Why Testosterone Decline With Age Can Actually Be Healthy

The widespread misconception that testosterone decline with age is nothing but doom causes the average man to handle it completely wrong.

Most men either:

• Despair over the changes they're feeling, creating unnecessary psychological stress.
• Grow complacent and blame age for all their symptoms, while neglecting the actions that would ameliorate them.
• Take TRT unnecessarily, potentially shortening their lifespan and depriving themselves of the positive aspects of the natural aging process.

Whatever the case, the shared mistake is that most men unknowingly allow the false belief that "testosterone decline with age is bad" to cause them to respond in a way that creates unnecessary harm.

The ubiquity of this misconception has two main origins:

1. Due to the health perils of our modern lifestyles, the average man in the 21st century is more likely to develop low testosterone later in life (termed "late-onset hypogonadism") than men throughout human history.
2. TRT companies profit by convincing you that you'll be condemned to low testosterone if you don't start injecting their product after 30.

But there are two core truths missing from that narrative that make it deeply misleading.

1. Although some testosterone decline with age is inevitable, low testosterone is not.
2. And although low testosterone certainly is a problem, not all testosterone decline is a problem.

Low testosterone and testosterone decline are not the same thing. Understanding the distinction between them completely changes how you should respond.

Low testosterone (AKA hypogonadism) is a pathological deficiency state caused by not having enough testosterone.

Testosterone decline, on the other hand, can lead to low testosterone, but only if the wrong kind of testosterone decline is left unmanaged.

There are two main causes of testosterone decline:

1. Natural aging.
2. Poor health.

Testosterone decline from poor health is pathological and should always be minimized.

But a closer look at evolutionary biology reveals that natural, age-related testosterone decline wasn't designed to emasculate you, but actually functions to extend your lifespan and safeguard the evolution of our species.

In this article, I'm going to explain the evidence showing why, when kept to its natural minimum, age-related testosterone decline is a process to embrace rather than resist, and how it shapes your role as an aging man in society, which is more important now than ever before in human history.

First, you need to understand the difference between the two types of testosterone decline.

The Two Types of Testosterone Decline

I go into much more detail on this topic in part 3 of this article series, but in a nutshell, there are two types of testosterone decline with meaningfully different causes and implications.

Total Testosterone

As the name implies, total testosterone is all of the testosterone produced by the HPG axis, the three glands that work together to produce the net amount of testosterone your body makes.

Thus, declines in total testosterone are caused by damage to one or more of the glands of the HPG axis.

Free Testosterone

Once total testosterone is produced and flowing in the bloodstream, a protein called SHBG binds to about 98% of it and keeps it inactive.

The remaining 2% is called free testosterone — the naked fraction of total testosterone that's capable of exerting effects in the body.

Thus, "declines" in free testosterone are caused by elevations in SHBG.

SHBG is produced by the liver and is part of the growth hormone axis. If you trace SHBG production all the way back to its root, it leads back to the hypothalamus.

So it appears that the root cause of free testosterone decline is damage to the hypothalamus.

Since testosterone is produced by the HPG axis, but its availability is governed by the growth hormone axis, all testosterone decline boils down to damage to either the HPG axis or the growth hormone axis.

The primary cause of most cellular damage is generally reducible to a process called oxidative stress (25).

For our purposes, the causes of oxidative stress can be divided into two categories:

1. Aging

Oxidative stress is a byproduct of cellular respiration, so a continuous trickle of oxidative stress with normal aging is inevitable (19).

2. Poor health

Aside from aging and a few other natural bodily processes, most oxidative stress is caused by just about anything that is "unhealthy" or "bad" for you, such as: poor metabolic health (22), psychological stress (26), endocrine disrupting chemicals (17), and chronic diseases, like heart disease and diabetes (19).

There are two crucial distinctions between oxidative stress caused by aging versus poor health:

1. As a byproduct of normal cellular function, oxidative stress from aging is necessary and unavoidable, whereas oxidative stress from poor health is unnecessary and in your control.
2. The cumulative effect of oxidative stress from poor health is far greater than that of aging alone.

One study compared the influence of numerous health and lifestyle factors on testosterone levels with age and found that poor health caused greater declines than aging (30). For example, obesity decreased testosterone levels by 12%, which is equivalent to more than a decade of normal aging (30).

