Men in uniform--that is, firefighters, police officers, corrections officers, ambulance workers such as EMTs and paramedics, doctors, nurses, shift workers, and all branches of the military--and especially vets (young and older alike) suffer symptoms of low testosterone (Low T) more often when compared to nonuniformed men.
There are a lot of reasons for this: long hours, head injuries, reduced and discordant sleep (consistently getting <6 hours a night = reduction of T levels as much as aging 15 years!), PTSD, weight gain, unhealthy eating patterns, to name but some.
The underlying mechanism here is stress. Stress from intense military field training, for example, has been linked to greater than a 47% drop in testosterone levels.
According to Renato Pasquali, 2012 and Rubinow et al., it's chronic, not necessarily acute, stress that interferes with the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis due to elevations in cortisol; cortisol and testosterone have an inverse relationship.
The key takeaway here: If cortisol is elevated chronically, it's more likely that testosterone will be inversely lower.
Again, quoting Rubinow et al., chronic stress significantly decreased Leydig cell testosterone production in the testes (in mice studies and extrapolated to human men).
Most of these men are incorrectly diagnosed several times over for years before it's realized they have Low T. It's postulated over 40% of men in uniform are not correctly diagnosed for over two years.
Shores et al. (2006), looking into Low T in veterans, found that "low testosterone levels continued to be associated with increased mortality" in male veterans.
At Vitali-T Men's Health & Testosterone Clinic, we believe that men in uniform should be taken seriously. If these men suffer decreasing motivation, libido, and energy with poor recovery, reduced strength, and endurance, they should be evaluated for Low T.
We don't want these men going years masking their symptoms all the while thinking they have depression, ED, arthritis, weight gain, and are "just getting older" when, in fact, they have Low T that can be optimized and most--if not all of these aforementioned--symptoms improve.
Why does TRT help men (in uniform)?
TRT has an anabolic effect (growth)--TRT stimulates skeletal muscle protein synthesis, inhibits protein degradation, and helps with bone formation and connective tissue growth.
In 2015, a study on 83,000 vets posted on the VA website out of the Office of Research & Development showed that TRT significantly reduced heart attacks, strokes, and death.
The evidence is clear--men in uniform and veterans of all branches of the military--that these men suffer Low T more often than the general population. These men are the ones who need TRT most and often don't get it for years due to chasing other symptoms of Low T as incorrect diagnoses.
At Vitali-T Men's Health & Testosterone Clinic, we work men up wholistically, investigating their symptoms compared to their blood work profile. We order cutting-edge labs that most providers have never heard of in order to dig deep and find the truth of why men might be silently suffering. We correct the root cause, which is often hormonal, helping men (in uniform) feel like a man (should) again.
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