Tired And Grumpy? You Might Have Low Testosterone

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"Be the man you used to be," booms the macho baritone voice on the car radio. "Get that energy back for a game of golf with your buddies. Rediscover some real passion for the one you love ..."

In Los Angeles, it's impossible to escape these unnerving adverts informing you that you're now a shadow of your former self. Men, we're told, are suffering a widespread malaise. We're tired, our waists are growing, our hair is falling out, and our sex drive is plummeting.

Of course, in the UK, losing some follicles and gathering a few extra pounds might be considered an inevitable rite of passage. But here, where the march toward self-improvement and perpetual youth is relentless, backsliding is perceived as an illness. A genuine sickness. There's even a catchy medical diagnosis for it: Low T or lack of testosterone.

LA Man's "T" appears to be vanishing faster than the ozone layer, and it has set off a panic along the sun-drenched beaches and palm tree-lined boulevards. Hypochondriac male Angelenos are buying up supplements with names like "Manimal" and "High T" by the bucket load. If that doesn't make them feel manly again, doctors will prescribe a hormone-infused gel.

It's now become impossible to watch a baseball game in peace without one of these ads telling you to "have a serious conversation with your medical practitioner" or to "get your T-level checked". Some of the symptoms you're told to look out for? Feeling slightly grumpy or sad, or not wanting to go to work.

All-American types with jaws chiseled from granite will pop up on TV screens telling you to "live strong" and "fulfill your life goals." Former American football player Daryl "Moose" Johnston earnestly reassures us that even he was a sufferer, but " got back in the game " through treatment.

Call it the power of advertising, but at some point these messages began to make sense to me. Looking for symptoms of my own I realized that I'd begun to find baseball a bit boring. And I do get pretty tired after hot yoga. As I watched for the hundredth time an ad showing a restored "High T" man driving a flash convertible on a beach, I thought: "Perhaps it's time I followed Moose's advice."

It wasn't that straightforward. For a start, I found it would cost me in the region of $800 a month to be coated in testosterone gel in order to "become the man I used to be".

More alarmingly, the possible side-effects of hitting up on T include shrinking testicles and growing breasts. Plus any woman I touched might develop excessive body hair. Suddenly, I was rather less keen to try it.

Testosterone, I also learned, is on the list of banned substances for professional athletes. On the other hand, word has it that it is becoming very popular among CEOs, who refer to it as "Viagra for the boardroom." One T-pumped man I encountered described how it "feels like someone's erased 15 years of your life." The Viagra analogy is apt: singer Robbie Williams has admitted to injecting himself with testosterone to boost his sex drive.

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Tired And Grumpy? You Might Have Low Testosterone