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One in 10 NHS trusts have a 'male menopause' policy - but a QUARTER do not have policies in place for women By KATE PICKLES HEALTH EDITOR Published: 00:35 GMT, 12 November 2024 | Updated: 00:44 GMT, 12 November 2024 e-mail View comments One in ten hospital trusts have ‘male menopause ’ guidelines while a quarter do not have policies in place for women, research suggests. The woke protocols have been installed at around 20 trusts, despite the NHS describing the term as ‘unhelpful and misleading’. Elsewhere, almost a quarter of police forces have policies to address the ‘manopause’ yet more than 40 per cent had nothing for female staff experiencing menopause, according to a Freedom of Information request.
The findings are further evidence of the widespread practice amongst public bodies, as exposed in an audit by the Mail last year which found examples within the Fire Service, Police, Councils and NHS. Critics said it was wrong to compare the two, with one effecting all women and the other said to affect around two per cent of men. Almost a quarter of police forces have policies to address the ‘manopause’ yet more than 40 per cent had nothing for female staff experiencing menopause (file photo) A quarter of NHS trusts do not have menopause policies in place for women, research suggests (file photo) The male menopause, sometimes referred to as the ‘andropause’, is said to be marked by a gradual change in testosterone levels.
As with women, the term is used to describe the period in an adult man’s life when his hormone levels fall, potentially causing symptoms including erectile dysfunction, depression, anxiety and rapid fat gain. But there is considerable debate within the medical community about whether it should be recognised as a condition at all. Dr Channa Jayasena, a hormone specialist at Imperial College London, and author of the Society for Endocrinology’s guidelines on testosterone replacement therapy, said it should not be referred to as ‘manopause’.
‘I think it’s an unhelpful term,’ he told BBC Radio 4s Menopause Matters series. Read More DR MAX: This is one of the reasons women feel anxious during the menopause..
. and HRT won't fix it ‘If we compare it to the menopause, all women undergo menopause, whereas 2 per cen of men undergo the ‘manopause’. ‘Menopause is a relatively sudden event in a woman’s life course.
It takes place over two to five years, whereas declining testosterone levels can develop over decades.’ He said that while all women would potentially benefit from HRT if they had symptoms, this was not the case with testosterone deficiency and many men needing no medical intervention. Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist and honorary research fellow at Cardiff University, said symptoms linked to the manopause, such as brain fog and low mood, were more likely the result of common mental disorders such as anxiety or depression.
He said: ‘We are very keen on medicalising things in the modern world, because we are recognising more and more conditions, disorders or just atypical ways of being, which could be addressed better. ‘Women have the menopause so to say that men have a similar sort of hormone deficiency issue at a similar stage of life, it’s a very logical leap to say “well, that’s the male version” of this well-established phenomenon. ‘But I do think you can go too far with that and attempt to put a label on a problem which may not necessarily be there.
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