In this video, Dr. Walsh discusses low testosterone
Transcript
Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Tom Walsh. I am a board-certified urologist and I am the director of UW Medicine Men’s Health Center. The Men’s Health Center is a clinical center that is really designed around men with the intent of treating male-specific conditions related to reproductive, sexual, hormonal, and just overall health but that really caters to men.
What is low testosterone?
In truth, the term low testosterone is not a medical diagnosis but it is something that we hear about in the media and we see a lot in advertisements. And to some degree, it has been driven by the pharmaceutical industry – the idea that having a blood test that shows a man to have low testosterone may indeed be a disease. In some men it is and in some men it’s not. But in general, low testosterone or single-measured low testosterone is not necessarily a problem. For some men testosterone needs to be retested found to be continuously low and be associated with some very specific symptoms for us to worry about low testosterone being a problem.
Overall, I think it’s clear that some men do benefit from testosterone while others don’t. The best way to find the right answer is to find an expert who you can discuss these issues with, have appropriate testing and a real shared decision-making model about whether or not testosterone is right for you.