Talking About Men's Health™

With health reform sound bytes swirling across the media as ferociously as a September hurricane, I thought it would be helpful to assess some of the real proposals on the table.

Most elements of the reform effort will surely benefit men’s health outcomes. Health insurance subsidies and ending harmful insurance market practices will allow men to get the coverage and care they need without breaking to bank. Expanding Medicaid to childless adults and expanding the CHIP program will allow men and boys to benefit from continuous insurance coverage, thus reducing lapses in needed care. Employer shared responsibility requirements and small business insurance subsidies will finally provide men in the low wage workforce with proper coverage. Changes in Medicare will incentivize more coordinated care, reducing hospital acquired infections and readmission rates for men. New population foci on minority and gender health disparities in the population will allow researchers to analyze why men experience worse health outcomes and die younger.

There are other legitimate concerns though, the most recent focusing on the degree of preventive care coverage in the forthcoming “minimum benefits package” of health reform. This benefits package will be the lowest amount of coverage that can legally be offered by insurance companies, and the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force (USPSTF) will recommend the list itself. Men’s health advocates have fought hard for the inclusion of prostate cancer screening benefits across the nation, and 37 states now require insurers to include the test. These strides may be threatened in reform, as the USPSTF does not currently recommend the procedure to be provided as a benefit. In the coming months, it will be important to address secondary effects of reform like the prostate cancer benefit in order to preserve successful past efforts and continue to support preventive services for male-specific diseases.

The summer of 2009 is almost over and looking back at the past two-and-a-half months, I realize that it’s been an extremely busy one. Health reform debates and symposia at various think tanks; briefings with health policy experts on the Hill; and editorials on the public option and “death panels” scatter websites and newspapers across the nation. Interspersed with health reform, I conducted health education outreach to an assortment of worksites and community health fairs. With so much attention on health care and health outreach, health seems like a top priority, right? Well, it depends. We can spend hours, days, weeks, months and years talking about being healthy and having health insurance, but that’s only the first step. Talking about health is easy. Scheduling and attending doctor’s appointments for routine check-ups and screenings takes effort. Showing up to those health education outreach that I conducted at worksites and community health fairs takes effort. Learning about and Becoming knowledgeable in a variety of health topics takes effort. So does eating well and exercising. It all takes effort and being healthy takes a lot of work…

I attended a church-sponsored health fair this weekend in Maryland and I was impressed with the event’s organization and layout. Unfortunately, it was not well-attended by parishioners. I interacted with less than 20 people; others even less. Health screenings and a variety of resources were available free of charge, but remained largely ignored. The picnic outside, however, was another story. Hundreds of parishioners were eating, dancing and singing outside, a mere hundred feet from the health fair.

Such is reality. It is much easier to stay in a routine or have fun than to actively seek and engage in preventive medicine. But I assure you, it is worth the effort and can be fun depending on what you seeking. There are numerous benefits of regular exercise and a healthy nutritious diet, especially as we age, that are fun and enjoyable; for example, risk factors for chronic disease decrease and quality of life improves. As the age-old adage states, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” I truly believe that investing in the effort now will drastically improve your health and well-being years in the future.

I turn it over to you guys. We need your help. How can we convince people to put in that extra work to become healthier? What methods or new strategies can we try to reach the general public?

**On a side note, MHN is currently conducting an online awareness survey on fibromyalgia. We encourage and invite anyone with a few minutes to spare to click on the following link to participate:

http://www.menshealthnetwork.org/fmsurvey.php

We thank you in advance for your help!

If you’re not familiar with a farmer’s market in your area, you’re missing out.  The freshest food is grown locally, you can get some surprisingly good deals, and there’s something special about connecting with the people who are growing the food you eat.  Plus, the earlier you get to your food, the more you will benefit from the nutrients it contains.  On recent weekends you could find me walking through rows of freshly-shucked corn, bell peppers in five vivid colors, ripe berries, apples picked the evening before and melons almost too good-looking to eat.  Almost.  And now that tomato season is in full swing, I have some extra motivation to get to my nearest farmer’s market on a weekly basis. 

