Drug side effects – they can sound funny, unless they are happening to you.
At the end of every drug commercial they list the side effects. After a while you start to tune them out, like your average smoker tunes out the giant warning on a pack of Marlboro. It just becomes ‘noise’. May cause drowsiness, diarrhea, giant weeping open sores, you might grow cloven hooves etc. Or my personal favorite, ‘oily anal discharge’.
As much as we tune these warnings out, it’s important to note that the side effects of some low testosterone treatments are pretty crazy – maybe not to you, but to your significant other or your kids. No ‘oily anal discharge’ here – something much weirder.
A few weeks ago the FDA asked the makers of popular testosterone ‘gel’ treatments to put a new warning on the product packaging. Apparently some guys had managed to rub up against their kids while wearing the gel, with bizarre consequences. From the FDA site:
Oily Anal Discharge? WTF?
Despite the currently labeled precautions, as of Dec. 1, 2008, the FDA has received reports of eight cases of secondary exposure to testosterone in children ranging in age from nine months to five years. Since that time, additional reports of secondary exposure have been received by the agency and are presently under review.
Of the fully reviewed cases, adverse events reported in these children included inappropriate enlargement of the genitalia (penis or clitoris), premature development of pubic hair, advanced bone age, increased libido, and aggressive behavior.
In most cases, the signs and symptoms regressed when the child no longer was exposed to the product. However, in a few cases, enlarged genitalia did not fully return to age-appropriate size and bone age remained modestly greater than the child’s chronological age.
In some cases, children had to undergo invasive diagnostic procedures and, in at least one case, a child was hospitalized and underwent surgery due to a delay in recognizing the underlying cause of the signs and symptoms.
Trust me, you don’t want little Johnny to be the only kid in first grade gym class with a beard. Be careful out there folks! Follow the instructions with these medications, and keep yourself and your family safe.
For some guys, a pharmaceutical approach is all that will work. If you have extremely low T and you feel really bad, it’s your judgment call as to whether the benefits of this therapy outweigh the potential risks. Just don’t kid yourself that there are no side effects – go into it with your eyes open.
If you find that your testosterone level is just at the upper end of the ‘low’ scale, you may find relief from natural remedies, and I would always recommend trying this in the first instance. Get your testosterone level tested, do the right things for a month, then test again and see if you really need the pharmaceutical approach. There are supplements that you can take, bad habits that you can cut and good habits that you can introduce that really have a marked effect on your testosterone level.
Just don’t believe 90% of what you read online – there is a lot of money to be made in ‘treating’ this stuff naturally, and most of what you will read is complete crap with no scientific basis. There are a couple of supplements with real studies behind them (like ZMA – you can get it here – link goes to cheapvitamins.com who are usually the cheapest – and find links to the study here), but most of it is crap. I don’t recommend any particular brand either – again, I’m not selling miracles. My advice – search for it, and if you want to try it, buy the one with the least expensive looking packaging! You don’t want to pay for marketing, right?
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