Mental Health

Though many things may cause us to experience occasional irritability, ongoing mood changes may be hormone-related in both men and women. When irritability becomes a recurrent theme, it may be time to investigate hormones as a potential cause.

Understanding how stress can influence your hormonal state is always valuable. But in the midst of a global pandemic that is introducing new and unpredictable stressors, it takes on even greater importance.

Testosterone replacement therapy for anxiety may not be a well-known treatment option, but evidence suggests that it can provide significant relief for those struggling with anxiety symptoms as a result of low T. If hormone imbalance is the cause of your distress, hormone rebalancing may be the solution.

People who experience prolonged, unmanaged stress at work may be experiencing burnout syndrome (BOS), a popular phrase that has recently become officially recognized as an occupational phenomenon with serious health consequences. There is now there is an overwhelming amount of scientific data demonstrating that not only is burnout syndrome real, it is common—and it needs to be treated.

Menopause can be a difficult time. Intrusive symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, painful sex, and sleep problems can create physical discomfort and emotional distress. Meanwhile, the transition out of your fertile years can be a time of introspection and give rise to complex feelings about your sense of self and your place in the world. For some, it is also a time when the symptoms of depression emerge, either for the first time or more severely than in the past.

When you struggle to fall asleep at night due to racing thoughts, you might brush it off as just another side effect of stress. When you wake up every morning feeling dread for the day to come, you might think it’s just because of your tight work schedule. But when you start feeling anxious for no reason at all, you might start to worry that something’s wrong. As those worries compound exponentially alongside uncomfortable physical and emotional symptoms of hormonal change, you finally realize that you need outside help to escape this painful cycle.

Mood swings are some of the least-understood aspects of menopause—and the most misrepresented. While pop culture representations of menopause tend to center specifically on mood, they typically treat menopausal women as a caricature of irrationality and hysteria rather than capturing the variability and complexity of menopause-related mood disturbances. Not only does this trivialize the very real suffering many women experience during this pivotal phase of life, but it may also leave you feeling ashamed and immobilized.

Most people know that testosterone is a critical part of physical wellbeing. However, a growing body of research suggests that this multifaceted hormone can also play a role in mental health in men. For example, a 2016 study on older men found that “low serum testosterone was associated with an 86% increased hazard of depression.”