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"What’s the biggest single factor that puts you at risk for ignoring your health? Being a man. Sociologist Lisa Wade, interviewed in New York Magazine, says th

• ganley 10y ago
  About a decade ago, I got a physical after having not set foot in a doctor's office in about 12 years. The doctor asked what made me come to get a physical after so long, and when I said nothing in particular, he pretended to write on his clipboard "Wife made me come here." He said middle-aged guys with no obvious health problems pretty much only come to the doctor for one (or both) of two reasons: Their wife made them, or they want Viagra.
  • thaumaturgy 10y ago
    It's not just a macho thing. I pretty severely injured an ankle back in September, at MMA, and for the first time in my life (at 38) it doesn't seem to be healing up very well. I keep finding new little movements that cause it to feel pretty wrong ("popping", "pulling", cold sensation, mild short-term pain, weakness). One of these happened in front of my girlfriend, who ordered me to see a doctor, so I did. I filled out new copies of all the paperwork I filled out a year ago when I was grievously ill, sat around for a bit, got into the doctor's office, his assistant appeared and asked me a couple of questions, then the doctor appeared after a bit and asked me the same questions again. He palpated my ankle for a few seconds, told me to get a brace, and then left the room without another word. Unless you're wealthy enough to afford a dedicated physician, there's just really no point in seeing a doctor for anything less than "I might be about to die". ...which sucks, because I'm a huge proponent of preventative medical care. It's just not available for most people.
    • ganley 10y ago
      No idea which of us is more typical, but my doctor is awesome. Preventative care is deductible-waived, so there's really no good reason other than laziness for me not to get a regular annual physical.
    • barsonme 10y ago
      > Unless you're wealthy enough to afford a dedicated physician I think it depends on your doctor. My GP is fantastic. He's always running late because the company he works for slots patients in 30 minute intervals, but he takes as long as is needed for his patients. I'm not even close to wealthy ($50k/year) I can go to him for anything from the flu to broken bones to high cholesterol without thinking, "this is pointless".
    • walshemj 10y ago
      But you don't know if that of pain is going to kill you or not
  • DanBC 10y ago
    > He said middle-aged guys with no obvious health problems Why would anyone see a doctor unless they had a health problem? (Or wanted health advice?)
    • ganley 10y ago
      A health problem that you are aware of. You're supposed to see a doctor periodically because they might catch health problems that haven't yet advanced to the point that you know they're happening.
      • DanBC 10y ago
        It's not surprising that the US has such a problem of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g5432 http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g5432
    • Tepix 10y ago
      If you are middle-aged (or older): to get a checkup
    • nommm-nommm 10y ago
      Annual physical exam (AKA annual wellness visit, annual preventive exam, periodic health exam, and routine checkup) - http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/annual-physical-examinations http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/annual-physical-examinati... Last I knew though they weren't evidence based.
    • PeterisP 10y ago
      Regular preventive checkups are (or should be?) a thing. Quite a few deadly things need to be caught before they become obvious problems. As a crude example, prostate cancer is one of diseases causing death for men; and has the "nice" property that if it's detected early in a screening then it's (usually) treatable with minor side effects, but by the time it causes symptoms serious enough to seek a fix for the symptoms, it generally has grown enough to be lethal.
      • 10y ago
  • ergothus 10y ago
    I can't deny the conclusion, and I agree that men are socialized to not show weakness ("macho"), but for me, I tend to avoid going to the doctor because, as a general rule, it rarely helps and it always costs money. (macho-ness may make more sensitive to that, hard to really know) I was very sickly as a child. Every doctor's visit did nothing to change this (it wasn't even "Hmm, you have a trend", it was "oh, you have a cold/bonchitis/etc.) It wasn't until I was 30 that I learned I was allergic to pollen, molds, dustmites, cats, dogs, and rats - basically everything that won't kill you (no food allergies I've nailed down) - and that discovery was made when my symptoms suddenly got dramatically worse for months, and I pinned down the only three things that had changed in that time and went to an allergist myself. Each winter for several years since then I would get bronchitis, and the coughing and shortness of breath would last for months. Every doctor told me to take some Delsym and wait 4-8 weeks. I eventually pieced together that this is my allergies (which, while treated, aren't gone) draining into lungs overnight and slowly being coughed up during the day. Some anti-inflammatory treatment that is now legal in Washington turns out to have stopped that for the last few winters. I've had two rounds of kidney stones in the last 5 years (each involving at least two stones, because apparently the inflammation from a kidney stone tends to "shake more loose") - Doctors couldn't do much beyond painmeds and flowmax. (First time though, I had a $1000 CT scan (I think it was CT - I get CT and MRI mixed up) because the doc suggested it.) I had pneumonia once - didn't realize it, it was just a bad cold/cough that got dramatically worse. Calling my doctor for an appt gave me something in 3 days. Day of, I wasn't sure I would be breathing by the time of the appt, so I was going to go to the ER. (which would have been ridiculously expensive). My wife took me to a local urgent care clinic (PatientFirst in VA) because she was worried about the wait time at the ER. They were awesome, saw me immediately as I walked in (they could hear me breathing), did in-house xray of my lungs and o2 sensor. Now that I'm in Seattle, the local clinics work differently - they REALLY want you to have a primary care physician. I recall a doctor there once saying that's because they want someone to coordinate your care, maintain a big picture view, and proactively look into potential issues. I told her I'd never had a PCP do any of those things) I'm not knocking medical science - it's a near impossible job: "Debug this program to which you don't have the source code, can't control or even know all the environment and inputs, and if you crash it someone dies". It's amazing they can do what they can, and in certain circumstances they are responsible for saving and improving a lot of lives (see above having pneumonia). But the reality is that if I went to the doctor every time some part of me hurt (and now that I'm 40, that's a lot of parts) based on my past experiences, I'd just spend a lot of time and money and be not much better off. So I'm all for being cautious on big things like chest pains. I'm all for knowing the warning signs of stroke, heart attack, and the like. But going to the doctor for every little thing? Seems a waste.