This is important to point out because it shows that your overall health, which is entirely within your control, is the most consequential determinant of testosterone decline with age.

So much so that healthy men can maintain stable total testosterone levels across their lifespan (13).

But what's interesting is that, unlike total testosterone, free testosterone does decline about 1–2% per year starting around middle age, and this occurs both in healthy men in industrialized nations and in men living in modern-day hunter-gatherer societies (30)(6).

This tells us that free testosterone decline is not an artifact of modern living or poor health. Rather, it appears to be a consistent biological feature across all human populations.

That said, free testosterone decline is exacerbated by poor health (30), so every man should do everything in his power to live as healthfully as possible to minimize oxidative stress, maintain total testosterone levels across his lifespan, and keep free testosterone declines to their natural minimum.

We take a deep dive on how to do exactly that in part 5 of this series.

If you're not already doing everything in your power to optimize all aspects of your physical and mental health, start now, because everything that follows in this article assumes you already are.

Once all causes of unnecessary oxidative stress are controlled for, and age-related testosterone declines are kept to their natural minimum, the remaining declines should be welcomed, not rejected.

Because as you'll soon understand, natural, age-related testosterone decline wasn't designed to emasculate you, but may actually function to extend your lifespan and safeguard the evolution of our species (5).

To understand why that makes sense, you first need to understand what's actually driving the process.

The Root Cause of Age-Related Testosterone Decline

As we've established, SHBG rises and reduces the proportion of available free testosterone with age in healthy men.

This raises the question: why do SHBG levels rise?

In the context of male aging, elevations in SHBG and subsequent declines in free testosterone are part of an overarching hormonal cascade called somatopause.

"Somato" comes from the Greek soma, meaning "body." "Pause" comes from the Greek pausis, meaning "cessation," or "coming to rest."

Together, somatopause describes a process during which the body shifts its priorities from growth and reproduction toward longevity.

Think of somatopause like reverse puberty.

During puberty, anabolic hormones skyrocket (namely growth hormone and free testosterone), causing adolescents to develop into functional adults capable of reproduction.

During somatopause, the exact same hormones slowly dwindle.

Tracing somatopause back to the root, declines in free testosterone originate with reduced functionality of the hypothalamus, and like most cellular damage, that is due to oxidative stress — which is why free testosterone declines faster in unhealthy men.

What's interesting is that the HPG axis is also sensitive to oxidative stress, but possesses compensatory mechanisms that offset the damage, which is how healthy men are able to maintain stable total testosterone levels throughout life in spite of unavoidable oxidative stress from aging (see part 3 for more details).

But unlike the HPG axis, the growth hormone axis does not have mechanisms to compensate for oxidative stress, which is why aging alone eventually leads to rises in SHBG and declines in free testosterone and growth hormone, even in healthy men.

Given that the body works to preserve total testosterone production but allows free testosterone to decline, it suggests that declines in free testosterone and growth hormone may have been adaptive, meaning beneficial for survival and reproduction in the context of human evolution.

To understand why pumping the brakes on anabolic hormones could be beneficial as we grow older, you need to understand their functions and what they cost.

The Functions of Anabolic Hormones

The two main hormones that decline during somatopause are growth hormone and free testosterone, both of which share several overlapping functions:

• Encouraging muscle growth and enhancing muscle function.
• Breaking down stored fat as an energy source.
• Increasing metabolic rate.
• Augmenting bone density and red blood cell production.

Collectively, these functions are great for maximizing physical capacity, but come at the cost of significantly increased energy expenditure (32).

You can think of anabolic hormones as muscle cars: they produce a lot of power, but aren't very fuel efficient.

Since these hormones are so metabolically expensive, we evolved to produce them only when the benefits outweigh the costs.

For example, one instance where the costs of high levels of anabolic hormones outweigh the benefits is during food scarcity. Since anabolic hormones increase caloric expenditure, lowering their levels is one of the body's responses to starvation. Under those circumstances, conserving energy is more important for survival than building muscle.

