Your Man's Health- By Fiona Marshall - A Sheldon Press Book

How healthy is your man? How well does he look after himself? Men's health is, to a large extent, in their own hands, but frequently health is the last thing on their minds. They continue to eat, drink and be merry, ignoring warning signs, avoiding the doctor, and generally behaving in a self-destructive way, because looking after body and mind is way down the list of priorities.

If any of this describes your man, help is at hand. This concise and informative book will tell you (and him) everything you need to know about men's health, with great suggestions about what you can do to help, and how you can motivate him to help himself.

Your Man's Health Contents:

Introduction
Acknowledgements

• The cardiac factor
• Cancers
• The prostate
• Fitness
• The inner man - diet, obesity and digestive problems
• The outer man
• Sexual health
• Work and stress
• Other lifestyle factors
• Psychological and emotional health
• Conclusion

Useful addresses
Further reading
Index

Introduction: Your Man's Health

What is the future of men? Are men the new women? Will men be needed at all? The last few years have seen several major conferences, magazines, articles, TV and radio programmes and web sites, all focused on male health and posing questions like these. Have they come in time to save the race from extinction? What with the global fall in sperm counts, men's appalling health records, and their relatively short life expectancy, it looks as though males are on a rapid downward slope. Add in sperm banks and human cloning, and men look like becoming a superfluous genus. Some see men as taking an increasingly female role in the world, accepting a range of magazines and TV shows aimed at men with contents identical to traditional 'women's stuff', while women increasingly perform all the tasks and jobs traditionally reserved for men. What seemed set in stone just a couple of decades ago — the future of men in society — looks a lot less certain today.

While some of the questions above may be posed more seriously than others, there are very real reasons for the worries about male health. Men have higher mortality rates for all 15 leading causes of death, including lung cancer, heart disease, accidents and suicide. They are three times as likely to commit suicide as are women. Rates of prostate cancer, which kills 9,000 men a year in the UK (four times as many men as cervical cancer will kill women), have doubled in the last 20 years, while rates of male obesity have trebled. There has also been a rise in psychosocial disorders in men, such as alcoholism, addiction, mid-life crisis, depression, suicide and domestic violence. Men have a much shorter life expectancy than women — seven years on average. If he is a black man and she is a white woman the difference is even greater — 14 years.

Why is this? Why are men in such bad shape? Socially, the balance is in their favour. Compared with women, they may earn more money, have less responsibility for childcare, and be more free to take exercise and look after themselves generally. But, as women catch up with work opportunities and equal pay, some experts believe we may see the gaps in health and life expectancy widen even further — unless women also adopt the self-destructive health patterns of men.

The social behaviour of men seems to be largely what militates against their health. Four out of five men do not visit their doctor when they feel unwell. They are not very interested in preventative health. They take more risks, have more accidents, smoke and drink more, and in general live more dangerously than women. They seem to have a prevalent feeling that it is not their place to look after themselves. Largely because of their poor health habits, they die much earlier than they should. It is important not to think entirely in stereotypes and to stress that this does not apply to all men — some men are highly health-conscious and have no trouble talking about their physical or mental health, while some women hate going to the doctor's, dislike showing emotion, and are fatalistic or careless about their overall health. However, the general picture remains — and, as already stated, is causing a great deal of concern.

Just three decades ago, there was very limited research specifically targeted at women's health. It was more or less assumed that women's health needs were the same as men's. In recent years this has changed. There is increasing recognition that men and women have different health and healthcare needs, with major health studies revealing important differences between the two. A well-publicized example in female health is the effect of certain anti-convulsant drugs on the unborn child of pregnant women with epilepsy; for years these drugs were given to women without adequate recognition that they could cause defects in the baby.

Many feel that this new science of 'his and hers' medicine has a long way to go. An American study, for example, called for scientists and doctors to pay more attention to the basic biological differences between men and women. The study added that clinical trials need to test for differences in how the sexes react to diseases and drugs, and that doctors need to take these differences into account when diagnosing, prescribing and advising on preventative care. In other words, it calls for a whole new overall view of medicine and healthcare, and the way in which it is administered. Lately, it is felt in some quarters that men are losing out on healthcare, and that provision is less well-defined than in women's healthcare.

