HEALTH PLUS MED­ICAL COR­RE­SPON­DENT

The month of No­vem­ber is im­por­tant for the mas­cu­line be­ing be­cause it gath­ers sev­er­al events that are im­por­tant to men. ‘Movem­ber’ is the month we fo­cus on rais­ing aware­ness on is­sues con­cern­ing Men. On No­vem­ber 19, In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day cel­e­brat­ed world­wide the pos­i­tive val­ue men bring to the world, their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. We high­light­ed pos­i­tive role mod­els and raised aware­ness of men’s well-be­ing. The 2020 theme is “Bet­ter health for men and boys.” Cru­cial and nec­es­sary, as the sta­tis­tics on men’s health are alarm­ing.

The sta­tis­tics show many men would rather suf­fer

If you think about any male fig­ure in your life, does he seem to be al­ways dog­ging the doc­tor? Ex­cus­es such as, “it will heal on its own” or “it doesn’t hurt that bad” are com­mon. It seems that men do not en­joy en­gag­ing in dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing their health. Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty may be part of the rea­son that men are not giv­ing physi­cians the full sto­ry when they do make ap­point­ments.

72% of men sur­veyed would rather be do­ing house­hold chores than mak­ing a doc­tor’s ap­point­ment.

65% of men sur­veyed stat­ed that they typ­i­cal­ly avoid see­ing a doc­tor for as long as pos­si­ble.

20% of par­tic­i­pants were able to ad­mit that they have not al­ways been 100% hon­est with their health care provider.

37% of men who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sur­vey have with­held in­for­ma­tion from their doc­tors in the past.

These num­bers, while alarm­ing to see on pa­per, make to­tal sense. There is the per­cep­tion as a man, that you should be able to han­dle your own busi­ness, and that seek­ing help or guid­ance may be per­ceived as weak­ness. Stud­ies al­so show that men typ­i­cal­ly do not en­joy hear­ing about their lifestyle choic­es such as drink­ing, smok­ing, and eat­ing habits and they al­ready know those ar­eas need im­prove­ment.

What is the num­ber one con­di­tion that men are most like­ly to ig­nore?

Heart dis­ease is the num­ber one killer of men. Men­tal Health chal­lenges are num­ber two with var­i­ous can­cer be­ing a close third. Re­search has found that heart at­tacks are twice as com­mon in men than women through­out life, and heart dis­ease is the lead­ing cause of death in men over the age of 45. For­tu­nate­ly, there are plen­ty of good lifestyle choic­es you can make to keep your heart, body and mind strong and healthy.

Aer­o­bic ex­er­cise is one of them. Sev­er­al stud­ies have es­tab­lished a link be­tween a high­er rate of car­dio­vas­cu­lar events and seden­tary lifestyles. Aim for around half an hour of mod­er­ate phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty every day.

On the oth­er end of the spec­trum, smok­ing can be a sig­nif­i­cant detri­ment to your heart. You would like­ly have heard plen­ty of rea­sons not to smoke, but here are a few more: nico­tine con­stricts blood ves­sels and car­bon monox­ide can dam­age them, and heart at­tacks are more com­mon in smok­ers than non-smok­ers.

Shift­ing the Mind­set for Fu­ture Gen­er­a­tions of Men

The more men un­der­stand and are en­cour­aged to take their health in­to their own hands, the bet­ter their out­comes for ear­ly re­port­ing of pre­ventable dis­eases. We all need to cam­paign to­geth­er to get more men seen by their pri­ma­ry care physi­cian at least once a year for a base­line phys­i­cal. The more they go, the more com­fort­able they will get with dis­cussing is­sues men may per­ceive as over­shar­ing and un­com­fort­able.

Part­ner­ing with places where men typ­i­cal­ly hang out such as golf cours­es and ath­let­ic clubs, will hope­ful­ly help out­reach and get men sched­uled with their doc­tors.

There is good news, how­ev­er, as the younger gen­er­a­tion is very tech-fo­cused, so health web­sites have been help­ful tools. They have helped shift how these young men think and in­crease their ba­sic health knowl­edge. It’s safe to say the cu­rios­i­ty is there, but get­ting them to the doc­tor is still a work in progress.

So let’s seek to MOVE those sta­tis­tics down in “MOVEM­BER”!

Look out for HEALTH PLUS every Tues­day for more in­for­ma­tive and health­ful ar­ti­cles. If you have any ques­tions or con­cerns re­gard­ing this top­ic, please email Guardian­Health­Plus2020@gmail.com