Aging seems to be another instance where the metabolic costs of high levels of anabolic hormones outweigh their benefits. Here's why…

How Somatopause May Extend Your Lifespan

Rate of Living Theory

We've established that oxidative stress is a natural byproduct of cellular respiration, and because of this, a continuous trickle of oxidative stress with aging is inevitable.

All of our cells respiring together culminates in our basal metabolic rate; the amount of energy needed just to keep us alive.

According to the rate of living theory, since cellular respiration creates some oxidative stress, having a higher metabolism could accelerate the accumulation of oxidative stress (4). And since anabolic hormones increase metabolism, the theory goes that by lowering levels of anabolic hormones, somatopause may have evolved to slow the rate of oxidative stress accumulation, thereby extending lifespan (4).

Although the rate of living theory is notoriously overly simplistic and its validity is hotly debated, it's still possible that metabolic slowdown with age may help slow the rate of aging.

What this means for you: if you're a generally healthy man but you're noticing that your metabolism is slowing down a bit, instead of just letting this frustrate you, understanding that it is the cost of a tradeoff your body is making to extend your lifespan can help you view mild reductions in metabolism in a positive light.

This perspective is predicated on the assumption that you're metabolically healthy and physically active.

We need to be careful here, because this is one of those situations where evolutionary mismatches can become a slippery slope.

Throughout human evolution, men were always moving. Evidence from modern hunter-gatherer societies shows that men walk over 20,000 steps per day (24) and continue doing demanding physical labor well into their eighties (31), both of which keep metabolic rates elevated.

But in the modern world, our sedentary lifestyles can easily exacerbate natural reductions in metabolism to an unhealthy degree, which might explain why similar research shows that fat mass tends to increase with age in western populations but not Turkana hunter-gatherer societies (6).

So although a slightly slower metabolism from natural aging may be beneficial for longevity, an excessively slow metabolism from inactivity is pathological.

Don't let this reframe become an excuse to gain 30 pounds and blame it on getting older.

Disposable Soma Theory

Einstein's equation E = mc² asserts that mass and energy are interchangeable. All tissues in the body have mass and require energy to sustain, which is why we starve to death if we stop supplying our bodies with energy (food).

In reductionist terms, the general concept of the disposable soma theory is that, by reducing overall body mass, the body requires less energy to sustain itself, which frees up energy to be allocated toward living longer (4).

By analogy, my grandparents recently moved from a relatively large home into a smaller duplex because there's much less square footage for them to maintain, freeing up their time to be spent on more enjoyable activities.

Since muscle tissue requires the most energy to sustain, it's the first to go, which explains why some natural muscle loss is evident in Turkana hunter-gatherers and western populations alike (6).

Similar to the rate of living theory, the disposable soma theory is also controversial and overly simplistic, but nonetheless, it's not out of the realm of possibility that having a bit less muscle mass may make it easier for your body to keep you alive for longer.

What this means for you: if you've been a fairly muscular guy your whole life but it's getting harder to put on or maintain muscle, it's probably not evolution trying to emasculate you. It may be your body trying to keep you alive longer by reducing the energetic overhead of maintaining that mass.

That said, this is another situation where evolutionary mismatches can create discrepancies.

Throughout human evolution, men were engaged in muscularly demanding activities that signaled to their bodies they still needed to hold on to muscle. In the modern world, the average man sits in a cubicle all day and rarely lifts anything above 30 pounds.

Sarcopenia (muscle loss with age) is a serious public health problem precisely because of this mismatch. So every man should be strength training consistently to preserve as much muscle as naturally possible.

Once that's accomplished, not looking like a bodybuilder after 60 might not be such a bad thing. Letting yourself waste away into frailty absolutely is.

The Growth–Longevity Trade-Off

The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred from one form to another.

For this reason, all organisms operate under energetic constraints and must allocate limited biochemical resources across competing functions: growth, reproduction, repair, and survival.

For example, this is why testosterone levels go down during illness. Since energy is finite, the body cannot simultaneously maximize testosterone production and immune function, so it deprioritizes testosterone production in favor of upregulating the immune system, because the need to neutralize an invasive pathogen is a more immediate threat to survival than the benefits of producing testosterone.

The body always prioritizes survival over reproduction and growth.

By analogy, you can think of the accumulation of oxidative stress that comes with aging as an invasive pathogen replicating in your body.