This is changing — indeed, the very emergence of male health as an issue may be one of the reasons why men's health is often thought of in terms of particular subjects such as the prostate, testicular cancer, or impotence. We have not yet quite got round to viewing male health in a holistic way, although this is slowly arriving. Meanwhile, many feel that there is still a gap between male and female health awareness and healthcare.

The gap, at the moment, is still left to women to fill. Women are traditionally the main force behind men's health, and tend to take the initiative not just in caring for their men, but in educating them about health. Forty per cent of men will only attend their family doctor, especially for preventative care, if their partner tells them to (usually part of the healthcare responsibility for the whole family). A MORI poll found that women have a better understanding of the male body than do men, as well as being generally better informed about health than are men.

There are several reasons why you may find yourself becoming actively involved in your partner's health. For purely altruistic reasons, your involvement can have a profound impact on his ability to heal after an illness. Some research has shown that men whose partners are actively involved in their health tend to recover more quickly, especially after surgery.

It is commonly said that men tend to communicate more by behaviour, and women by means of words (again, like all generalizations to do with the sexes, this statement needs a lot of qualifying). If, however, illness can be viewed as a behaviour, then you may be needed to interpret this behaviour — the reasons behind it, what to do about it, not just in terms of treatment but in wider overall lifestyle decisions.

You may also become involved because his health affects your own health and way of life. For example, the partner of a man with erectile dysfunction may lose out on intimacy, self-esteem and trust. If you are informed about impotence, however, you will know that it can be a symptom of a wide variety of underlying disorders including diabetes and heart trouble, and that even impotence by itself is medically treatable in many ways. Infertility likewise stems from a problem with the male partner around 50 per cent of the time; yet you may blame yourself because you 'can't get pregnant'. Often, what may be felt to be a private shame turns out to be a fairly common health disorder.

Again, being involved in a man's health may be good for your health in other ways, too. A partner's poor health habits may pose a danger to others — a by-product of smoking is passive smoking; alcoholism may result in abuse or car accidents; his refusal to attend to his stress level may result in his no longer being able to cope with his job. Taking this further, if he becomes disabled, your quality of life will be profoundly affected too, and social, sporting, travel and retirement activities may be limited. Finally, death has the ultimate impact on the woman, leaving her alone.

This may sound dramatic, but it is a fact of life for many women. However, there are a number of ways in which you can help your men to better health, starting with a better understanding of male health and possible problems. By being well-informed, you can keep your eyes open for signs and symptoms and encourage your partner to have them checked immediately. You can share what you learn with your partner, perhaps encouraging him to read a book like this one, or an article, or passing on the phone number of an information or support organization. Most men suffer alone, yet research has shown that sharing with other men with the same condition has enormous benefit.

You can accompany him to the doctor — women often have better vocabulary and communication skills when it comes to explaining symptoms and asking questions of medical professionals. Taking this further, you can also be better informed about check-ups — both in terms of what is on offer from the doctor, such as regular cholesterol checks, and what you can do yourself, such as how to check for testicular cancer. Again, you can make a family health history as well as history of his individual health which can be invaluable in identifying possible areas which may need extra attention.

On a day-to-day basis, as many women tend to do the shopping and cooking, responsibility for his healthy diet may well be in your hands. You can also motivate him to exercise — even better, join him!

Last but by no means least, it helps to understand the male approach to health with its accompanying feelings of fear and embarrassment. Above all, you may need to tackle the male feeling of being indomitable: the feeling that he can safely get away with it - whether 'it' is an overly hectic lifestyle, drinking and driving, or refusing to check out that persistent pain in his stomach. It is hoped that this book will help you with this, as with all the above points.

This book looks at various conditions and different aspects of preventative health, but, basically, if you can get your man to take three simple steps, you will have made a major impact on his health. These are to take more physical activity, to eat less, especially less saturated fat, and to eat more vegetables and fruit.

Finally, educating him about his health can also extend to sons. If the next generation's men are to be healthy, now is the time to be starting the process. Once again, women can be enormously influential in changing a culture in which it used to be accepted that men are not really expected to be responsible for their health. While 'fitness' is still a leading definition of health among men (often the only definition), health in its wider aspects, including preventative and emotional, is finally finding a place in what used to be a macho- bound society. Let us hope that the species will survive after all.

About the author:

Fiona Marshall has written widely on health, psychology and parenting. She is the author of eight books, five of them for Sheldon Press, and also a novel.