Check mate: Hormone replacement is a boon for old men.

Tired? Lack energy? Find that you can’t throw the football through the tire as well as the guy in the television advertisement who takes a drug for erectile dysfunction?

You may be experiencing the tragedy of andropause, the name now applied to something that was once called male menopause, and snickered at. That was before hormone replacement therapy.

Please do not write letters explaining that there are serious consequences to low levels of testosterone in older men that can require medication. I know that. There is also just plain getting old. Women know when they go into menopause. But how would a man know if he was just old, tired, and worn out, or if he had a treatable medical syndrome?

Help at hand

I went to Andropause.com, where I learned a bit about the problem of male menopause, and how Andriol, a drug that’s a form of testosterone, could help me. Organon, the company that makes Andriol, made the Web site, too.

Here’s the question that faced me there: “Are you feeling irritable, tired all of the time and just don’t have the same enthusiasm for things?” Well, yes, as a matter of fact. “Take this quiz to find out if you have the symptoms of andropause. (andropause.com/diagnosis/quiz.asp).” So I did.

There are some personal questions in the quiz ? the kind that might also appear in a “do you need Viagra?” quiz. My answers to those questions are between me and Organon and whatever federal agencies are monitoring my Web surfing.

But I’m willing to go public with some of my other answers.

“Do you have a decrease in strength or endurance?” Yes. “Are you falling asleep after dinner?” Yes, or during. “Have you noticed a recent deterioration in your ability to play sports?” Funny you should mention that. I’m about to turn 57, and suddenly it seems I can no longer rely on my fastball. As I said, there are of course aspects of getting old that can be alleviated by medication. We certainly don’t want any more folk songs written like, “Maids, when you’re young, never wed an old man.”

But there is something suspicious about the models on the andropause Web site. They look so much better than the average aging man. It’s enough to make you think this andropause deal is worth getting in on, no matter what’s making your hair turn grey and your knees hurt. After all, some women are still getting hormone therapy for menopause, despite known risks. Menopause is a natural phenomenon.

Gender equality

I think what’s going on here is that men have decided that menopause is too good to leave to women ? a really bizarre thought, I recognise. But there is precedent. There are cases of males exhibiting some of the symptoms of pregnancy. It even happens in cotton-top tamarins, which are, by the way, probably the coolest-looking animals in the world.

They have gray, whiskery faces with big, fluffy white fur. They have primate faces on catlike bodies, and they have hands. They belong in a movie as aliens who have odd powers of foresight and fabulous hair.

They also share the child rearing and gain weight because of hormonal changes when their mates are pregnant, according to a recent study. Human males have also shown some of these symptoms, in what is sometimes called a sympathetic pregnancy.

I think these are actually competitive pregnancies. Imagine yourself as the mother-to-be. You are pregnant, sometimes sick, sometimes hungry, wanting a certain amount of extra attention, and ice cream. And now your husband is having hormonal changes, too? If I'm this guy’s wife, I'm hanging onto my ice cream with both hands.