To counteract rising oxidative stress, our bodies upregulate antioxidant defense pathways as we age. Just like how upregulating the immune system requires energy investment, so does upregulating antioxidant defenses.

And since energy cannot be created or destroyed, the aging male body appears to divert energetic resources away from the production of anabolic hormones and toward bolstering antioxidant and longevity pathways, because neutralizing oxidative stress is the more pressing survival priority.

Although theories like the rate of living theory and the disposable soma theory are often oversimplified, they converge on a widely supported biological principle: the molecular pathways that promote growth and reproduction tend to oppose those that promote maintenance and longevity.

In biology, "growth" refers to processes that increase cell size, cell number, and tissue mass through protein synthesis, cell proliferation, and anabolic metabolism. The primary growth pathways are:

• mTOR (mechanistic Target of Rapamycin): a central regulator of protein synthesis and cellular growth that promotes muscle hypertrophy and cell proliferation, but suppresses cellular repair processes such as autophagy (14).
• GH/IGF-1 axis (Growth Hormone / Insulin-like Growth Factor-1): stimulates tissue growth, cell division, and anabolic metabolism, but is associated with increased cancer risk and reduced lifespan in multiple animal models when chronically elevated (1).
• Insulin signaling: reflects nutrient abundance and promotes glucose uptake, fat storage, and anabolic activity; chronically high levels are linked to accelerated aging and metabolic disease (2).

In contrast, "longevity" refers to processes that preserve cellular integrity over time by enhancing repair, stress resistance, and metabolic efficiency at the expense of growth. The primary longevity pathways are:

• Autophagy: a cellular recycling process that removes damaged proteins and organelles, maintaining cellular function and reducing the accumulation of damage associated with aging (18).
• AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase): an energy-sensing enzyme that activates fat oxidation and autophagy while inhibiting anabolic processes like mTOR when cellular energy is low (11).
• FOXO transcription factors: regulate genes involved in antioxidant defense, DNA repair, and stress resistance, and are activated when growth signaling (e.g., IGF-1) is reduced (15).
• Sirtuins (e.g., SIRT1): NAD⁺-dependent enzymes that enhance mitochondrial function, DNA repair, and metabolic efficiency, particularly during periods of caloric restriction (9).

When growth pathways are upregulated, repair pathways are suppressed. When repair pathways are activated, growth is downregulated.

This doesn't mean longevity pathways are good and growth pathways are bad. It's context-dependent.

Early in life, our bodies prioritize growth and reproduction because we need to develop into fully mature adults capable of producing and providing for offspring.

Later in life, there is a gradual shift toward maintenance and repair as longevity becomes the higher priority after peak reproductive years have passed.

Somatopause is that shift, and it provides a functional explanation for why anabolic hormones decline with age: a reduction in growth-promoting signals from growth hormone and free testosterone may function to rebalance the system toward maintenance and longevity pathways.

While these mechanisms are well-supported at the cellular level, the extent to which they fully explain hormonal changes in humans remains an area of ongoing research (20).

The key takeaway: your body cannot simultaneously run the programs that keep you jacked, lean, and physically high-performing while also running the programs that keep you alive for as long as possible.

Physical prowess can and should be maintained to the best of your ability. But expecting to be as lean and strong as you were in your twenties while living into your eighties is like expecting to simultaneously set a world record in the marathon and the deadlift: they're competing priorities that your biology cannot multitask.

While doing everything in your power to be as healthy as possible, you will find it much easier to embrace the gentle dips in physical prowess if you keep in mind that they are the price tag you pay for being able to live longer.

Everything discussed thus far relates to the physical body. But the story is incomplete without understanding how declining free testosterone affects the psychological and behavioral side of the equation.

Behavioral Effects of Testosterone

Higher testosterone levels are generally associated with a greater propensity toward aggression (7), risk-taking (23), competition (16), and dominance (12).

These functions were evolutionarily adaptive because they gave men the courage to take risks that would benefit the group: hunting down woolly mammoths, traversing unexplored territory in search of better shelter or food, fending off predators and rival tribes, etc.

They also promote competition for mates between men, and when men compete, the fittest tend to emerge victorious and pass on their superior genes.

