All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
Social media widely promotes testosterone as an essential part of menopausal hormone therapy (MHT, also known as hormone replacement therapy or HRT) to treat low mood, brain fog and loss of vitality.
As a result, some women who aren’t prescribed it as part of the MHT regimen feel they are missing out.
At menopause, when menstruation finally stops, oestrogen levels fall substantially, which can cause symptoms such as hot flushes, night sweats and vaginal dryness. Replacing this oestrogen with MHT relieves these symptoms.
But our new research, published this week in The Lancet journal eBioMedicine, shows testosterone doesn’t change like oestrogen when women reach perimenopause or menopause.
Rather, testosterone declines with age.
Testosterone levels tend to decrease by around 50% from about age 20 through to about age 60.
Then they begin to subtly increase, with the trend for levels to increase continuing into the eight and ninth decades of life. We are yet to understand why these changes occur.
Whether low testosterone is associated with symptoms needs further exploration. However, research to date suggests women with low testosterone aren’t more likely to have lower sexual desire, poorer muscle mass or lower mood.
Source: Testosterone levels decline with age, not menopause, despite what you’ve heard