Nice to see a survey for once on the
medical concerns of men, especially (nice for this aging dude, to see that this
survey is on aging men and done in Canada.
The good news is that most of the guys
surveyed claimed that their doctors had talked to them about certain key health
issues such as heart disease, cancer (including even prostate cancer), and
diabetes.
The disturbing news, though, is that a
large majority of men claimed their doctor had not addressed other health issues
that really mattered to the guys.
For example, only roughly 1 in 8 men had
discussed osteoporosis with their doctors, probably in large part (I’m
guessing) because many doctors still erroneously think of osteoporosis as a
woman’s condition (it’s not), even though a majority of the aging men in this
survey said they were (rightly) worried about the risks of falling, and the
consequences of falling are of course much greater in anyone with OP, which is
for most of us a pretty preventable condition.
Other disturbing examples: Only 1 in 6 men
had discussed the vital issue of memory loss with their doctors.
And few men had discussed depression (or
other mental health issues) with a doctor, even though depression and
subsequent suicide is a large problem in elderly gents.
Now it’s clearly not simply the fault of
primary care doctors for this block in communication between them and their
male patients: men, who generally notoriously hate going to see a physician and
who will often just mumble one or two over-riding health concerns when they’re
finally in the office (often in large part because their spouse made them make
that doctor’s appointment), have to learn that if “ya don’ mention it, the doc
won’t mention it, either.”
So if something’s on your mind – falling,
depression, etc – you have to bring it up.
But it’s also clearly incumbent on more
doctors to be way more (Challenging? Inquisitive? Straight-forward?) in their
dealings with aging guys so that they – the doctors – actually end up
discussing what the men really want to discuss when they’re finally in the
office.
And maybe such improved communication at
the primary care level would put more of a dent in that large discrepancy that
now exists between the genders in terms of when we die on average.