But promoting risk-taking behavior does come with its risks. Research shows an acute spike in male mortality right around early adulthood (4).

Lower free testosterone later in life quells this propensity toward high-risk behaviors, reducing the likelihood of death from a risky act.

In the pre-antibiotic era, this was especially significant: one infected scrape from a reckless act could spell death.

In a nutshell: lower free testosterone = less risk-taking behavior = lower chance of dying = longer life.

Up until this point, we've talked about how somatopause may have extended the lifespan of individual men by:

1. Slowing oxidative stress accumulation by reducing metabolism.
2. Freeing up energetic resources to be redirected toward antioxidant defense and cellular repair.
3. Reducing risk-taking behavior.

All of this suggests that evolution is making a valiant effort to keep men alive for as long as possible.

This begs the question: why would evolution care to keep men alive past their physical prime?

Why Evolution Designed Men to Outlive Their Prime

Before answering that, there's a crucial concept about biology you must understand. Organisms have two objectives: survival first, reproduction second. Survival must come first because deceased organisms cannot reproduce.

But there are two unique features of humans that make longevity beyond reproductive prime especially important:

1. Humans must survive after reproducing to care for offspring.
2. Human evolution conserves traits that are beneficial to the survival and reproduction of the group, not just the individual.

The Grandmothering Effect

The grandmothering effect in women is a prime example of both features in action. After giving birth, women need to stay alive to breastfeed and raise their children.

But women also survive well past menopause, when they're no longer fertile and after their offspring are already independent. If evolution only cared about individual reproduction, women would die after their kids grow up, but they don't.

The grandmothering hypothesis reveals that women serve a purpose beyond mothering their children, which is helping their daughters and other young women raise their offspring, and by doing so, support overall group evolution.

Grandmothers who stuck around helped raise grandchildren who had better odds of surviving and reproducing themselves, and in turn passed on grandma's post-menopausal longevity genes.

Likewise, if men were totally useless after their peak physical and reproductive years, they would die out. But they don't either.

Since evolution was willing to sacrifice anabolic hormones for the sake of longevity, men must have value beyond their muscles and libido.

Thus, evolution designed men to stay alive past their physical prime for the benefit of others.

The Most Adaptive Trait Evolution Has Ever Produced

Last weekend I watched an incredible David Attenborough documentary about gorillas. The dominant alpha male of the troop was Gicurasi. One of the central tensions throughout the documentary was a younger male, Ubwuzu, challenging his dominance. They fought a couple of times, and eventually Ubwuzu won. The rest of the troop signaled they wanted Ubwuzu as their leader.

But Gicurasi wasn't just ostracized. He didn't die or leave. He took on a new role as the elder, serving as an advisor to Ubwuzu, helping him navigate the complexities of leading a troop, avoid dangerous areas, and find the most abundant food sources.

Gicurasi used the knowledge he had accumulated during his time as the alpha to inform the next generation of leadership.

The parallel to humans is direct. Research on hunter-gatherer societies shows that although male physical fitness peaks between ages 20 and 30, hunting success peaks right around 45 (4). Older men who are less physically capable than the younger men in their group are more successful hunters.

Brain is equally, if not more important, than brawn.

If any primate survives long enough to reach old age, they must have accumulated something extraordinarily valuable: practical knowledge that can be passed on.

It takes significant intelligence to survive in the natural world, and those who make it to old age have proven, by virtue of still being alive, that they have it.

Although humans are physically weaker than most other animals, it was our intelligence and ability to work as a group that enabled us to become the most dominant species on Earth.

Since intelligence and cooperation are the leading competitive advantages of the most dominant life form that has ever existed, it follows that wisdom is the most adaptive trait evolution has ever produced.

And that is why our bodies are willing to sacrifice anabolic hormones to extend our lifespans: to ensure that the wisdom we've gleaned can be used to contribute to group survival for as long as possible.

Modestly lower free testosterone doesn't only serve to keep men alive longer so that they can pass on their wisdom, it also changes the way men think and behave in ways that benefit the group.

Group Decision Making

As we've established, lower free testosterone reduces the propensity toward risk-taking behavior, which lowers the risk of death in older men.

But it also functions to counterbalance the testosterone-fueled gusto of younger men at the group level.