  • eon1 10y ago
    The whole "getting a physical" annually is purely an old school American thing anyway. I don't know anyone in my country who does this - although apparently nowadays US med associations recommended you go visit a doctor every 5 years or so if you're under 40. Still, if I walked into a doctor and said "is anything wrong with me?" with no symptoms or obvious indication that this might be so, they would probably take blood pressure, do a breathing test, ask me if anything was actually wrong, and then wonder why I was wasting their time (or maybe ask if I was looking for a medical certificate cos I didn't feel like going to work, heh).
    • derefr 10y ago
      Personally, I kind of wish my GP was there to help me optimize my health, rather than just to diagnose illness. Like, all those dietary restrictions they give to people who've had heart attacks? Why not give them to me before I have a heart attack, so I won't ever get one? Make my life more of a hassle, so that I live longer! I want to have someone in my life who plays the same role that a dental hygienist plays a dentist visit, but for my general physical health.
      • DaUR 10y ago
        > I want to have someone in my life who plays the same role that a dental hygienist plays a dentist visit, but for my general physical health. You better not expect doctors to be that. Most of them still believe cholesterol causes heart disease, for example, or that you need 50% carbs in your diet.
      • eon1 10y ago
        Okay.. so that kind of sounds like you need a dietician, which is someone you can ask your GP for a referral for, or in many cases just book an appointment with. Your GP doesn't send you to the dentist unless there's something so wrong with your teeth it's impacting the rest of your health; why would it be any different for your diet?
• hubert123 10y ago
  It has nothing to do with risk taking, quite the opposite. This is all pop culture. Going to the doctor is a risk. You cannot and dont want to take that risk if you have to go to work. Most of the time if you dont have an issue that's stopping you from working, it's not an important issue worth risking work over. To call men who dont want to go to the doctor basically "emotional pansies" is a very.. i dont know, maybe a very uninformed way to look at it.
• jstalin 10y ago
  It's not popular these days to claim that there are differences between men and women.
  • Shendare 10y ago
    Of course, acknowledging and appreciating differences differs greatly from enforcing differences.
  • robertk 10y ago
    Popularity and truth are correlated but sometimes orthogonal.
  • goatlover 10y ago
    It's funny though, because I've heard tons of women, many of them progressive, from 20s to 60s, who eagerly acknowledge differences between men and women. I have to think hard to recall otherwise. Usually it would be in context of a specific argument. Maybe I just don't know any hard core feminists.
  • comicjk 10y ago
    I have traveled in some of the most socially liberal circles in the US, and I have to disagree with you about what's popular - or at least make it much more specific. It's not popular to claim that there are significant, biologically-determined, mental differences between men and women. Small differences, cultural differences, and corporeal differences are all accepted. This zeitgeist may still be incorrect, but it's not terrible as a heuristic.
  • ergothus 10y ago
    Is it? I know it's not popular to say things like "women can't do this" or "women aren't as good at this", but I've not actually heard someone say that men and women don't have differences. A great many of those differences are socialization, not biology, but even then there are physical differences. For example, I know lots of people that want women to be able to be in combat roles in the military. I've not heard anyone suggest that any qualification standard that actually applies to fitness to do so be lowered. Given the biological range of the genders, this would mean that: * there would be women who physically qualify * that number would be less than men that physically qualify ...and everyone seems okay with this. Frankly, I've heard far more people get angry about some theoretical upset person than I've ever seen actual upset persons.
• DaUR 10y ago
  Sociologists and feminists like to chalk everything up to gender roles, as the author does here, and offer feminism as a solution, but this is dogmatic. There's a difference between taking risks (if you take risks, and bad things happen as a result, that's often outside of your control; e.g. sharks when swimming in the ocean, there's always a risk) and self-neglect, which is within your control. Self-neglect is a consequence of low self-esteem, and has nothing to do with masculinity. This may be uncouth, but: think of the men who you think are least masculine, and ask yourself if they nurture themselves more, go more to the gym, and eat better. If anything, the opposite is true. The real problem is self-neglect, whose root cause is low self-esteem. I don't think women's average self-esteem is any higher or lower than men's, but theirs manifests itself in different ways, which explains why women would be more conscientious of their physical health, and push men to do the same. Still doesn't change the nature of the problem, or its real solution.
  • derefr 10y ago
    > The real problem is self-neglect, whose root cause is low self-esteem. I'm not sure if I disagree with you, or if my perspective is this same perspective from a different angle, but: I would say that it's more that men tend to (expect to) derive their self-esteem from things they do, rather than things they are—so they invest much more time in doing things, and much less time in being things. In order to "be" beautiful or to "be" athletic, it's usually a pre-requisite to be healthy—to take care of your body. In order to do things like building a successful business or finding cures for diseases, you don't have to be anything in particular, other than, perhaps, stubborn. So you tend to see things like your own physical health as distractions from "doing."
    • pmarreck 10y ago
      With the disclaimer that this is gender stereotyping (and my doubts have been increasing as to the utility of this way of thinking about people), this does seem like an insightful observation
      • derefr 10y ago