Mood Swings

In addition to regulating your muscle mass and sex drive, testosterone has a major impact on your mood. Anyone who has gone through those awkward teenage years can tell you that hormone levels trigger certain emotional responses, but here’s the thing: it doesn’t stop as you get older. If your hormone levels are off for any reason, the result could be an imbalanced mood which can have a negative impact on your relationships, your work performance, and your overall health. Like other aspects of a man’s physiology affected by Low T, your mood swings are probably noticeable, not unlike a decreased sex drive or weight gain. You may find yourself feeling a certain way one moment and the complete opposite way in the next moment.

Does Low T cause mood swings?

If you’ve ever wondered if Low Testosterone can cause mood swings, the answer is yes. It’s brought on by the hormonal imbalance created by a lack of testosterone and the increase of cortisol, sometimes known as the “stress hormone.” This can bring forth an excess of emotions that you don’t normally experience while simultaneously decreasing the behaviors and emotions that you do experience normally.

Which moods does Low T affect?

Low T affects a wide variety of emotions, including the obvious ones like happiness and anger. But rather than having an impact on just one or two moods specifically, a decrease in testosterone can alter your behavior overall. This what creates mood swings. You’re happy one moment, sad the next, and you bounce around without any rhyme or reason.

These are the moods that a lack of testosterone can affect the most:

Anger

You might think a decrease in testosterone would also reduce anger, but men with Low T often report increased and difficult-to-manage feelings of frustration and irritability. Sometimes it’s due directly to their imbalanced hormone level; sometimes, it’s the fact that other symptoms of Low T are creating problems in their lives, particularly their sex lives or professional lives. In any case, anger and frustration are common whenever your testosterone is too low, and your cortisol is too high.

Depression

This is the big one. Recent studies show that women experience depression more than men, but men who are suffering from Low Testosterone are more likely to experience depression than men who are not. If you’re a generally happy person who’s starting to show the common signs of depression, such as a loss of interest in things that uses to bring you joy, a hopeless outlook on life, or changes in weight and appetite, it could be due to Low Testosterone.

Sometimes, however, it’s the opposite case. If you suffer from depression, you are less likely to exercise or maintain an active lifestyle and more likely to lead a sedentary life, which directly contributes to testosterone loss. Like anger, depression naturally rises when your life is impacted by a hormone imbalance, so it’s tough to tell if you’re depressed because of your Low T, or if your Low T is the thing making you depressed. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter because depression (however it arrives) is the most common emotion men with decreased testosterone experience.

Happiness

This one dovetails with depression and anger, but the experience unfolds in the opposite direction. When your anger or depression increases, your happiness decreases, the result of the imbalance brought on by Low Testosterone levels.

Paradoxically, the balance can skew the other direction, as well. Low T has also been found to increase happiness in some men, particularly those with manic depressive tendencies, a recent study showed. But those feelings of euphoria and frenzy are paired with their own negative behaviors and mood swings. It could possibly be attributed to the imbalance generated by decreased testosterone.

Anxiety

Though it is often linked with depression, anxiety is its own emotion that is uniquely exacerbated by hormone imbalance. People with Low T can be hit with excessive worry, lack of concentration and even physical expressions of anxiety like trembling and nausea. You might also start experiencing things like unwanted thoughts or feelings of impending doom – irrational fear and stress that arrive as a result of increased cortisol levels.

Another way anxiety is different from depression when it comes to Low T is that anxiety itself does not cause a decrease in testosterone. In fact, people who suffer from anxiety are often active and hypervigilant, the key being that they don’t derive joy from all that activity. Instead, anxiety increases when testosterone levels are low, whether it’s a hormonal reaction or a mental reaction brought on by feelings of inadequacy spurred by Low T symptoms like weight gain or loss of strength.

Easy ways to improve your mood

Because your emotions are so intricately linked to your behavior, it’s possible to improve your mood by switching up a few habits and routines. Here are a few things you can do to lessen your mood swings and get back on track:

• Work out. Exercise is not only a good way to boost testosterone levels naturally, but it can also rejuvenate dopamine levels in your brain, which will help remove feelings of depression or anxiety.
• Change your diet. Increasing the amount of protein in your diet and cutting out sugar and fat will help you slim down and improve your mood.
• Cut out the stress. Spikes in cortisol, aka the stress hormone, can have a direct impact on testosterone reduction. Whenever possible, avoid situations that are tense and aggravating.

Of course, the most effective way to increase your testosterone levels is testosterone replacement therapy from SynergenX.

Learn more about our process by calling one of our centers on 888.219.7259.