Imagine a band of young, high-testosterone cavemen who see woolly mammoths across an ice shelf and are ready to make a rash decision to migrate over. An older, wiser man with less free testosterone and lower risk tolerance says: "in my experience, that's not a great idea," potentially avoiding a decision that may have wiped out the entire tribe.

That contribution to group decision-making, repeated across thousands of generations of human evolution, was an adaptive benefit of both keeping older men alive and having somewhat lower free testosterone calibrate their judgment.

But this raises an important question: if lower free testosterone is adaptive, then why do total testosterone levels remain stable?

Why Total Testosterone Stays Elevated

Above all else, testosterone's primary function is to encourage reproduction, both by driving the desire to reproduce (libido) and by providing the raw materials to do so (sperm production).

Fertility Preservation

Healthy men maintain the ability to reproduce throughout their lives, as evidenced by studies showing that men in modern-day hunter-gatherer societies father offspring well into their 70s (33).

They're able to remain fertile despite declines in free testosterone because total testosterone levels, which facilitate sperm production from within the testes, remain intact (6).

But just because older men can reproduce doesn't mean they should be the ones reproducing.

Evidence shows that older men, even healthy ones, have higher rates of DNA mutations in their sperm, which increases the risk of birth defects and developmental problems in offspring (10). Older men are also less physically capable of providing for and protecting offspring.

Thus, maintaining total testosterone levels works together with lower free testosterone levels:

• Stable total testosterone levels keep older men fertile as reserves, just in case they're needed to propagate the species.
• Lower free testosterone discourages reproduction in older men by bringing down libido, leaving the job to younger men with higher-quality sperm and more strength to provision offspring.

By leaving the fighting and reproduction to younger men, lower free testosterone liberates cognitive and motivational bandwidth for what older men are most suited to contribute: deliberative thinking that ensures the tribe makes good decisions.

The maintenance of total testosterone levels serves a purpose that extends beyond fertility preservation.

Older Men Retain Acute Testosterone Spikes

Studies conducted on the Tsimane, a modern hunter-gatherer population in Bolivia, show that older men experience transitory surges in testosterone of equal magnitude to younger men in response to high-intensity physical activity and competition (31)(32).

Maintaining normal total testosterone levels appears to have evolved to keep a reservoir of testosterone available on call, so it can be deployed in instances when maximal physical exertion demands it.

So if you ever want to feel a revitalizing surge of testosterone, do a high-intensity workout or engage in some form of physical competition.

This may also explain why the HPG axis, which controls total testosterone production, has compensatory mechanisms to offset age-related oxidative stress, whereas the growth hormone axis, which regulates SHBG and therefore free testosterone availability, does not.

The body wants total testosterone preserved as a reserve. It does not want high free testosterone circulating as the chronic default.

In other words, men retain the ability to fight and reproduce only on an as-needed basis.

It's also worth noting that while rises in SHBG are required to bind free testosterone, SHBG serves unique purposes independent of its role as a testosterone inactivator, including functioning as an endogenous antioxidant (3), potentially helping combat the accumulation of oxidative stress with age.

Putting it all together: the body wants total testosterone to remain elevated to preserve fertility, maintain a reservoir for acute instances of physical exertion or competition, and support bone mass and red blood cell production.

But it also wants lower overall anabolic hormones circulating freely to prioritize longevity, reduce risk-taking, and lower sex drive when sperm quality and provisioning potential are suboptimal.

Rising SHBG achieves this precisely.

A Note on Epistemic Honesty

Although the evolutionarily adaptive features of somatopause are compelling, the degree to which its features were "by design" versus unavoidable trade-offs of the aging process remains an open question.

Furthermore, just because something was adaptive in our evolutionary history does not mean it translates cleanly to the modern world. Overeating is an obvious example of a once-adaptive behavior that is now pathological.

In the case of somatopause, the lifespan extension benefits are real, but so are quality-of-life side effects, which raises the question of whether we should treat it pharmacologically (i.e., TRT and growth hormone replacement), an inquiry I'll fully address in part 6 of this series.

For now, the more important question is: knowing what you know, what do you do with it?

