Surviving Male Menopause

I began working on my male menopause series when I turned 50.  The changes hit me like a ton of bricks.  Everything seemed to be falling apart at once.  My erections were going south, my hormones were dropping off, my energy was going down, my sleeplessness was increasing, my prostate was enlarging.  My children were growing up and leaving home.

I wanted answers in the worst way.  And I wasn’t alone.  Mid-life men and women weren’t content to slip quietly into old age.  When I began research for the book Male Menopause most people laughed at the idea.  Well, really to be truthful, most men laughed at the idea.  Most of the women I talked to said things like, “Well, it’s about time men finally figured out that they are as hormonal as women.”

I said, “After completing four years of research, I concluded that midlife men have significant hormonal and physiological changes and that ‘male menopause’ was the proper name to describe what all men experience as they move from the first half of life to the second.”

When I began my research, I assumed I would find that men and women differed greatly in how they experienced the “change of life.”  I expected women’s changes to be more physiological and hormonal and men’s changes to be more psychological and social.  But it turned out that as many women suspected, men were every bit as hormonally driven as were women.

And once again I ran into a resistant belief system.  In our youth oriented culture, we didn’t want to believe that hormonal and physiological changes were impacting men.  In fact, most physicians I talked to felt that “male menopause” was a myth.  However, in England, Germany, Denmark, Russia, Australia, and many other countries more and more medical professional were recognizing the reality of male menopause.

Here’s what I said about Male Menopause:

Male menopause (also called viropause or andropause) begins with hormonal, physiological, and chemical changes that occur in all men generally between the ages of forty and fifty-five, though it can occur as early as thirty-five or as late as sixty-five.  These changes affect all aspects of a man’s life.  Male menopause is, thus, a physical condition with psychological, interpersonal, social, and spiritual dimensions.

The purpose of male menopause is to signal the end of the first part of a man’s life and prepare him for the second half.  Male menopause is not the beginning of the end, as many fear, but the end of the beginning.  It is the passage to the most passionate, powerful, productive, and purposeful time of a man’s life.

The three books in the series, Male Menopause, Surviving Male Menopause, and The Whole Man Program became best-sellers throughout the world and were translated into more than 30 foreign languages.  As more and more men move into and through the male menopause passage, we continue to learn more about what it means to be a male today.

Although, they became world-wide best-sellers, what was most satisfying was that they honored the memory of my father.  Going through his own “male menopause passage,” he tried to commit suicide.  No one understood what was going on for him and he was shipped off to a mental hospital.  It didn’t have to be that way.

I know I’ve been able to save thousands of families from going through what we went through.  Male Menopause is real and it can be treated.  Men don’t need to suffer the despair that overwhelmed my father.

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Blurb about Guest Blogger:

Dr. Jed Diamond have been helping men, and the women who love them, for the last 44 years. He has written 8 books, including Male Menopause, The Irritable Male Syndrome, and Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places. He is passionate about helping transform relationships and make the world a better place for us all. For more information, please go to www.menalive.com.