What really happens to men as they age—and why testosterone is only part of the story
By Curro Cachinero
It does not happen on a particular birthday.
You do not wake up one morning at 45 or 50 and have your body announce: youth is over. Testosterone is being shut down.
It is not that simple.
Nevertheless, many men know the feeling that something shifts at some point. Perhaps not even dramatically. More gradually.
Recovery takes longer. Muscles are harder to build and disappear faster. While the muscles say goodbye more quickly, belly fat clings on with surprising stubbornness. After a bad night’s sleep, you suddenly need two days to get properly back on your feet. For some, libido changes. For others, mood, concentration, or simply that difficult-to-describe feeling of drive changes.
And at some point, a word comes up:
Andropause.
The male menopause.
I find the term interesting precisely because it is so catchy. It offers an explanation for something many men actually experience. At the same time, it may lead us down the wrong path.
Because there is no male counterpart to menopause in this form.
There is no normal biological point at which the testes stop working. No hormonal cliff that all men eventually fall over.
What does exist, however, is a medically defined testosterone deficiency—hypogonadism—and there are men in whom it first develops later in life. The European guidelines explicitly distinguish between age-related changes and hypogonadism requiring treatment.
The decisive question, therefore, is not:
Are there changes in the aging man?
Of course they do.
The more interesting question is:
What of this is truly aging—and what do we merely attribute to aging?
A seductively simple story
A few years ago, Louann Brizendine’s book The Male Brain was published.
In a certain sense, it tells the story of a man’s life through the lens of his hormones: childhood, puberty, sexuality, partnership, fatherhood, and finally aging.
I previously explored Brizendine’s book and the role of testosterone in greater detail: Testosterone and the male brain.
I understand very well why this perspective is fascinating.
Hormones offer an immensely appealing explanation.
Why does the pubescent boy absolutely want to impress?
Testosterone.
Why are young men so strongly interested in sex, competition, and status?
Testosterone.
Why do the body, sexuality, and drive change with age?
Testosterone again.
Suddenly, you have a master key that seems to open a great many doors.
And testosterone is undoubtedly an important main character in male biology.
But a main character is not the whole story.
What does testosterone actually do?
When testosterone is mentioned, it usually does not take long for muscles and sexuality to enter the picture.
Both are true.
But that makes the matter about as completely described as a forest with the words: There are trees.
Among other things, testosterone affects sexual function and libido, muscle and body composition, bones, blood formation, and reproduction. A true deficiency can therefore have physical, sexual, and psychological consequences.
Most testosterone is produced in the testicles. But its production is controlled by a regulatory system:
Brain → pituitary gland → testicles → testosterone
That is more important than it may initially sound.
Because if the end result is low testosterone, that does not automatically mean that “the testicles are producing too little.” The cause may lie at different points in this system—and body weight, metabolism, illnesses, or medications may also play a role.
A low testosterone level is therefore initially just information. Not yet an explanation.
Does testosterone simply decline because we get older?
One of the statements you constantly read on the subject of men’s health goes roughly like this:
From a certain age onward, testosterone levels decline every year.
The man gets older, testosterone declines, and therefore strength, libido, and vitality decline.
A nice straight line.
It seems, however, that the human body is less orderly here too.
The European Male Ageing Study is particularly interesting: a large European study of aging men. Over the long-term observation period, average total testosterone declined only slightly, while free testosterone declined more substantially.
Even more interesting: Changes in weight were accompanied by changes in hormone levels.
Men who gained weight showed declining testosterone levels on average. Weight loss, by contrast, was associated with rising levels. Body weight, comorbidities, and lifestyle apparently have a considerable influence on hormonal changes.
That changes the question.
Not just:
My testosterone is declining because I’m getting older—what can I take to counteract it?
Rather:
Why is my testosterone changing at all?
Sometimes a low testosterone level may be the cause of a problem.
But sometimes it may also be an expression of a larger problem.
Andropause is both myth and reality
That is why I now prefer a somewhat contradictory answer.
Yes, andropause does exist.
And:
No, andropause does not exist.
It does exist if by it we mean that the bodies, sexuality, metabolism, and hormone systems of many men change over the course of their lives.
It does not exist if we imagine it as the male version of menopause: a biological switch that is flipped at some point and triggers the same chain reaction in every man.
Andropause does not exist. Testosterone deficiency in older men certainly does. That is a crucial difference.
In healthy aging men, age alone explains only part of the decline in testosterone. Obesity, diabetes, other illnesses, and overall health can play a much larger role.
That is initially bad news for anyone looking for the simplest possible explanation.
For us men, it may be a pretty good one.
Because we cannot change our year of birth.
Some other factors are.
Fatigue is not yet a diagnosis
A man in his mid-fifties is more tired than he used to be. He has gained weight, sleeps worse, needs longer to recover after exercise, and his libido has declined.
Could testosterone play a role in this?
Of course.
However, fatigue, lack of motivation, and poor sleep can also be associated with stress, obesity, metabolic problems, depression, medications, and numerous illnesses.
