What is the reason for the male hormone health risk warning?

The core trigger is abnormalities in the secretion and metabolism pathways of androgens (mainly testosterone), combined with the reduced sensitivity of target organs to androgens, as well as interference from the external environment and living habits.

Not long ago, a 32-year-old Internet programmer came to me for consultation. He stayed up until 2 or 3 o'clock to get off work for half a year. Last week, the company's physical examination showed that the level of free testosterone in six hormone items was nearly 30% lower than the reference value. The report directly marked a hormonal health risk warning. He himself said that he has been feeling heavy recently, has lost a lot more hair than before, and is not even interested in being intimate with his wife. Many people's first reaction when encountering this situation is "Have their functions deteriorated with age?" This is really not the case. Nowadays, there are a lot of young people in the clinic who have such early warnings at the age of 25.

At present, the academic community has not reached a completely unified conclusion on the proportion of causes of such early warnings. One group of clinicians believes that more than 90% of abnormalities are caused by acquired lifestyle habits. Some studies believe that nearly 30% of early warnings are inseparable from innate basic factors such as congenital genes and a history of cryptorchidism in childhood.

If you think about the daily life of young people today, they eat high-fat takeaways and milk tea, and their body fat percentage keeps rising. The aromatase enzyme in fat is like a "little thief that steals hormones", specifically converting testosterone in the body into estrogen. This is equivalent to reducing production while stealing inventory. Naturally, androgen levels cannot increase. There are also those who sit in the office for more than ten hours every day and play games on the sofa after get off work. If the testicles are crowded in a hot and stuffy environment for a long time, their ability to synthesize and secrete testosterone will be compromised. In addition, with the long-term pressure to meet the project, the cortisol level will soar, which directly presses the "pause button" on the secretion of testosterone. It would be strange if no warning is given.

But it’s really not all to blame on lifestyle. I met a 28-year-old fitness instructor last month. His body fat rate has been maintained between 11% and 13% all year round. His diet and rest routine are as regular as an alarm clock. He also found a hormonal risk warning. Finally, further screening revealed that he was born with insufficient gonadotropin secretion. His body’s compensatory ability was not shown when he was young. In the past two years, he has been leading intensive training classes with a heavy workload, and the compensation could not keep up. The problem broke out. There are also some easily overlooked triggers, such as long-term use of antidepressants, glucocorticoids, or having mumps affecting the testicles as a child, or having a history of testicular trauma, which may suddenly trigger this warning.

There is another point that many people have misunderstandings about. Many people think that this risk is only encountered by adult males. In fact, clinical warnings are also present in teenage boys. Most of them are caused by severe obesity and long-term consumption of high-sugar carbonated drinks. Previously, there was a 16-year-old child who weighed nearly 200 pounds. The detected testosterone level was not higher than that of a 40-year-old male, and there were already signs of breast development. It is really worrying to talk about it.

In fact, you don’t need to be too anxious when you encounter a warning report. First, go back and check whether there are any obvious problems with your work, rest and diet in the past two or three months, and then go to the men’s department or endocrinology department of a regular hospital for a comprehensive hormone screening to find out whether it is caused by acquired habits or congenital problems. In most cases, as long as timely adjustments are made, the indicators can be slowly brought back to the normal range.