The Nation - News from Jan. 26, 1987

Men who are heavy drinkers for most of their lives may suffer an “alcohol induced male menopause” after age 60 that increases risk of heart attack and decreases levels of sex hormone, a new report said. Researchers at the Veterans Administration Hospital in North Chicago, Ill., studied 72 elderly men and found those who had spent a lifetime of drinking had extremely low levels of the male hormone testosterone and were more likely to have had heart attacks than their nondrinking colleagues. “Basically they have drunk themselves into an alcohol-induced male menopause,” Dr. Conrad M. Swartz reported in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.