There are other great ways to enjoy locally grown food, too: consumer-supported agriculture (CSA) provides the opportunity to directly support farmers in your area by “subscribing” to their farm – in exchange you can get a box full of delicious fruits and veggies delivered straight to your door.  If you’re looking for a fun trip out of the city with the kids or friends that also happens to be good for you, consider going to a farm that allows you to pick your own produce.  You may also find some interesting local grocery stores or co-ops that specialize in local crops.  All of these options are a win-win: for the farmers because they get to grow their consumer base, and for you because you get the tastiest, freshest and healthiest food available.  You can get some ideas about great options in your area by starting here: http://www.localharvest.org/.  Happy eating!

We all wish there were more hours in a day. A little more time with our families, a few more hours of daylight to play another game of tackle football with our buddies, just an hour more to complete that last level on the new Call of Duty video game. Unfortunately most often the thing we sacrifice to indulge these loves could very well be killing us. I speak of course of sleep. I’m frequently guilty of this myself. Treating sleep more as a nuisance or as a reservoir of free time to be dipped into at will. And why not? We’ve all heard how many of the great leaders and geniuses have typically subsisted on 4 hours or less a night. Leonardo Da Vinci and Thomas Edison were said to have slept in 10-minute bursts, totaling only 2 hours per day. Winston Churchill claimed to have logged no more than 4 hours each night. The trouble is this is decidedly atypical and according to many sleep scientists a primary contributor to innumerable adverse health effects from memory loss, to depression, and even obesity.

According to these same sleep scientists only approximately 10 percent of adults can successfully deviate from the prescribed 7-8 hours per night. This forces the vast majority of us “normal folk” to make a choice and after looking at the latest statistics it becomes clear that shut-eye frequently emerges as the loser. According to an article in Men’s Health magazine (http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/Sleep_Better_for_More_Energy/), the CDC shows that American males in their 20’s typically average around six hours of sleep each day and those between the ages of 30 and 44 are the worst avoiders of sleep, routinely admitting to less than six per night. That puts the vast majority of us easily into the thoroughly sleep-deprived category.

There is almost unanimous agreement among scientists that this type of sleep deprivation is incredibly detrimental to our health. Let’s take a look just at the three examples I mentioned previously and which I think may be of particular importance to men: memory function, depression, and obesity. A study at the University of Pennsylvania (http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=265) shows that two weeks of getting only six hours of sleep per night yields the same loss of alertness and memory as not sleeping at all for a full 24 hours. The same research also found that inadequate sleeping also damages memory consolidation, which is the process by which the brain organizes learned information for storage in permanent memory. So for those of us in a constant state of studying, this means that extra sleep is in fact more beneficial than reading that chapter again for the umpteenth time.

Just as compelling is the overwhelming evidence of the link between obesity and sleep deprivation. According to Professor Cappuccio of the University of Warwick (http://www.sleepdex.org/s26.htm), who recently completed a study on this relationship, “The ‘epidemic’ of obesity is paralleled by a ‘silent epidemic’ of reduced sleep duration with short sleep duration linked to increased risk of obesity both in adults and in children. These trends are detectable in adults as well as in children as young as 5 years.” His study found that, among other things, lack of sleep causes increased production of the enzyme Ghrelin, which actually stimulates appetite, while simultaneously causing a reduction in levels of Leptin, which suppresses appetite. This double-whammy was found to lead to nearly a two-fold increase in the risk of obesity. In addition, it has been observed that those who sleep less tend to have higher body-mass-indexes, larger waistlines, and higher body-fat percentages. In a related study, as diabetes is often an additional consequence of obesity, recent research conducted by the Boston University School of Medicine (http://stason.org/articles/wellbeing/sleep/how_many_hours_do_you_need_to_sleep.html) found that participants who reported sleeping less than six hours also had an increased incidence of diabetes.

These are obviously major health concerns that can affect not only our current quality of life, but also how we weather old age, and can even extend to the well-being of our children. Sleeping, like breathing, is a fundamental part of our biology and it is important that we remember to treat it as such. Plus, let’s face it, I’m certainly no Thomas Edison and chances are you’re no Leonard Da Vinci, so why don’t we put that Madden ’09 season on pause and get some sleep.

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References:

http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/Sleep_Better_for_More_Energy/

http://www.sleep-deprivation.com/articles/effects-of-sleep-deprivation/index.php

http://www.sleepdex.org/s26.htm

http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=265

http://stason.org/articles/wellbeing/sleep/how_many_hours_do_you_need_to_sleep.html