According to European guidelines, certain sexual changes are more informative: declining sexual desire, fewer spontaneous or morning erections, and erectile difficulties.
Put somewhat unacademically:
Morning erections may be more diagnostically informative than the general feeling of somehow not feeling quite as good as before.
We have a separate, older article on the connection between testosterone and erectile function: Testosterone and Erectile Dysfunction.
And what does the blood test tell us?
An easy world would be nice here, too:
Draw blood. Measure testosterone. Look at the number. Done.
Unfortunately, it does not quite work that way.
Testosterone fluctuates over the course of the day. That is why a measurement in the morning while fasting is recommended. A low result should be confirmed with a second measurement. Diagnosing hypogonadism requires symptoms together with repeatedly low laboratory values.
There is another point, too: A large proportion of the testosterone in the blood is bound to proteins, particularly SHBG—the Sex Hormone Binding Globulin.
That is why total testosterone and freely available testosterone are not the same thing.
Two men can have the same total testosterone level and still have different amounts of free testosterone. Depending on the situation, SHBG, free testosterone, LH, and other levels may therefore also be of interest alongside total testosterone.
A single testosterone measurement is not an oracle.
I tried this on my own body once, years ago, and documented my levels using a Pine Pollen self-test. Today, I would formulate some of the conclusions much more cautiously—but that is precisely why I find the old experiment interesting as part of this search for answers.
Testosterone as a cause—or as a clue?
Perhaps this is the thought that has become most important to me while exploring this topic.
We like to think of testosterone as an adjustment knob.
If the level is low, we want to turn it up.
In the case of a genuine medical testosterone deficiency, targeted treatment can of course be sensible or necessary.
But for some men, a low level may possibly say something else about the condition of the system as a whole.
Weight, metabolism, sleep, illnesses, and overall health affect the hormonal system—and the hormonal system, in turn, affects body composition, sexuality, and well-being.
Not a straightforward chain of causation.
More of a network.
That is why another question has become more important to me than:
How can I increase my testosterone?
Namely:
What does my body need so that its hormonal system can regulate itself effectively?
Sleep? Exercise? Less visceral fat? Better metabolic health? Less chronic stress? Treatment of a disease?
Or an actual medical hormone therapy?
There is no single answer to this for all men.
This very perspective—not merely avoiding illness, but asking what makes health possible—is the starting point of our work with salutogenesis and adaptogens.
And what does Pine Pollen have to do with it?
So far, nothing at all.
And that is important to me.
Because as a provider of Pine Pollen, the following story would of course be extremely convenient for us:
Men grow older.
Testosterone changes.
Pine Pollen contains testosterone.
So Pine Pollen helps.
It is not that simple.
There is a fairly large scientific gap between detecting a substance in a plant and demonstrating an effect in humans.
We would need to know how much of it is present, in what form, what happens to it when consumed, how much is absorbed—and whether this amount is even relevant in the human body.
Anyone who would like an overview of our previous articles and the research can find it on our Pine Pollen knowledge page and in the separate research overview.
Even so, the story is remarkable.
1971
In January 1971, M. Šaden-Krehula, M. Tajić, and D. Kolbah published a short scientific paper on the pollen of the Scots pine Pinus sylvestris.
Your title:
Testosterone, epitestosterone and androstenedione in the pollen of Scotch pine P. silvestris L.
So the researchers did indeed report detecting:
Testosterone.
Epitestosterone.
Androstenedione.
in the pollen of a pine tree.
But that still does not answer what this finding means for a person who takes Pine Pollen.
And that is exactly what interests me.
What are epitestosterone and androstenedione, anyway?
How were the researchers able to detect these substances in 1971?
What quantities did they find?
And does any of this also apply to our Canary Island pine, Pinus canariensis?
That is what the next part is about.
Not the claim:
“Pine Pollen increases testosterone.”
Rather, the much more interesting question:
What did these researchers actually discover in 1971?
And what does their finding mean—and what does it explicitly not mean?
Conclusion: Is andropause a myth or a reality?
Both.
Men change as they age. Their hormonal system changes too.
Clinically relevant testosterone deficiency exists.
But the idea of a universal hormonal crash that befalls every man from a certain age onward is too simplistic. Age plays a role—as do health status, body weight, metabolism, and illnesses.
And a single testosterone reading does not yet tell the whole story.
That leaves me with two sentences:
Andropause does not exist. Testosterone deficiency in older men certainly does. That is a crucial difference.
And:
The salutogenetic question is not: How do I get more testosterone? Rather: What does my body need so that its hormonal system can regulate itself well?
We will continue with this question.
In the next part, we come to three scientists, a pine tree, and a surprising finding from 1971.
Note: This article is for general information only and does not replace medical diagnosis or treatment. Persistent changes in sexual function, pronounced fatigue, or suspected hormone deficiency should be medically evaluated.
Sources and further reading
European Association of Urology: Guidelines on Sexual and Reproductive Health – Male Hypogonadism.
Endocrine Society: Testosterone Therapy in Men With Hypogonadism: Clinical Practice Guideline.