I just blamed it on the aging process. Fortunately for Cormier, his doctor recognized these as more than symptoms of advancing years and referred him to Dr. Robert Tan, a Houston geriatrician, a doctor specializing in care of the elderly. After getting the results of a blood test, Tan, the author of The Andropause Mystery , immediately prescribed testosterone replacement therapy. While some of the symptoms may be the same as for women experiencing menopause, there are important differences. At the San Antonio meeting of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists last month, there were two major presentations on treating androgen deficiency.
Androgens are a group of hormones, of which testosterone is the most powerful.
One source of the confusion is the name used to describe the syndrome. Because men don't have menstrual cycles, they can't stop having them. Not that the medical community hasn't tried to coin alternative terms. Produced in the testes, testosterone is the hormone responsible for many of the attributes that define a male. In the womb, it shapes the male genitals.