Depression: It’s not just for women anymore

About a month ago I asked my doctor to help figure out what was wrong with my brain. I felt bad. Depressed. Sometimes hopeless.

Life changes, hitting 40, being a tired, overextended father of an 8 and 4 year old … I just felt run down. And I knew it was more than my physical health.

So my doctor said he’d like to run some blood work on my hormones before just blindly trying antidepressants. Turns out I’ve got a weird imbalance of estrogen and testosterone brought on by many factors, including obesity, lack of exercise, etc. I’m crazy, but because of not taking care of myself all these years.

So there’s a chemical imbalance and reason I’ve felt crappy for a while. It’s not midlife crisis. It’s not lack of confidence. It’s not that I hate my life. It’s that the ingredients in the bloodstream aren’t right for me to be normal.

The great news is that’s fixable. I got a bunch of testosterone pellets injected into my hip and am on some other drug to balance out the estrogen. (Which all men have, just not in as large proportions as I do … and no, it wasn’t making me effeminate. It was making me moody, as it can with the fairer sex.)

The lessons learned here for me are that A) Men can be depressed B) Depression can be a normal evolution of one’s body chemistry and C) It can be treated and sometimes even without the non-natural chemicals so many people are stuck on.

If you feel moody, depressed, hopeless, alone, etc., even though you rationally know you shouldn’t, go talk to your doctor. Ask for a hormone check … especially if you’re at or near 40 or beyond. Your body chemistry doesn’t always keep up. It’s not your fault or something to be ashamed of. It just is.

So do what you can to fix it. I did. And two weeks in, I feel a lot better.