Your Purpose as an Aging Man

The most important prerequisite for everything that follows is this: you must first do everything in your power to minimize unnecessary testosterone decline from poor health and keep testosterone decline with age to its natural minimum.

I cannot stress this enough.

Most men in the modern world will likely develop late-onset hypogonadism because the average man is quite unhealthy, and this has profoundly negative effects for individual quality of life and society at large.

The Dangers of Excess Testosterone Decline With Age

If you're this far into an article like this, you're probably already aware of the dangers of low testosterone: excessive muscle loss, metabolic slowdown, fat gain, reduced bone density, cognitive impairment, depression, and so on.

All of these symptoms are exacerbated when stacked on top of the natural declines that come with age.

Moreover, there is a reciprocal relationship between low testosterone and nearly all chronic diseases, because they're both ultimately caused by poor health.

And there is also an inverse correlation wherein testosterone levels decrease and chronic disease prevalence rises with age.

Poor health and all the chronic diseases it manifests are creating an enormous economic burden on our society (I go into much more detail on this subject in part 2 of this series).

The point is that, as an aging man, it is your moral duty to yourself, your family, and society to do everything you can to keep testosterone decline within nature's intended limits, so that you don't spend the last decades of your life in misery while burdening the economy unnecessarily.

To help men like you avoid that outcome, I've developed the Testosterone Transformation Academy: a science-based coaching program designed to help men like you preserve your testosterone levels naturally.

Once you've done that, it's time to let go of the attachment to the aspects of being young that are naturally going to dwindle as you get older.

Here's a recap of the reframes that make that possible.

1. A slower metabolism isn't your body trying to make you chubby — it's your body's way of slowing your rate of aging.
2. Slight reductions in muscle mass are the cost of your body reducing its energetic overhead in order to redirect resources toward cellular preservation and longevity.
3. Lower libido isn't castration, it's your body's way of redirecting your motivational energy away from the pursuit of reproduction and toward using your wisdom to help others.

Crucially, remember that all of these changes are tradeoffs your body is making to extend your lifespan so that you can use the wisdom you've gained throughout your life to benefit other people.

Here's why doing so is more important now than ever before in human history.

Why Older Men Are More Valuable Now Than Ever Before

Fertility rates are at an all-time low because of an increasing prevalence of health-related fertility issues (low testosterone and sperm counts being major contributors), the economic challenges of having children, as well as shifting social values (27).

At the same time, the percentage of the U.S. population aged 65 and older reached an all-time high of nearly 17% in 2020 (34) because modern medicine can keep people alive on a concoction of pills in spite of poor health.

As a result, the economic burden on the working-aged population who support the elderly (via Social Security, etc.) is at an all-time high and is projected to continue increasing.

For this reason, at no point in human history has the "grandfathering" dynamic been more important than it is right now. We need older men (and women) to carry their weight, which goes beyond staying healthy.

Use the knowledge and experience you've accumulated across your lifespan to continue contributing to society.

This can take the form of fathering and grandfathering.

According to Stefano Aarnio, author of Hard Times Create Strong Men, there is a cyclical pattern seen across history wherein "strong" men create easy times, easy times create "weak" men, who go on to create hard times.

We are in the latter half of that cycle right now, and what we need most is a new generation of mature, emotionally stable, hardworking men. Through your efforts as a father or grandfather, you can help create that.

Carrying your weight can also take the form of never fully retiring. Stop watching the news just to feel outrage about the injustices you see. Do something about it.

You can use your career experience to contribute to the economy through consulting, building a business that solves a problem you're passionate about, or volunteering for a nonprofit cause you believe in.

Older men in hunter-gatherer societies chop wood and advise on decision-making well into their eighties. The modern equivalent is continuing to contribute intellectually and socially for as long as you're capable.

And here's a personal benefit worth knowing: having a sense of purpose and mission in life is associated with higher testosterone levels.

Research shows that men who perceive themselves as having meaningful social standing have higher testosterone levels (21). By recognizing and fulfilling your purpose as an aging man, you actually support the testosterone levels you're working to preserve.

The bottom line is that the physical changes you experience with age are just the price tag on staying alive long enough to do what older men have always been designed to do: leave the world better than they found it for the people who come after them.

That's the type of man our society needs right now. Be that man.

References

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