65 MAIN ROAD, GREEN POINT
021 433 0128
65 MAIN ROAD, GREEN POINT
021 433 0128
Men mistake symptoms for personality. Tired becomes “I’m just that kind of person.” Low drive becomes “I’m getting older.” They’re not wrong about the symptoms. They’re wrong about the cause.
I spent more than a decade working in emergency medicine before moving into integrative and preventative care. In that time one pattern repeated itself so consistently it became impossible to ignore: men don’t come in until they absolutely have to.
They manage. They push through. They tell themselves it’s stress, or a busy period, or just getting older. Right up until the point where they can’t anymore – and by then, whatever had been building usually had been building for years.
Years of small neglect. Nothing dramatic enough to act on. Until suddenly it was.
That’s what eventually moved me into preventative medicine. The emergency room taught me what happens when men ignore their bodies long enough. My work now is trying to catch that conversation earlier.
People aren’t unwell. They’re just operating well below where they could be – and they’ve been doing it long enough that it feels normal.
The men I see at Hermanos aren’t in crisis. But the majority have been quietly ignoring signals for longer than they’d care to admit. Difficulty building muscle despite consistent training. Fatigue that sleep doesn’t fix. A sex drive that’s quietly gone missing. A general sense of not feeling like themselves.
That last one is the most telling. “I just don’t feel like myself.” Vague enough to dismiss – and men do, for years. But it’s almost always pointing at something real and measurable.
I find men have a strong all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to health. They either do everything terribly or perfectly. Very few are in the middle.
The man who trains six days a week but sleeps five hours a night. The man who does nothing for months, then decides to fix everything at once and burns out in three weeks.
Neither approach works. And neither addresses what’s actually going on underneath.
Here are three things that come up in almost every consultation.
One week of bad sleep ages your testosterone by 15 years.
A University of Chicago study published in JAMA found that men sleeping less than five hours a night for just one week had testosterone levels equivalent to someone 10 to 15 years older. The drop was measurable within days – not months. Testosterone governs muscle growth, energy, mood, libido, and bone density. Men chasing those outcomes in the gym are unknowingly undermining them every night they short-change their sleep.
You’re probably vitamin D deficient. Yes, even in Cape Town.
Vitamin D deficiency is significantly more prevalent in urban South Africa than people assume – higher here than in much of sub-Saharan Africa, despite the sunshine. If your day moves between an office, a car, and a gym, you’re not getting the exposure needed. Vitamin D deficiency is directly linked to low testosterone, low energy, poor muscle recovery, and mood – and you won’t know your levels are low until you test. The irony of being vitamin D deficient in Cape Town is not lost on anyone. But there it is.
Fatigue is a signal. Not a personality trait.
When fatigue doesn’t resolve with rest, it’s pointing at something measurable. Low testosterone, vitamin deficiencies, thyroid dysfunction, elevated cortisol – these don’t announce themselves dramatically. They make you feel progressively less like yourself over months and years. A blood panel tells you in 48 hours what years of pushing through never will.
It starts with knowing what’s actually going on. A proper conversation. A blood panel. A look at what your body is telling you rather than what you’ve been assuming.
That’s what I do at Hermanos. Not generic wellness advice – you already know to sleep more and eat better. The question is why it isn’t working. And the answer is almost always in the numbers.
Now you know where to find me.
Dr Kerin van Heerden
Integrative Medicine & Aesthetics Doctor,
Hermanos Aesthetics
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Facts and figures in this article are drawn from peer-reviewed clinical research and published trichology literature. Sources available on request.
