TRT Helped This Performance Coach Push Through a Midlife Crisis
- By Rebekah Harding
- January 22, 2024
When performance coach Greg Scheinman hit 40, a sharp drop in his energy levels began to stunt his career growth and satisfaction with his personal life. This brought on a full-blown midlife crisis.
“I started feeling like I wasn’t recovering the way I used to,” Scheinman tells Hone Health CEO Saad Alam on a recent episode of the Hone In podcast. “I was feeling like things were getting a little bit more difficult to do from an energy standpoint.”
“That’s when I started getting my blood work done and taking a look at my testosterone.”
Midlife crisis can be a debilitating experience for nearly 20 percent of men over age 40. Performance coach Greg Scheinman talks strategies to cope on the Hone In podcast.
Men’s testosterone levels tend to dip in their mid-thirties and continue to decrease for the rest of adult life. Once your levels drop below 200 ng/dL, you can experience symptoms like low energy, muscle loss, and irritability, according to hormone specialist Danielle McDevitt, M.D.
Scheinman says that stereotypes about testosterone use kept him apprehensive about starting testosterone replacement therapy (TRT). Instead, he first worked with his primary care physician and nutritionist to change up his workouts to boost his T levels.
Resistance training and high intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts are most effective at increasing testosterone levels in men naturally, according to research (1, 2). And diets packed with foods like ginger, egg yolks, and fatty fish may also boost your T levels.
It helped, but he still felt depleted. In his late forties, Scheinman decided it was time to start TRT to “pour some rocket fuel” on his low testosterone problem.
Hone’s at-home testosterone assessment is the simplest way to uncover whether your levels are low. If you qualify for treatment, TRT can be sent right to your door.
“I don’t think I’m cheating. I don’t think I’m sacrificing. And I don’t think that this is unhealthy,” he says about starting TRT. “I started to feel better during the day. I started to be happier. I started to sleep better. All of these other compounding kind of like ancillary positive effects that started to fill back up the bucket. Like the real bucket of things that mattered again: the family stuff, the financial stuff, traveling… all the things that I really wanted to do.”
Now, at 50-years-old, he’s a best-selling author and coaches other men through midlife crisis. In his weekly newsletter and podcast, The Midlife Male, Scheinman offers advice on how to maximize your mid-life (especially in the sex and money categories—who doesn’t want that?) and the “the 6 F’s”: family, fitness, finance, food, fashion and fun.
References
1. Riachy, et al (2020). Various Factors May Modulate the Effect of Exercise on Testosterone Levels in Men.
2. Velasco-Orjuela, et al (2018). Acute effects of high-intensity interval, resistance or combined exercise protocols on testosterone – cortisol responses in inactive overweight individuals.
