The male mid-life crisis is something of a standard joke, with the stereotype of a paunchy forty or fifty-something indulging in some ill-advised attempt to recapture their lost youth. However, for some men, the reality is a persistent low mood, loss of energy, and a general lack of appetite for life.

While the late forties or fifties are a very common age for men to start experiencing health problems and bouts of depression, there is another view that it can be a very liberating time of life. The realisation that your time on earth doesn’t last forever, and you only have a certain number of summers left to enjoy, can be a great motivator.

Men are often mocked for buying a sports car or taking up windsurfing, but if not now, when? If you fancy learning the guitar, wearing leather trousers, or backpacking around Peru, there may well be no good reason why not. One of the advantages of being older is that you don’t care as much what other people think!

It may also be a great motivation to sort out those niggling health problems that tend to crop up around this age. After all, you are not getting any younger, but there’s still plenty of time left to really get to grips with your diet or exercise routine, if this has taken rather a backseat until now.

Middle age is obviously a time when most men are deep in careers and family responsibilities, so it understandably takes more effort to carve out exercise time. Finding a workout buddy to go jogging with, starting to cycle to work, or joining a five-a-side football team, may help to motivate you to do a little more.

Make sure that you warm up those muscles and joints properly, for at least ten minutes, before jumping into a jog or footie match. This is because older bodies are less flexible and more prone to strains and impact injuries. Resist the urge to compete with the 20-something guys, and take it at your own pace.

Getting fitter, eating better, and losing a little weight can often be all it takes to turn mid-life anxiety around, and into a chance to fine-tune your life and tackle your health problems head-on. Many men are reluctant to visit the doctor for example, especially about very personal and sensitive issues such as erectile dysfunction (ED).

ED affects around 20% of all men over 50, but it should not be accepted as an inevitable part of getting older. There are many excellent treatments available now, so it is a shame to suffer in silence when you could be enjoying a rewarding sex life for many more years to come.

In many cases, you don’t even have to visit your GP, or even go and queue up in a pharmacy. For example, it is possible to buy Tadalafil online after a consultation with an online pharmacist. The medication will then be posted to you in discreet packaging.