“I played an entire game of golf before I realized, I wasn’t hurting anymore.”

As a 50-something-year-old man he’s been fastidious about his diet, exercises regularly with light weight training and stretching and gets great sleep. However, he developed sometimes nagging, sometimes severe joint pains over the past 2 years. He was diagnosed with mild degenerative scoliosis a year ago and sent to PT. His therapy was unimaginative and, to him, did not go beyond that which he was doing for himself. He would complain mostly to his wife all while feeling like “something is wrong”. His joint pains were rarely specific, often migrating between the major joints (shoulders, hips, back and most recently feet). Increasingly grumpy, tired and short tempered, his wife made her concerns quite known and forced his hand in openly discussing his symptoms with me. We did a series of tests and together we found a working diagnosis, one in which he was adamant that he would not “just take a pill for”. Although “bummed” by the diagnosis he recieved, his overriding emotion was one of “finally I know what is going on”. Together, we made an alternative path to treatment, focussing on the root of the problem. The plan began with anti-oxidant IV therapy, thyroid replacement and testosterone replacement. At his last visit, he described his golf game as above. For the past two years, he wouldn’t make it through the first 3 holes without some nagging pain and however he tried to ignore it, it impeded his joy. It was not until it was gone that he recognized how much the pain affected him and his relationships. He put in the work to build a healthy foundation, our plan laid out a path to stay active, happy and maybe take a few strokes off his game.

Take a moment and read, “Andropause: Women Are Not the Only Ones Who Experience the “Change of Life”.