This Sunday is Fathers Day and June is Mens Health Month. This is a great opportunity to recognize the men in our lives, but it is also a reminder of the many health challenges men face. These include lower life expectancy, lower likelihood of visits to the doctor, and higher risk of being overweight or obese.
This Sunday is Father’s Day and June is Men’s Health Month. This is a great opportunity to recognize the men in our lives, but it is also a reminder of the many health challenges men face. These include lower life expectancy, lower likelihood of visits to the doctor, and higher risk of being overweight or obese.
Here are some wellness tips for men to consider:
Prevention is Important
Men are three-times as likely as women to go a year without visiting the doctor, and nearly twice as likely to be without a regular go-to doctor in times of sickness. To reverse these trends, now is the time to schedule an annual wellness visit with your primary care physician. Take charge of your health and detect any potential health issues or diseases early.
Reduce the Risk
The medical journal BMJ published a study showing that men take more senseless risks than women, causing unfortunate consequences. For example, men are more likely to be addicted to alcohol and tobacco than women; men are twice as likely as women to binge drink; and men are 80% more likely to misuse drugs than women. Some men are prone to push themselves physically, such as attempting a marathon, triathlon or an extreme sport. It’s a good idea to check with your physician before you engage in any extreme sport and start a slow and steady training routine.
Get Competitive in a Healthy Way
Men who take fewer risks and channel their competitive spirit in a healthy way can enhance their well-being and quality of life. One strategy is to pair up with a workout partner, someone who can hold you accountable and encourage you to achieve your wellness goals. Also, check if your employer offers a wellness program that enables people to earn rewards for achieving certain fitness goals or offers discounts on gym memberships. To help maintain overall health, it’s important for men to “compete with themselves” and set realistic – and specific – exercise and diet goals.
Remember Behavioral Health
Numerous studies show that men are less likely than women to seek help, particularly for depression and other behavioral health issues. One potential barrier is some men might be embarrassed to ask for this type of assistance. To help with that, men can consider a virtual visit with a mental health provider via a mobile device or computer. Virtual care can shorten wait times for an appointment, fit work and personal schedules, and eliminate travel time and expense. And, research shows that outcomes of a virtual visit with a mental health provider may be similar to in-person sessions for multiple disorders.
Following these tips may benefit men – and their families – for years to come. And by better understanding men’s unique health challenges, we can help men live happy and healthier lives.
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Dr. Ronald Fujimoto is chief medical officer with United Healthcare Community Plan Hawaii.
Aloha Kakou especially Fathers,
Much good advice in this article.
However, prevention and avoiding the causes of illness, disease, and injury are improved by education…and we need more of that…education…instead of doctor visits.
Medical check ups and testing are NOT Prevention, but are detection of diseases too late, you are already sick…and doctor visits sell medical treatments…almost always chemical drugs…a Pill for Every ill.
The intent of Health is not to use medical care because it is Disease oriented and designed to find what is already wrong, And should have been prevented, and at the same same time doctor visits are to sell, use, and prescribe treatments that we are daily reminded of on TV are poisonous and plagued with side effects initiating the need for secondary and tertiary additional drugs for treatment of the side effects of the first drug.
Certainly a horrible dilemma is to go to the doctor with one Disease and develop 1 or more additional diseases from the treatment.
It can be often safer to avoid doctors and instead let your inborn healing mechanism restore your health, especially with the flu or cold, and at the same time avoid the causes of diseases and illness, and injury. Allowing yourself to get well from sickness strengthens your immune system and taking drugs weakens your immune system.
The old achronym…SWARE…IS IMPORTANT…so be sure to have adequate amounts of daily Sun, Water, Air, Rest, and Exercise…and extremely important is to eat whole, live, natural plant based foods, without added chemicals in the food, avoiding foods made out of animals as they are the greatest source of the killers of heart disease and stroke, obesity, diabetes, and cancer.
Sugars turn to fat and cause diabetes, dairy has cancer causing protein.
It’s not safe to naively walk into the grocery store. You need to be armed with education about what you have been eating and what you should be eating.
So what are you gonna eat?
Whole food, plant based nutrition: fruits and vegetables, grains, and legumes have all the protein you need and all the vitamins and minerals too…EXCEPT VITAMIN B12 which you need to take as a supplement, but be sure it is from a natural source…NOT Cyanocobalamine…!
Food today is loaded with cheap synthetic ingredients made from petroleum and are simply called petrochemicals, made from oil and their chemical makeup is organized in laboratories And factories to mimic real food…but it AIN’T…! It’s FAKE…!
So beware…to be healthy and live a long active life you need to be educated, even self educated, so don’t be ashamed to be caught reading to yourself or your family or friends or share with them what you have studied or learned.
What’s the difference between a Vegetarian and a Vegen?
Vegetarians don’t eat animals but eat what animals excrete like all dairy products and eggs.
Vegens eat no animals nor what animals excrete. Some people do not eat animals because they do not agree with killing a live animal and eating it. Others see eating animals as a proven way to become sick early in life and it sure seems so.
Look around at the fat and/or sick people…watch what they eat.
Vegans out of the 3…animal eaters (or carnivores or meat eaters), vegetarians, and vegens…VEGENS do not need to take medical drugs very much if it all, like never, of doctor prescribed or self prescribed over the counter medications, vegens are sick less often or not at all, and they are more active and live longer and look more fit and less fat or acne faced.
Why because it is low life and chemical filled foods that accumulate over time that make people overweight, obese, sick with heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and cancer.
We really need to educate our children early and their parents and family and friends…because most of this hospital and doctor stuff can be avoided and while your sick friends are at the doctor you can be out having fun or studying Health.
It can’t be said enough, lending and knowing and understanding how to read the ingredient (Warning labels) on your food is extremely important. Take the time to read them…don’t be tricked into buying what has an attractive package whether for you or your kids.
You may be buying and eating today what will accumulate in your body and become your diseases in the future. Count your life in decades, what you eat today may be your disease or death in a few decades.
Why aren’t we educated about Health…? Because getting sick and becoming Diseased makes too much money…!
Mahalo for reading,
Charles