Men’s Health & Hormones · 2026

Andropause: A Man’s Guide to the Years That Matter Most

What andropause is, why it matters, and what you can do about it naturally.

Jhöl Unger · New Westminster, BC · September 2026

Content note: this article contains mentions of suicide, suicide loss, and depression. If you’re struggling, call or text 988.

I was talking to a female friend recently, teasing her about pre or full menopause and her busted thermometer. She said, “you know, men get menopause too, right?” I said, “what? Like Man-o-pause?” She laughed and shot back, “it’s called Andropause, it’s a real thing.” I’d never heard that in my life. Being an advocate and writer for men’s mental health I had to look into this.

So I looked. And the more I searched for answers the more I saw that this is something we weren’t really discussing in North America. Then I found a few things I became genuinely angry about that weren’t common knowledge.

Here is the first one.

What happens to a man’s body between 40 and 60 matters because turns out those years are the most dangerous of a man’s life, statistically. Not because men are weak. Because the science isn’t making its way to the men that age.

Quick thing: not every man reading this is in that window. If you’re in your 20s or 30s, this information is still for you, the cortisol and testosterone seesaw runs at every age. Outside it, andropause may or may not be affecting you personally. I’m not diagnosing anyone. I’m putting information on the page and letting you decide what fits.

Man-o-Pause Is Real?!

Andropause has a real medical name: late-onset hypogonadism. The clinical definition is a syndrome marked by physical and sexual symptoms alongside a testosterone level that’s dropped below the normal range for a healthy young man. It’s real, it’s diagnosable, and it has a name doctors use. (Singh, Andropause: Current Concepts, Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2013.)

Want the full study? Head to our Research Library......open the Food, Body & Depression section and look for entry ✱23, Andropause — what falling testosterone in aging men actually does, and doesn’t do.

This is andropause. Male menopause. It is indeed a thing and has been for some time. Eighty years of documentation. The medical establishment has been talking about it since the 1940s. And eighty years later, most guys in North America still find out from a joke, the way I did.

The Facts For Men

✱1 In Canada, men aged 40 to 59 have the highest suicide rates of any age group. Not teenagers. Not elderly men. Middle-aged men.

The overlap between that window and what’s happening hormonally is not a coincidence. Yes, andropause isn’t the only thing going on at this stage, lack of purpose, loneliness, relationships, work, retirement anxiety all hit at once. But when those pressures land on a man whose brain chemistry is already shifting underneath him, the combination becomes dangerous. The hormone piece isn’t the whole story. It’s the amplifier.

✱2 After age 30, a man’s testosterone drops roughly one percent per year. By the time you’re 50, you could be sitting at 20 percent below where you started.

Most guys already know the women’s version. Sweaty, angry, ripping the buttons off your favourite shirt one minute, crying the next. Now I know men get a version too, and it shows up just as physical. By the time I was 47 I had experienced everything on the list below.

Here’s what it can look like:

• Fatigue you can’t shake
• Weight gain, especially around the middle
• Poor sleep
• Anxiety and irritability
• Depression
• Loss of motivation, focus, libido

These symptoms often get diagnosed as stress. As midlife dissatisfaction. As a guy who needs to pull himself together. Men often go undiagnosed and untreated until they’re already in trouble.

Suddenly ‘man-o-pause’ stopped being funny and started being personal.

The Biology in Plain English

Testosterone does more than build muscle and run your sex drive. It runs the neurotransmitters in your brain, serotonin, dopamine, GABA. The chemicals that regulate your mood, your motivation, your ability to feel okay in your own skin.

When testosterone drops, the brain chemicals that keep you feeling stable start to go sideways. Depression, low motivation, emotional flatness. It’s not in your head. It’s in your hormones.

There’s a villain in this story. It’s called cortisol. Cortisol is your stress hormone, and cortisol and testosterone operate like a seesaw. When one goes up, the other goes down. When your stress system runs hot all day, your body decides testosterone is a luxury it can’t afford right now.

This is the critical piece: stress isn’t just making you feel bad. It is chemically blocking the hormone your brain needs to regulate your mood.

The Needle Problem

Honestly, for me, when I first started noticing something had changed, it wasn’t even me. It was my wife at the time. She was desperate to get me to see I was depressed and needed some help. I went where a lot of guys go……“I must have low testosterone.” She got me an herbal version of that little blue pill everyone knows. All that did was drill a new, worse problem into me, “now there must be something wrong with my penis too, on top of everything else.” I only ended up more depressed and more helpless feeling.

The obvious answer might look to be pharmaceutical. Often the first thing a man wants to do is medicate. It’s fairly cheap here. Easily accessible. And in my own opinion Western Medicine seems to prefer the pill to a nature walk.

Can’t you just take testosterone? Inject it, patch it, whatever?

