What Changed? Why Men May Be Reaching Andropause Sooner

Last week I wrote about the drop in men's testosterone and asked is it age, or is it how we live? The research points more and more towards how we live. Men born later seem to have lower testosterone than their fathers and grandfathers did at the same age.

That left me with a bigger question. If it isn't just age, what changed?

I'm not a historian or an economist. I'm just curious, and I like to keep asking why until I get to the root of something. So this week I've gone back a few decades to look at what has shifted in the way we eat, work and live, and what that might mean for men reaching andropause.

And I've started with women, because their side of the story has been studied for longer.

Two generations, one story

In Sweden, researchers asked women about hot flushes at the age of 50, and kept asking each new generation the same questions. Women born in the 1950s and 1960s were far more likely to have daily hot flushes than women born in 1918 and 1930: around 35% against 24%, and the gap was still there after allowing for smoking, weight and stress.[1] In Finland, women in their early fifties described more moderate and severe symptoms in 2010 than women the same age had in 2000, a change in just ten years.[2]

We do talk about menopause much more openly now, and some of that rise will simply be women feeling able to say so. But the Swedish researchers didn't think that explained it all. They pointed to hormone-disrupting chemicals, and to changes in lifestyle, diet and working conditions.

And the men's side tells a very similar story.

In Boston, researchers followed the same men from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Men of the same age had lower testosterone with each passing year, by about 1.2% a year, and it wasn't explained by changes in weight or smoking.[3] In Finland, men in their sixties who were born in the 1940s had testosterone more than a third lower than men born thirty years earlier had at the same age, and the difference held even after allowing for their weight.[4] The researchers had actually expected to find no decline, because Finnish men's reproductive health compared so well with the rest of Europe. And in a group of US Air Force veterans followed over 20 years, even the men who kept their weight steady saw their testosterone fall by 19%.[5]

So both sexes seem to be shifting, generation by generation. Women's symptoms have simply been measured for longer. To me that makes menopause a bit like the canary in the coal mine. If something in the way we live has made the change harder for women, it is very likely touching men too.

What changed between the 70s and now

Think back to the 1970s for a moment. Most meals were cooked at home from fairly plain ingredients. More men did physical work. Shops shut on Sundays, and nobody carried the office around in their pocket. It wasn't perfect, but life ran at a different pace.

What's on the plate

In 1983 the UK set its first official healthy eating goals. They asked the nation to cut total fat by a quarter, saturated fat by 40% and sugar by half.[6] Low-fat spreads, yoghurts and ready meals soon filled the supermarket shelves.

The trouble is that men's bodies make testosterone from cholesterol, a fat. When researchers pooled the studies, men who moved from around 40% of their calories from fat down to around 20% saw their testosterone fall by 10 to 15%.[7] I'm not suggesting lard sandwiches! Healthy fats, though, were never the enemy.

Meanwhile, more and more of what we eat comes ready made. Today more than half the calories in the average UK diet come from ultra-processed food.[8] With both partners often working long hours, there is simply less time to cook from scratch. That shift touches the whole household, and it's nobody's fault.

All of this links to weight, and weight is the biggest single factor in low testosterone in men. Belly fat turns testosterone into oestrogen, which lowers testosterone further, and round the loop goes.[9] The good news is that it works in reverse too. When men lose weight, their testosterone tends to come back up.[10]

What men do all day

In 1971, 92% of working-age men in the UK were in work. Today it's about 78%.[11] As heavy industry closed, many older men never went back,[12] and today the biggest reason men give for being out of work is their health, increasingly among younger men too.[16][17] That's a bigger story than I can do justice to here, but it tells me men's health is struggling at every age.

The men in work today mostly do very different jobs from their grandfathers, with heavy, physical work largely swapped for desks, vans and screens. I find that interesting, because movement matters for testosterone. In one study, overweight men who took up regular aerobic exercise, such as walking or jogging, for 12 weeks saw their testosterone rise noticeably, and the men who pushed themselves harder saw the biggest rise.[13] A whole working day of lifting, carrying and walking used to do that job without anyone thinking about it.

What's on the bathroom shelf

We now live with a long list of chemicals our grandparents never even met. Phthalates are one group, used in soft plastics and many toiletries. In a US study of over 2,000 people, higher levels went with lower testosterone, and among adult men the clearest link was in those aged 40 to 60.[14] That's exactly the age andropause starts to show itself.

What keeps him awake

I covered sleep and stress last week, so I'll keep this short. We sleep less, work longer, and rarely switch off. Most of a man's testosterone is made while he sleeps, and constant stress gets in the way of the signals that tell his body to make it.

I'd add one more thing from my own observation. The pressure we put on ourselves now never seems to let up. Earn more, look better, do more, and keep up with what everyone else seems to be doing on their phones. I can't point you to a study that measures that. But if his body never feels it can rest, it stays stressed, and that does his hormones no favours.

So where does that leave men?

If all of these changes have built up over the decades and made menopause a harder road for many women, it would be odd if men had come through untouched.

