Do you have low testosterone?

The male hormone, testosterone, is essential for healthy ageing in men.

DATUK Prof Dr Tan Hui Meng recalls the day that 58-year-old Mr L sat in his clinic and told him about his old man sickness.

L used to be a very active and vibrant man, says Prof Tan. He would go mountain biking and scuba-diving regularly, and played golf every day.

However, something changed when L hit 55. He began to feel tired and sleepy every afternoon. Instead of exercising for an hour-and-a-half every day, he cut it down to 45 minutes. He also felt that he was generally less focused.

Prof Tan says that he has seen many men in their 50s and 60s complaining of the same old man sickness, where they start to feel lethargic, moody and irritable, gain weight around their tummy, and suffer from low libido.

Many of these patients seemed resigned to the fact that their condition is part and parcel of ageing.

However, Prof Tan believes that there is more to it than just getting old. Blaming these symptoms on age, he says, leads to the assumption that they are inevitable. But what if these so-called ageing symptoms could be prevented or better managed to help men maintain their quality of life?

Prof Tan has been privy to a lot of exciting international and local research, which increasingly confirms that low testosterone levels are linked to many physical and psychological symptoms and conditions usually associated with ageing.

A lot of this research also suggests that treating testosterone deficiency could be the key, not only to improve these symptoms, but also to reduce the risk of metabolic syndrome, which is linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and early death.

All this knowledge motivated Prof Tan to write a book about testosterone deficiency syndrome, to help men in Malaysia identify if they have low testosterone, and what they can do to bring their levels back to normal.

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Do you have low testosterone?

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