✱3 One study examined millions of men on synthetic testosterone. The men on the needle got more depressed, not less. In many cases, considerably higher rates. That got my attention. Research shows anabolic steroids are linked to higher rates of depression in men. (Nackeeran et al., 2024)

Here’s why: injecting synthetic testosterone into a body that still has its own production system running is like flooding a generator that isn’t empty yet. The body reads the flood, panics, and shuts down its own production to compensate. You end up worse than where you started.

Think about a 16-year-old whose hormones are firing off and changing his body fast, volatile, emotional, unpredictable. That’s what can happen when you override a system that still has its own rhythm.

The intervention point isn’t the needle. It’s the lifestyle. Keep reading.

The Natural Stack, What Actually Works

Before I give you this list, I want to tell you something personal. Two years ago I had what I call the belly shelf. You know the one, where you rest your beer without spilling. In 2023 I was depressed, had no energy, couldn’t see a reason to change. Today I’ve lost 25 pounds and can actually see at least two abs. I’m not lucky. I’m not built this way. I did the things on list below. That’s the only reason I get to stand here today and see both my shoes when I look down.

Here’s what moves the needle without a needle:

• Lift heavy things. Break a sweat. Go to the gym and actually work. Not a stroll on the treadmill, move weight, push hard, make it count.
• Sleep. ✱4 Men who sleep less than five hours a night for one week show 10 to 15 percent lower testosterone. Sleep is not rest. Sleep is hormone production.
• Stress reduction. Meditation, yoga, deep breathing. These lower cortisol directly. Remember the seesaw, less cortisol means more room for testosterone to do its job.
• Diet. Zinc and magnesium are critical. Oysters, pumpkin seeds, spinach, almonds, dark chocolate. Reduce processed food and excessive alcohol. Both tank testosterone.
• Sunlight. Vitamin D plays a direct role in testosterone production. Get outside.
• Reduce body fat. Excess fat, especially around the abdomen, produces an enzyme that converts testosterone into estrogen. The body works against itself.

Here’s what I want you to notice: everything on that list is also on the list of things that improve mental health, reduce depression, and reduce suicide risk.

The Fix Isn’t Glamorous. It’s the Only One That Sticks.

Andropause is indeed real. You can’t see it but it’s there. Like gravity you may not notice it’s there until you fall. It takes a piece of you at a time. A little less pep, less interest in sex, tired but restless sleep, then suddenly, it seems your get up and go, got up and went. In my head, I think sometimes I’m in my 30s, not too far off, days of catching long touchdowns and running 10K around the seawall. That’s why it was so surprising when only two years ago now, I started getting winded bending over to tie my shoes.

I’m telling you this because I know what happens when a man doesn’t get this information.

I lost people I love to depression. My sister. My best friend. I spent years trying to understand how people I loved could fall into the darkest of places and then gone from life. Losing them is part of why mental health, especially men’s, became my daily mission. Now that I am squarely in the middle of the ‘older guy’ age group I wanted to know how to adjust with the times in my body and my head. Part of the answer is that andropause is real. The hormone link to depression and suicide is real. And it’s almost completely absent from the conversations men have with each other.

Jason was my best friend. My brother. Best man at my wedding. I lost him to the same thing I’m writing about now……a man who got good enough at pretending that the people closest to him couldn’t see his struggles. He was masking so well that most people who knew him had no idea. The substances……sugar, cigarettes, weed……those weren’t the disease. They were the way he was trying to cope while telling everyone he was fine. He was falling through a hole in the science that nobody was teaching him about. A hole that could have been closed. This article exists because of him.

My dad didn’t die by suicide. But he died earlier than he needed to, and he suffered more than he needed to, and so did my Mom. He had doctors telling him to change his diet for years. He kept eating the steaks, the chips, the ice cream. He kept drinking for his moods. He gave himself diabetes. His temper became unpredictable. His moods swung daily. He was doing what a lot of men do……reaching for the thing that gave him a short hit of feeling better, without knowing what it was costing him underneath. That’s not weakness. That’s a man with no other tools in the bag.

You’re getting a one-pager that gives you the natural stack in plain language. Put it on your fridge. Put it on your phone. Send it to a guy you’re worried about. Or just keep it for yourself. And if you are over 40 ask your doctor about it.

You made it this far. I’m hoping that you now see that there are options. That already moved the line. I wrote what’s next so you don’t have to find it the hard way, the way I did.

— Jhöl

AI Use

Voice-first authorship. It starts on my phone. I talk, and what comes out is the wire......the shape of the thing, bent by hand. My agents pack the clay onto it. Then I work every inch of it back down myself, and nothing goes out that I haven’t. The thinking is mine and so is the last pass on every line. Full session records on request.

Jhöl Unger  ·  themensdateproject.org