The Testosterone Factor: A Practical Guide to Improving Vitality and Virility, Naturally Paperback - 2006

Excerpt

Introduction

A Letter from the Doctor
To the baby-boomer men who want to get more out of life,
Who want to be more vital,
And to those who love them . . .

It’s an honor to have this chance to speak with you directly. I’m also pleased to talk to you in plain language, so I don’t have to hide behind my doc-talk, all those medical terms we’ve been taught to use, which often confuse people even more.

This is important, because the usual messaging from health practitioners doesn’t seem to be getting through. Caregivers and their clients should all have such open and plain communication with each other more often.

First, baby-boomer men should be saluted. You boomers are the first generation to want it all – energy, vitality, creativity, grace under pressure, sensuality, good health, and well-being. You want to age vigorously and without disease. You want to be in your prime of life for as long as possible.
It’s great that you are not content to see midlife as a time to start slowing down or fading away, letting the stresses of the world overpower you, accumulating problems like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attacks, obesity, sexual problems, creaky bones, and weakening muscles. I heartily salute your desire for perpetual wellness. By doing so, you are waking up the medical establishment, and causing the world to take notice. You are forcing health practitioners to change their mind-set, to think in new ways, and to be promoters of health, not merely disease-­catchers.

But here’s the problem.What you may not realize is this – it’s the effects of the master hormone that the body itself makes, testosterone (T), that can help put you at your best. ­Testosterone – made in the testes, controlled by the brain – promotes all the positive qualities, such as energy and vitality, just mentioned. In fact, testosterone has lifelong positive effects on your physique, emotions, intellect, relationships, behavior, and sexuality.

T is a true multitasking ­hormone.

But baby boomers are living longer than anyone in the history of humankind – men are now routinely living past the age of eighty. Men are pushing the limits, which is wonderful. I applaud all the developments that made it possible – in medical science, public sanitation, clean water, nutrition, antibiotics, immunization, and so on. Yours is the first generation to realize that aging does not have to be a slow decline.

But now I’ll give it to you straight. If you’re about forty-five years old or older – according to ­Nature – you’re supposed to be dead already. That’s what happened for generations up until the year ­1900.

That’s how it’s always been for ages, and is still true today in many developing countries. It seems that we men were built for only a forty-five-year journey, not an eighty-year lifespan. We just aren’t geared up for a service contract that runs so long – our lifetime warranty expires much earlier, but now our bodies have to work for an extra thirty-five years. The body’s testosterone hormone production schedule, the communication routes, the distribution network, the whole arrangement we have going – it’s all overextended.

It’s like we’re all hanging around after the party is over.

So we need to renegotiate our hormone service contract. Here’s the ­story:

On top of that, our modern lifestyle poisons the body: our nonrestful sleep, constant stress, never-ending demands on our time, attacks on our self-esteem, high blood pressure, excess weight, sitting around all the time, and dedicated eating of junk, cholesterol, sugar, and salt – all these damage our bodies.

The body’s hormone-manufacturing ability is particularly hard hit. When your body is abused by the above factors, T is increasingly blocked from acting. It’s neutralized, used up, burned off, wasted, or overwhelmed by competing, enemy hormones – which means you can’t keep functioning at your best.

So what happens? Gradually, the body’s hormone production systems run out of juice too early. And that’s one of the core reasons for a wellness gap – why your life span is longer than your health and well-being ­span.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Hormones, the chemical messengers floating around in the blood, have always been there for you when it mattered.

Remember puberty, the transition to manhood, the coming of age, becoming a man–­when hormones blew your mind? That was the doing of all the body systems working together, inspired and led by the brain — testes axis. It was a real power trip, one of the body’s championship seasons.

Testosterone output was superspiked, giving you your beard, deeper voice, broader shoulders, bigger muscles, sexuality, new energy, ambitious personality, vigor, and a desire to take charge and take on the world.