Fresno Chiropractor and Natural Health Doctor Comments:
Current medical practice in the 21st century has developed numerous guidelines and standard of care protocols to identify and manage menopause symptoms in women, but current medical practices do not have practice guidelines and models to manage male hormone disorders. As men age, they too are susceptible to hormone dysregulation and loss of coordination of their hypothalamic-pituitary-gonad feedback loop.
Andropause is the appropriate term for what many would call "male menopause." Although, this term is not entirely correct because men do not menstruate. Males instead go through a period where they lose their ability to remain androgen (testosterone) dominant.
Low testosterone states in males has many physiological impacts:
- Increased obesity
- Increase waist-to-hip ration
- Insulin insensitivity
- Increase heart disease risk
- Erectile Dysfunction
- Loss of libido
- Cognitive Decline and greater risk for Alzheimers
These symptoms cross over into many medical specialties including....cardiology, urology, proctology, endrocrinology, psychology, and general medicine. Most often the symptoms of andropause will be treated as separate disease entities, not as a symptom of a bigger problem. This occurs because andropause is not commonly screened for in everyday practice.
Treatment of this condition is not a straight forward matter. Although, exogenous testosterone is the most common treatment, it is not always appropriate.
Loss of androgen dominance can result from elevated estrogens. This is usually from upregulation of enzymes that convert testosterone into estrogen, or decreased liver clearance of estrogens. These are usually secondary to other metabolic shifts that can be supported with natural interventions, that don't require testosterone replacement. If the body is actively converting testosterone to estrogen then increasing testosterone through replacement gel is only going to make this problem worse.
Another common cause of low testosterone is from depressed output of the pituitary releasing hormone, called Luteinizing Hormone (LH). LH is the hormone that signals the male testes to produce more testosterone. This hormone is suppressed by the body's stress response usually due to adrenal dysfunction, overtraining, or some other form of physiologic stress response.
This is a situation where replacement testosterone would further suppress LH, destroying feed back loop coordination and possibly creating dependence on exogenous testosterone forever. Rarely is this pattern screened for. It is a scenario where natural intervention is needed since their is no medical treatment for suppressed LH due to adrenal dysfunction.
We see andropause patients commonly at Fresno's Boydston Institute. We take a functional endocrinology approach to dealing with hormone imbalances, naturally.
If you suffer with male hormone imbalance and you would like to become a patient at the Boydston Institute in Fresno, CA, call us at 559-297-9218. You can visit our new patient page to get all the details. If you have a question then Contact Us.
Recent Comments