HAMBURG (dpa) – Irene doesn’t know her husband any more. Instead of sitting slumped in front of the television for hours, Manfred is now like a man possessed, jogging whenever he gets the opportunity. All the same, his activities in the bedroom leave a lot to be desired.
Irene’s husband is 48 and at a critical phase of his life. The scientists call it PADAM syndrome, short for “Partial Androgen Deficiency in the Aging Male”, a phenomenon that befalls the stronger sex in the best years of his life. The scientists say that at around 40, production of the male hormone testosterone begins to decrease, by about one per cent each and every year thereafter.Initially, masculine potency is seldom affected by the change, a fact illustrated by the statistics which reveal that half of all 80- year-olds are still capable of producing children.In any case, age tends to creep up on men. Unlike women during menopause, their suffering is minimal, says Elmar Braehler, a medical psychologist at the University of Leipzig.But as urologist Gerd Ludwig of Frankfurt writes in his new book “Sexuality and Partnership in the Second Half of Life”, the reduction in hormone levels begins to affect the body from the age of about 50.And indeed, many middle-aged men complain of symptoms similar to those of women, such as hot flushes, raised heart rate, lack of concentration and even depression. Libido also tends to diminish, although potency remains unchanged.The effects of PADAM syndrome are all the more intense as they emerge in a phase of life often beset by other factors. Perhaps the children have grown up and flown the coup as a decrease in performance and all the signs of ageing become evident. They can’t be denied deny no matter how hard one tries.“This is a critical period for couples,” warns Braehler. Urologist Hermann Berberich, also in Frankfurt, agrees: “Growing older has something to do with letting go – something that men are worse at than women.” Loneliness is also more of a problem for men than for women.These factors all add up to a hard time for men getting older. Berberich sees them as evidence that those men who turn to a younger woman in later years are not primarily fired by sexual desire but a yearning for confirmation of their own youthfulness.“The older the bolder,” is a German proverb which sums it up nicely, or, as we say: “There’s no fox like an old fox.” Psychologists and doctors refer to it as “the Jennifer syndrome”.Psychologists and andrologists, meanwhile, are troubled at the things men do to themselves, especially in comparison to women.“Men go the whole hog,” says Braehler: they pump themselves full of poisons of one form or another, don’t care about the food they eat, don’t sleep enough and overdo sporting activities, all of which weakens the body.“The male’s dictum is to shorten life,” agrees Berberich, who heads the German Urological Society’s Psychomatics workgroup. Many men, he contends, see their bodies as “machines”. “If something goes wrong, they want it repaired like their car.”Braehler’s observations of men prematurely resorting to “lifestyle medicines”, such as those which claim to restore hair loss or cure erectile dysfunction, only confirm his colleagues’ views.
