* A REAL competitor is a company that manufacturers pharmaceutical grade bioidential hormones. Not a company that sells you herbs, spices and/or vitamins and call it a 'hormone supplement' that won't help you very much at all.
New Research Shows Low Testosterone is Linked to Massive Increase in Early Deaths
taken from www.CartoonStock.com
There is a male version of menopause called andropause and the condition is confirmed by medical professionals today. It is not as obvious as menopause as experienced by women, but it is real.
Men don't like to think or talk about it because it makes them feel less masculine. We are also very reluctant to do anything about it, and when we do, it is to ask our doctor for a prescription for Viagra rather than attempting to address the underlying causes of our declining energy, increased fatigue, weight gain, irritability, man-boobs, and failing libido and sexual performance.
The medical profession and most people had believed that testosterone contributes to the development of heart disease. It was also believed that the abuse of testosterone, which can be taken as a supplement, was linked to increased risks of cardiovascular disease and sudden death. But now things have changed!
It is now recognised that it is the abuse of testosterone and the use of synthetic forms of testosterone are dangerous.
An array of recent studies may make more of us sit up and take a bit more notice and recognize the good things about testosterone - especially in regards to our health and quality of life.
Researchers have found that low testosterone levels in men are associated with dramatically higher risk of death from a very wide array of different causes.
We now know that high end levels of testosterone are linked to lower levels of blood fats and cholesterol, less obesity, prevention of glucose intolerance and prevention of diabetes.
"Emerging data suggest that reduced testosterone levels in men may be associated with increased cardiovascular risk", Ronald Ma and Peter Tong of the Chinese University of Hong Kong have found in their research which is another link in the information chain concerning the benefits of bioidentical testosterone therapy. Based upon the results of the research they have called for a review of testosterone replacement therapy.
"There has been a marked increase in prescription of testosterone over recent years," they wrote. "While the long term cardiovascular impact of testosterone supplement in those with low levels remains to be demonstrated, accumulating evidence suggests there is a sound basis for examining this."
To measure the impact of testosterone levels in men with heart disease and to identify what percentage of them have low testosterone, 930 men with coronary heart disease were recruited to participants in the research. These men had all been referred to a heart center between 2000 and 2002. The participants' health was then tracked for about 7 years.
At the start of the study, low testosterone levels were found to be common, with about 25% of the men being in this group.
According to the measurements of bio-available testosterone (testosterone available for body tissues to use which is what needs to be increased to remain healthy) and total testosterone, these men were clinically defined as being testosterone deficiency, which was not caused by their aging but by a treatable medical condition (possibly hypogonadism).
Over the course of the follow-up period, nearly twice as many men with low testosterone levels died as men with normal testosterone levels (20% versus 12%).
Low, rather than high, levels of testosterone are linked to obesity, dangerous blood fats, and insulin resistance, all of which are risk factors for diabetes and heart disease (the types of testosterone found in synthetic hormones, however, are known to be harmful). The researchers suggest that men at high risk of these conditions may stand to benefit the most from testosterone replacement therapy.
A quarter of the men were found to have low testosterone. During the study, one in five patients with low testosterone died, compared with one in eight of those with normal levels.
Supporting evidence comes from a study of British men aged 40 to 79 by University of Cambridge gerontologist Kay-Tee Khaw, MBBCh, and colleagues.
Khaw has said,
"The men with lower testosterone levels had an increased risk of dying from any cause, but most particularly of cardiovascular disease. We looked at cancer, too, and found no evidence of a link to cancer with higher testosterone levels."
Close to 12,000 men were involved in the research and more than 800 died by 2003; Khaw compared these men's testosterone levels to those of 1,500 of the living study participants.
After adjusting for factors that might affect risk of death - including age, weight, smoking, alcohol use, high blood pressure, diabetes, physical activity, education, and social class - the link between low testosterone and earlier death remained.
Compared to men with the lowest 25% of testosterone levels:
"We found that low testosterone predicts early mortality in men over the next 10 years or so," Khaw says. "But we think this finding needs to be replicated. We would like others to look at this in other populations of men and see if they get the same results."
The findings make sense to Robert Davis, MD, professor of urology at the University of Rochester, N.Y. Davis. He says that low testosterone is common among men with metabolic syndrome - a constellation of risk factors including abdominal fat, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol, and high blood-fat levels.
"Certainly I'm not surprised at this finding. It's been shown that low testosterone correlates with metabolic syndrome, which is related to diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and vascular disease," Davis said. "The need to check testosterone levels in people with metabolic syndrome is being recognized more and more among physicians."
The Archives of Internal Medicine highlight research undertaken at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System and the University of Washington at Seattle, which evaluated whether low testosterone levels are a risk factor for mortality in male veterans.
They studied the relationship between hormone levels and death in a total of 858 males over the age of 40. All participants received care in the VA Puget Sound Health Care System and had their testosterone levels checked. These men were followed for average period of 4.3 years, with some followed for the full eight years of the study. None of the men had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
19% of the men were classified as having low testosterone levels. 28% were classified as equivocal, meaning they had an equal number of test results in the low and normal ranges. 52.7% were classified as having testosterone levels in the normal range. Men who died during the first year of the study were excluded from the data. Results were adjusted to account for an array of issues that could have swayed the findings.
Men in the low testosterone group had an 88 percent increased risk of death compared to the group who had normal testosterone levels. This is a highly statistically significant, jaw dropping result that persisted after the other variables that may have influenced risk of death, such as age, other illnesses and body mass index were considered.
These finding highlight that there is a link between low testosterone and mortality and that it is not simply due to acute illness, and should not be ignored by men.
It may be an idea to check your testosterone levels to see if you are at risk. You can do that easily - just take the 5-min online Testosterone Quiz by clicking on the button below. Your results will be displayed imediately you complete the quiz.
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If you think you might be or to prove to yourself that you're not then how about taking a short 5-minute testosterone quiz and finding out? Got the balls?
