HEALTH PLUS MED­ICAL COR­RE­SPON­DENT

This week, we cel­e­brat­ed Fa­ther’s Day. In cel­e­brat­ing them, we cel­e­brate their con­tri­bu­tions and their roles but we should al­so cel­e­brate their health and well­be­ing. How­ev­er, if you think about any male fig­ure in your life, does he al­ways seem to be dodg­ing 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.

The sta­tis­tics show…many men would rather suf­fer

• 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 from a Har­vard Health sur­vey, 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 come in at num­ber two with var­i­ous can­cers 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 is 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 will 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.

Why are men strug­gling – and what can be done about it?

Men­tal Health is a huge­ly sen­si­tive, com­plex is­sue with a tan­gled mul­ti­tude of caus­es, and the very na­ture means we may nev­er ful­ly un­der­stand the rea­sons be­hind it.

How­ev­er, one iden­ti­fi­able is­sue is com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

It is too sim­plis­tic to say women are will­ing to share their prob­lems and men tend to bot­tle them up, but it is true that for gen­er­a­tions, many so­ci­eties have en­cour­aged men to be “strong” and not ad­mit they are strug­gling.

It of­ten starts in child­hood. We tell boys that: “Boys don’t cry”, we con­di­tion boys from a no­tice­ably young age to not ex­press emo­tion, be­cause to ex­press emo­tion is to be “weak.”

The Cen­tre for Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion, in Cana­da high­light­ed: “It’s how we talk to our chil­dren and how we en­cour­age them to com­mu­ni­cate about them­selves too.

“Moth­ers en­cour­age their girl chil­dren to ex­press their emo­tions way more than their boy chil­dren...and they share and iden­ti­fy feel­ings more,” Mara Grunau, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor says.

“Where­as boys go through sim­i­lar episodes but ex­pect­ed to be tough.”

Rigid gen­der norms may make it dif­fi­cult for males to reach out and ask for sup­port when they need it.

It’s not that men don’t have the same is­sues as women––but they are less like­ly to recog­nise they have what­ev­er stress­es or men­tal health con­di­tions, that are putting them at greater risk for sui­cide.

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 in­creas­ing 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.

NEXT WEEK:

HEALTH PLUS puts a lens on Men’s Health.

We ask our read­ers, “Why do men not pri­ori­tise or pay at­ten­tion to their health?”

If you wish to con­tact us with your com­ments, send us an email to: guardian­health­plus2021@gmail.com