Welcome back to Get Fit Guy. I'm Kevin Don. Now recently we discussed the anti-aging

properties of strength training for two of the major hallmarks of aging, sarcopenia or loss of muscle

mass and osteopenia or loss of bone mineral density. But what about some of the other effects of aging?

Hormonal changes, skin changes, body composition changes, vision and cognitive changes.

What protocols are there to address those?

This week I'm going to have a look at hormonal changes in men

and what benefits there could be to addressing those with a medical intervention.

As we age, researchers estimate that in general men lose about 1% of testosterone production every year after age 30.

Around 3% of the adult male population in the US are receiving

TRT or testosterone replacement therapy, and that's just the patients who are getting it through

official channels, with many more self-administering without proper medical supervision.

But what is testosterone and why is it important to men?

Testosterone is a hormone.

It's the primary sex and anabolic or muscle-building hormone in males.

It's responsible for the development of male sexual characteristics,

the development of muscle and bone mass,

as well as things like body hair distribution, the deepening of the voice, and other secondary

sexual characteristics. Low levels of testosterone have been positively correlated with depression

and cognitive declines such as Alzheimer's. It's also been correlated with

low levels of muscle mass and bone density, as well as increased metabolic syndromes, cardiovascular

disease and mortality. Inflammatory markers have also been high in the absence of sufficient

testosterone levels. But there are, of course, two sides to every

...