Men May Not Bleed, but Here’s Why They Have ‘Periods’

MOOD SWING

Tim Teeman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11.19.158:00 PM ET

It’s not just women who have their ‘time of the month.’ Indeed, men’s hormonal shifts fluctuate dramatically day-to-day. One expert calls it Irritable Male Syndrome (IMS).

Is your man irritable? Does he growl at you if you dare to take a piece of the chocolate bar that he is eating, or seethe a little too angrily at the loss of the TV remote? Well, understand that maybe it’s his time of the month.
A quarter of British men believe they have ‘man periods,’ according to a new survey, reported by The Telegraph.
The poll of 2,412 people, commissioned by vouchercloud.com, made up of half male and half female respondents, revealed that 26 percent of men experienced conditions associated with the female menstrual cycle, including tiredness, cramps, and increased sensitivity.
Almost half the women surveyed—43 percent—said they helped their men through their ‘man period’ symptoms.
On how they attempted to do this, women showed themselves to be as lacking as men sometimes feel around their female partners. “Try and cheer him up” summed up the modus operandi of 44 percent of women with man-period suffering partners, while “walk around on egg shells” accounted for how 39 percent dealt with it.
Of the men suffering from ‘man periods,’ 56 percent said they were irritable, 51 percent said they were more tired than normal, 47 percent had increased cravings, while 43 percent said they were both constantly hungry and easily upset.
The Telegraph reported that 12 percent said that they were “more sensitive about personal weight.” Five percent reported even suffering from “menstrual cramps.”
The man who describes himself as suffering from man periods will spend an extra £81.53 a month (about $124.72) on purchases to satisfy his food cravings than a man who does not.
Not all of Britain’s households are in a state of multi-sexual, crampy sensitivity—or maybe it’s that a sizeable number of women simply don’t have the patience for these male ‘times of the month’: 33 percent of women who didn’t believe in the existence of the ‘man period’ had told their partners to ‘man up.’
As funny it all may sound, the ‘male period’ may be a very real, medically recognized phenomenon—albeit without the definitive monthly period bleed that women go through.
Professor Peter Schlegel, chairman of Urology at New York-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine, told the Daily Beast that while women “have very regular hormone cycles and there are obvious symptoms attached to them, men also have extraordinarily similar hormonal changes on a daily basis. Testosterone levels in younger men can vary four-fold in a typical day. What is less clear is how those levels vary day by day and week by week.”
While testosterone levels decline with age, Professor Schlegel said men with their doctors should judge if those levels had decreased to an abnormal level, deleteriously affecting their sex drive, behavior and mood, before seeking treatment.

“The notion that men can be ‘hormonal’ is seen immediately as a joke. But the truth is that men have hormonal cycles just like women.”

Jed Diamond, therapist and author of The Irritable Male Syndrome, who is a believer in the “male period,” said that “men have hormonal cycles just as women do.”
Diamond, who also founded men’s wellness site MenAlive.com, says there are two crucial periods when men’s hormones shift: adolescence/young adulthood and midlife.
IMS is characterized by depression, anger, fatigue, moodiness, anxiety, lethargy, low libido, and confusion, he writes on his websites, which “can wreak havoc with a man’s closest relationships.”