Male Menopause: Warning Signs and How to Fight It by: Dr. William Wong ND, PhD

Not long ago, a mere decade in fact, conventional medicine denied there was such a thing as male menopause or Andropause. Yet physiology and endocrinology text- books as far back as the 1920’s address the lowering of testosterone in late middle age as the male climacteric and described what the symptoms were. For decades the squeaky wheel got the grease and women's hormonal issues were openly researched and treated by an allopathic medicine eager to profit from their lack of hormones. But with men and their hormone testosterone, medicine found itself in a philosophical quandary. Since the Woman's Lib movement of the 1970’s medical junk science has blamed testosterone for everything from cancer to causing war, to criminal behavior, to rape. Medicine could not easily go back and admit that testosterone was a needed and good thing after decades of bashing it as the root cause of most of mans ills.

Just as the female ovaries stop making all progesterone, all testosterone and some estrogen at menopause, a mans testicles stop making testosterone and progesterone (needed to keep testosterone from turning into estrogen), while their adrenals and body fat keep making estrogen. Estrogen is also rife in foods, (soy, flax, green tea etc.) and as xeno-estrogen pollutants in pesticides, artificial crop fertilizers and plastics. This load of estrogen hastens the process of Andopause. It is a sad fact these days that most men aged 40-45 have more estrogen floating in them than their wives do! And what’s worse, food and environmental estrogen have caused men to hit andropause earlier and earlier since the WWII generation. The clinical experience has shown the WWII / Great Depression generation men got to andropause in their mid 50’s to 60. Baby Boomers began to get to andropause by their mid to late 40’s and now reports have many men in the X’er generation hitting the wall at 35!

According to Dr. Doris Rapp MD, the worlds leading Pediatric Allergist and Specialist in Environmental Medicine, the overflow of estrogen in the foods and environment is the reason so many young men born since the 1970’s look, sound and act feminized in their physiques, voices, mannerisms and sexual preferences. (1,2). The soy formula had since 1973 is a major contributor to this process and to men reaching Andropause earlier than previously. Each bottle of soy baby formula contains 5 to 8 birth control pills worth of estrogen! (3). One simply cannot feed a boy that much estrogen (or any estrogen) and not expect there to be trouble! (4). At infancy and toddlerhood, is a time when infant boys are supposed to have the testosterone level of an 18 year old! This high testosterone level in boys 3 months to 3 years old produces the sexual differentiation in the anterior pituitary needed to tell a boy he’s a man.

So now, the men who were fed the first soy formulas as infants are in the 30-35 year old group. They are wandering into doctor’s offices asking for Viagra. But the answer to the changes they see and feel cannot be had with a pill that merely improves circulation. Andropause is a time when a man’s hormone production begins to change during the planned obsolesce the body has that ultimately leads to death. Anti-aging medicine tells us that it is testosterone and progesterone that begin to lag in men at andropause, while estrogen production is increased. It is dopamine and oxytocin levels that begin to lower in the brain while prolactin levels increase. How is this planned obsolesence? The answer is simple.

Higher estrogen causes inflammation. Today, medicine is worried about the hormone created by body fat that creates inflammation. That hormone is estrogen, specifically the Estradiol and Estrone variants of human estrogen. Medicine knows that inflammation is the root cause of most all non-infectious disease (i.e. diabetes, heart disease, lung fibrosis, cancer, Alzheimer’s etc.) as all have as their starting point inflammation. After they start, it is continued inflammation that drives the development of these conditions. Physiology knows, even if medicine refuses to admit the fact for reasons of liability, that it is estrogen that drives the formation of fibrosis diseases in women (i.e. endometriosis, uterine fibroids, fibrocystic breast disease etc.). It is this estrogen dominance that creates the chronic inflammation that in both sexes decreases the size and diminishes the function of our internal organs as we age. By our 70’s, our internal organs have shrunk to 1/2 or less of their young adult previous size. This is so significant that in med school anatomy it is taught that this fibrosis is actually what kills us all as the visceral dysfunction it causes leads us to chronic disease. (5)

Andropause like menopause is a time of very low or no testosterone and progesterone production (progesterone is what protects testosterone and keeps it from turning into estrogen and keeps both from becoming Di Hydro Testosterone). The only hormone being produced in any substantial amounts is estrogen and with it the signs of estrogen dominance and estrogen's conversion into DHT appear:

• Lack of morning erections when awaking. (Testosterone is made between 2 and 4 a.m. and 2 and 4 p.m.). No morning erections equals no testosterone production that night). 
• Smaller less stronger and less frequent erections, with an overall shrinkage of penis size. 
• Hair loss from the head while there is, Increased hair growth on back 
• Gynocomasty (beast development in men or “man tits”) 
• Loss of muscle mass 
• Flabbiness 
• Loose saggy skin 
• Loss of mental drive, (i.e. no get up and go. Testosterone is the anti depression “I’m invincible” hormone. As we know from PMS estrogen is the hormone of depression.) 
• Lowered or lack of libido 
• Smaller less pleasurable orgasms 
• Lowered volume of ejaculation 
• Back pains 
• Generalized weakness 
• Swollen prostate.

At the same time, the Substantia Nigra of the brain begins to die off at the rate of 10% per decade after 40 lowering the production of Dopamine. (6). This brain chemical is responsible for the connection of brain to body but is also the true seat of desire or libido. Low dopamine produces low libido and little satisfaction from sex as the orgasm hormone Oxytocin is an analogue of dopamine and when one is low the other is as well, while their enemy hormone prolactin is high. Prolactin is the anti desire hormone No one knows why men make prolactin, the breast milk making hormone, but it puts a huge crimp on sexual desire and pleasure when it is high. 

These are all things Viagra absolutely can’t fix. Natural anti-aging therapy can help restore most all the things lost to the hormonal changes of andropause better than a blond and a hot sports car! Those will just be an embarrassment if you have low libido, low sexual ability, no drive or zest for life and look like a flabby saggy old man. The secrets to overcoming andropause and feeling 18 again are in my book Maximun Male Performance. That way you can actually do something meaningful with that blond and sports car! 

So, do you think you might be in or approaching andropause? Take the test below. The results may open you eyes.

References:

1) Is This Your Childs World by Dr. Doris Rapp, published by Bantam. www.drrapp.com.

2) Our Toxic World, A Wake Up Call by Dr. Doris Rapp, published by Environmental Medical Research Foundation. www.drrapp.com

3) www.soyonlineservice.co.nz

4) Soy the Poison Seed, (article with references) 

5) Fibrosis The Enemy Of Life. (article with references).

6) Marked microglial reaction in normal aging human substantia nigra: correlation with extraneuronal neuromelanin pigment deposits: Beach Thomas et al, Acta Neuropathologica, vol. 114 Number 4 Oct. 2007, p 419-424. Published by Springer Berlin.