Unveiling the Truth | Exploring Sexual Health and Testosterone with Dr. Mo Khera

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:02)
Welcome to the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show, where I believe a healthy world is based on transparent conversations.
Dr. Mohit Khera, thank you so much for coming on the show. I am honored to be able to sit with you. You are arguably the world leading expert on testosterone and andrology. Truly a pleasure.

**Dr. Mohit Khera** (0:27)
Great to have you. Thank you.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:31)
Tell me about what inspired you to be doing what you're doing. And just to lay the foundation for people, you have published over 200 scientific papers, if not more. You are really leading the charge and transforming the way that we think about sexual medicine, the way we think about andrology.
You are an absolute maverick.
How did you get here?

**Dr. Mohit Khera** (0:58)
1st of all, you are too kind. But the reality is this. I look at two types of medicine. One medicine is in the business of saving lives. The other business is improving the quality of life. So what I do is improving the quality of life.
Patients come to me. Many are depressed. They are anxious.
Sexual dysfunction is not commonly discussed, but many, many people suffer from this condition. And they don't want to talk about it. So, what we do is we try to improve the quality of life.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:28)
And you're right. People don't talk about sexual health. We talk about muscle health. We talk about exercise. We talk about cholesterol.
Do you think that the reason that we don't is because people are embarrassed or it's a stigma? Or is it the thing that really impacts them so much that maybe there's shame around it?

**Dr. Mohit Khera** (1:48)
There's a huge stigma around it. And many patients are very embarrassed to discuss this. I want to give you just an example. There was a survey that came out two years ago and it was given to over 1,500 patients.
And what they found in the survey was that 69% of patients said they don't even know where to get sexual medicine health care. They have no idea. What was really surprising about this is that roughly 51% of those patients ever discuss this with their provider and less than half of the patients ever discuss it with their partner. So think about this.
Right? So I call this suffering in silence. They don't want to discuss it. Majority of patients who suffer from sexual dysfunction don't talk about it. It's a major concern.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:29)
You know, when I think about overall health and wellness, I think it's important to define sexual medicine.
What is sexual medicine? What is andrology? We're going to talk all about hormone role play. We definitely going to talk about hormones. Everybody wants to know about testosterone for men and women. But what are some of the definitions that we can start off with of understanding?

**Dr. Mohit Khera** (2:52)
There are so many components of sexual dysfunction. I'll give you some examples. 1st, you can think of erectile dysfunction, which is the most common. We can think of low libido. Don't forget that we have sexual dysfunction in men and women. It's different, right? So many men and women can suffer from HSDD, hypoactive sexual desire disorder.
Perone's disease, which is an abnormal curvature of the penis when the penis is erect, 9% of all men suffer from Perone's disease.
That's pretty significant. In fact, if you look at the statistics for erectile dysfunction, 40% of men suffer from ED at 40 years of age. 50% at 50, 60% at 60, 70 at 70, 100 at 100 You live long enough, ED is going to affect most men. So it's a very, very prominent, common condition, but we don't talk about it. Other conditions, premature ejaculation, it affects 30% of men.
The 30% of men suffer from that condition, right? So low testosterone. We know that roughly 52% of men over the age of 40 will have low testosterone, and many of these men will suffer from the signs of symptoms.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:51)
52%, let's pause.

**Dr. Mohit Khera** (3:54)
Yes.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:54)
52% of men will suffer from low testosterone. 40% of men by 40 years old have some kind of erectile dysfunction.

**Dr. Mohit Khera** (4:02)
Absolutely. Now let's talk about that low testosterone for a second. Just because you have low testosterone doesn't mean you're a candidate for therapy unless you have symptoms.
So you have to have signs and symptoms and a low testosterone level. Now if you look at how many men have signs and symptoms and a low testosterone level, that number drops to about 8%, almost up to 10% over the age of 50 That's still a significant number of patients who suffer from this condition. We don't talk about it.