Weight loss ‘may boost low testosterone levels’

Weight loss can reduce the prevalence of low testosterone levels in overweight, middle-aged men with prediabetes by almost 50 percent, a new study has found.

The new study involved nearly 900 men with prediabetes, also called impaired glucose tolerance, who had participated in the Diabetes Prevention Program.

“Doctors should first encourage overweight men with low testosterone levels to try to lose weight through diet and exercise before resorting to testosterone therapy to raise their hormone levels,” Frances Hayes, co-author of the study from St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, said.

That now-completed U.S. study showed that people at high risk of Type 2 diabetes could delay or avoid developing the disease through weight loss.

Since overweight men are more likely to have low testosterone levels, Hayes and her colleagues studied the effect of weight loss on men’s testosterone levels.