In popular culture, it’s the women who are supposed to be the most obsessed by the way they look. Such is the pressure for social acceptance, many spend amazingly large sums of money on cosmetic surgery and other treatments to keep the relevant parts of the body trim and all wrinkles away from the face. Yet, on the quiet, men can have equal concerns albeit most do not spend the same amount of treatments. For some reason, men seem to forget they also go through a menopause where their hormone levels change. This causes that unfortunate swelling of the belly, loss of muscle tone and mass, a slowdown in the sex drive and, sometimes, depression. The skin loses some of its elasticity. Fine lines and wrinkles appear. Eyesight and hearing tend to decline.
Some men manage to go through the danger years between 40 and 70 with only the smallest changes. Others find their lives more seriously disrupted. For example, because the hormone level affects the prostate, some men need to urinate more often. Age also brings an increased risk of heart disease, a loss of up to 15% in bone density and changes to the autoimmune system. Unlike women who have been offered hormone replacement therapy for many years, doctors have had little interest in devising a similar treatment for men. Rather they have picked individual symptoms and devised specific remedies to deal with them, e.g. to treat heart disease, erectile dysfunction, and so on. Put into context, however, testosterone levels fall both because of aging and because of weight gain. So, men who are overweight are more likely to show age-related changes earlier. Nevertheless, doctors don’t consider it appropriate to boost the general level of testosterone, so certain clear risks emerge. As bones weaken, the risk of fractures from falls rises, the libido becomes less urgent and some men experience erectile dysfunction, artherosclerosis rises the blood pressure, and mood changes occur with many growing more depressed.
Outside the purely medical problems comes a greying of the hair, then hair loss on the way to inevitable thin cover or actual baldness. This can be very damaging to self-confidence. Hair dyes have been around from the time people started noticing how some plants could change the color of “things”, but it’s only recently that a real remedy for hair loss has emerged. Of course, there have been fake medicines for centuries. Now Propecia brings the promise of a stop to hair loss for male pattern baldness. But, as with everything, there’s a slight catch. To get the best results, you should start taking this drug as soon as the diagnosis is confirmed. If you delay and age continues to thin your hair, the chance of regrowth disappears and the hair loss may not completely stop. The medical evidence from clinical trials is clear. Propecia is most effective when taken by younger men as early in the hair-loss cycle as possible. The other problem, of course, is that, once you start, you should be prepared to continue for many years. Hair loss will resume when you stop.
