Don’t get teste.
Women — and the people who love them — are mostly familiar with the mood swings associated with PMS. But it turns out, men have their own mood issues tied to changing hormones, which one expert has dubbed “irritable male syndrome,” or IMS.
Even if it’s not an official clinical diagnosis, doctors have been looking into this phenomenon for over 20 years.
The big player here is testosterone — and when those levels decline.
“There’s a misconception that testosterone is only about libido and muscle mass,” Dr. Hal Mohammed, MD, Men’s Health Chief Medical Officer at Gameday, a nationwide network of men’s health clinic, told The Post for a separate story. “But it definitely influences drive, competitiveness, assertiveness and emotional reactivity.”
These symptoms are well-known in the men’s health world, just not necessarily under the “irritable man syndrome” label. Here’s what to know.
What is ‘irritable male syndrome’?
In 2001, biologist Gerald Lincoln wrote a paper coining the term, describing it as a “behavioral state of nervousness, irritability, lethargy and depression that occurs in adult male mammals following withdrawal of testosterone.”
He was observing the phenomenon in Soay rams in Scotland, but since then, authors have extended the concept to humans. Researchers split (human) IMS symptoms into three categories:
- Psychological and emotional: Irritability, aggression, anxiety, depression, mood swings, emotional instability, reduced self-confidence and motivation
- Physical: Fatigue, lethargy, reduced sexual desire and performance, muscle weakness and loss of lean muscle mass, insomnia, increased abdominal obesity (belly fat)
- Cognitive: Difficulty concentrating, impaired decision making, memory problems
There’s a lot of overlap with symptoms of low testosterone. But Dr. Jed Diamond, author of “Male Menopause” and “The Irritable Male Syndrome,” says it’s a mix of those hormonal changes plus three other things: changes in brain chemistry (especially serotonin and dopamine), stress, and loss of male identity and changing roles.
“Those hormonal changes make men more anxious, which in turn can lead to irritability. There can be a crisis of self-identity that comes from declining physical performance, loss of muscle and lowered libido,” psychologist James Davis told HuffPost.
“When you overlay the stresses of managing a career, finances and relationships … add in broken sleep, a lack of experience or framework for expressing vulnerability or issues and increasing social isolation, and you can see how multiple factors can pile up to impact an individual.”
So is this more like man-struation or man-opause?
In Lincoln’s original research in animals, he observed that irritability in males as something temporary and cyclical — it would come and go much like PMS, premenstrual syndrome, in women.
In humans, newer research approaches it more as a one-way trend: As a man ages, their testosterone falls.
That doesn’t mean men are doomed to be pissy for the rest of their life. Men going through these changes should talk about “andropause” or “age-related hypogonadism” with their doctor.
“Many men feel embarrassed or pressured to keep quiet about fatigue, mood changes or libido issues, fearing it makes them look weak,” Dr. William Berg wrote for Stony Brook Medicine. “Opening up about these changes isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a step toward better health for yourself and a way to encourage other men to do the same.”
Your doctor may help give you meds for mood, sleep, libido, or check your testosterone to see if you could benefit from a boost. Fixing up your diet and exercise routines, plus managing stress, can help too.