My observation is that many men may now be reaching andropause earlier, and that it is falling faster once it starts. I call it 'earlier-onset andropause'. It isn't a medical term, and nobody has tested it as a hypothesis yet. But it fits what the generational research is showing, and what I hear from the women I talk to about their partners. Even one NHS trust's workplace guidance notes that andropause, usually seen between 40 and 60, has been seen in men as young as 30.[15]

The difference is that men don't get a clear signal. There is no hot flush and no change in periods to tell him something is shifting. Instead it creeps in as tiredness, a thicker middle, low mood, less drive and a sort of flatness. It is easy to put that down to work, to age, or to him just being a bit grumpy. So it often goes unnoticed for years.

And if his andropause is arriving earlier while her perimenopause is getting harder, the two may be overlapping sooner too. That's the Hormonal Phase Gap, and I'll come back to it later in the series.

Putting some of the 70s back

None of us can turn the clock back, and I wouldn't want to lose everything we've gained since. But we can borrow the best bits, and my Foundation Flow™ of Nourish, Sleep and Peace is a good place to start.

For Nourish, I suggest cooking from scratch whenever you can, even if it's simple. Don't be afraid of healthy fats: oily fish, butter, eggs, olive oil, nuts and seeds all have a place. And I'd suggest cutting back on the ultra-processed foods that make up so much of the modern diet. Steadier blood sugar and a healthier weight both help his testosterone.

Movement belongs here too. If his job no longer keeps him moving, his days need to. Walking, carrying, digging the garden, lifting weights - it all counts. Think of it as putting back some of the physical work that modern life took away.

On the chemical side, small swaps add up. Heating food in glass or ceramic rather than plastic, choosing fewer heavily scented toiletries, and replacing plugin airfresheners with natural oils, are easy places to start.

For Sleep and Peace, I recommend a regular bedtime, phones out of the bedroom and real time to switch off, whether that's a walk, the allotment or an evening with friends. When his body feels safe enough to rest, it can get on with making its hormones.

If he recognises the tiredness, low mood, low drive or flatness I've described, I urge him to see his GP and ask for a testosterone blood test. It's usually taken in the morning, when levels are highest. And if he takes any medication, questions about it should go back to whoever prescribed it.

Joining the dots

I started this wondering what changed. As far as I can see, it was a mix of things: the food, the work, the chemicals, the sleep and the pressure, all creeping in over fifty years until they felt normal. Women have been telling us for a while that the change has got harder. I think men's bodies have been saying the same thing, just more quietly.

Next Monday I'll be looking at what happens to a man's hormones when he becomes a dad, and why some of those changes are actually a good thing.

Rhu x

References

1. Rödström K, Weman L, Sundh V and Björkelund C. Perception of higher frequency of daily hot flashes in 50-year-old women today: a study of trends over time during 48 years in the Population Study of Women in Gothenburg, Sweden. Menopause, 2022. doi.org/10.1097/GME.0000000000002033

2. Lipasti M et al. Climacteric symptoms more severe in 2010 than in 2000: experience of Finnish women aged 52 to 56 years not now or previously on menopausal hormone therapy. Maturitas, 2021.

3. Travison TG et al. A population-level decline in serum testosterone levels in American men. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2007.

4. Perheentupa A et al. A cohort effect on serum testosterone levels in Finnish men. European Journal of Endocrinology, 2013.

5. Mazur A et al. Is rising obesity causing a secular (age-independent) decline in testosterone among American men?. PLoS ONE, 2013.

6. Robbins C. Implementing the NACNE report. 1. National dietary goals: a confused debate. 1983.

7. Whittaker J and Wu K. Low-fat diets and testosterone in men: systematic review and meta-analysis of intervention studies. Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2021.

8. Rauber F et al. Ultra-processed foods and excessive free sugar intake in the UK: a nationally representative cross-sectional study. BMJ Open, 2019.

9. Fernandez CJ, Chacko EC and Pappachan JM. Male obesity-related secondary hypogonadism: pathophysiology, clinical implications and management. European Endocrinology, 2019;15(2):83-90.

10. Corona G et al. Body weight loss reverts obesity-associated hypogonadotropic hypogonadism: a systematic review and meta-analysis. European Journal of Endocrinology, 2013.

11. Office for National Statistics. Women in the labour market, 2013 and employment figures, June to August 2026.

12. Campbell N. The decline of employment among older people in Britain. London School of Economics, 1999.

13. Kumagai H et al. Vigorous physical activity is associated with regular aerobic exercise-induced increased serum testosterone levels in overweight/obese men. Hormone and Metabolic Research, 2018;50(1):73-79.

14. Meeker JD and Ferguson KK. Urinary phthalate metabolites are associated with decreased serum testosterone in men, women and children from NHANES 2011-2012. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2014.

15. East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust. Andropause in the Workplace guidance. 2019.

16. Allwork.Space, reporting ONS figures for April to June 2026. Why economic inactivity in the UK affects men disproportionately.

17. Office for National Statistics. Population changes and economic inactivity trends, UK: 2019 to 2026. 2023.