You may recall a recent New England Journal of Medicine paper showing an increase in cardiac events in older men on testosterone supplements.
Well the expected push back is discussed here. I have no dog in this fight since I am handsome and strong and supremely confident.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1748526
From my singular experience. I am 72 and have been very active. Three years ago I climbed Pikes Peak and daily walk/hike four or more miles. About a year ago I started loosing interest in most of those activities. I started to become a couch potato and preferred TV to reading and started gaining weight, two pounds a month. About six months ago I talked with my doc and he tested my T levels and found them to be quite low. I have since been taking testosterone and my vitality is returning and i haven’t even sat on the couch lately and my weight is slowly reversing. I think my risk for cardio/vascular is much improved.
Correction, the full quote is “[in men under 65] excess risk was confined to those with a prior history of heart disease.” This would indicate that there is a risk to people above 65 regardless of prior diagnosis. I did not mean to misrepresent the findings. I still feel the increased risk to be marginal, and there’s still a question of undiagnosed prior heart disease. The final call will be dependant on how well proponents can prove their claimed benefits.
I still feel it’s too soon to tell, but the highlighted shortcomings in the study bear further investigation. Even if T therapy does increase risk, we’re left with the question of whether the increased risk is sufficient to shift the risk/benefit ratio. Heart disease is already the leading cause of death in men over 65 (the demographic relevant to the study). There is an overlap of symptoms between low T and early stages of heart disease. Could it be that T therapy is sought out by or offered to the sort of person who is likely to have a heart attack? How effectively did the two studies eliminate the individuals who already had or would have developed heart disease irrespective of the therapy?
For some reason I can’t get the NEJM link to open. The PLOS One abstract has this important qualifier: “excess risk was confined to those with a prior history of heart disease”. That seems to confirm my initial suspicions. That study dealt specifically with increased risk of myocardial infarction. My big question there is how T therapy changed the behavior of the patients. Did they experience the promised increase in energy and libido and subsequently engage in a sudden increase in physical activity? What is the proposed mechanism by which t therapy causes a heart attack that would not have happened otherwise?