Should You Be Taking Testosterone?
But you believe that men with low testosterone who have central adiposity have some control over their level of testosterone?
They may, yes indeed. It may be that if they institute lifestyle changes—the ones we're all struggling to do, including increased exercise and better eating-and lose some of that central adiposity. There are many systems in their body that will be improved by that, and testosterone levels are just one of them.
Twenty-nine percent of the men you studied had low testosterone. By this finding, it would seem that above age 50, diminishing testosterone seems to be fairly common.
That's correct. It declines gradually with aging in general, and many experts believe that above the age of 60, about 30 percent of men have testosterone deficiency. Symptoms include low energy, fatigue, inability to concentrate, low libido. There's a tremendous amount of research going on in this area right now. And what we need, of course, is a large placebo-controlled clinical trial to test supplements.
Is there one going on at UCSD?
It's in the development stages. It's multisite study that the National Institutes of Healthis reviewing for sponsorship. The principal investigator would be Peter Snyder at the University of Pennsylvania, and Elizabeth Barrett-Connor would be the lead at UCSD.
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