NOT men's scene, health stuff. Better to live life at full throttle and die young than count your calories and measure out your days miserably. You don't know - don't want to know - your cholesterol count. You're too busy for a walk, let alone a workout. Haven't been to the doctor for years. What you don't know won't harm you. When your time's up, your time's up.
If they managed their current accounts or their cars, to say nothing of their relationships, as they "manage - or, more likely, mismanage - their health, the bank manager would be on the blower, the car would be written off and most partners would probably have long since departed.
Men usually need the health equivalent of a fiscal, motoring or romantic bust up before they cop on to valuing their health and forestalling the Grim Reaper. We are much less likely to consult a doctor than women but way more likely to be rushed to hospital with a heart attack or stroke. The macho strut of disregard for health care often bites the dust on the emergency room stretcher. Some hero then.
Being male places us at risk. Men die, on average, six years younger than women. Many more men get heart disease than women do. We smoke, eat rubbish and drive ourselves too hard. We are more prone to accidents than women - only partly associated with men's higher alcohol intake. Male suicides far outstrip women's and most substance abuse, addicts and patients of mental hospitals are male.
Neither do most men exercise the recommended three times a week and almost half are overweight.
Prostate cancer in men is almost as common as breast, cancer in women. Yet in Britain it's estimated that while breast cancer attracts £8 million a year in research funds only £400,000 is available for prostate cancer. Five times as many men die from cancer of the prostate as the number of women who die from cervical cancer, yet prostate cancer is much less researched.
It's time men learned from the way women have raised consciousness over the last 20 years about their gender specific cancers and demanded cash to tackle them. So effective have women been that men are likely to be more aware of women's cancers than those which could he killing themselves. From breastfeeding to breast cancer and from menstruation to menopause women have put their health on the agenda. Now men must do the same.
Probably none of us was taught in school to examine our testes. Yet testicular cancer is the commonest form of cancer in men aged 15-44. Monthly self examination for lumps, other than the lump at the back of the testicle, the epididymis, which is meant to be there, ensures the most crucial feature for successful treatment: early detection. Delays make treatment more complex, costly and less successful. According to the Irish Cancer Society, one in every 251 Irish men will develop, cancer of the testes in his lifetime.
As many as one in every 32 males will develop prostate cancer. Seventy five per cent of men over 50 have symptoms of BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia).
That's when the prostate enlarges and affects the flow of urine through the urethra. Many needlessly suffer in silence when it could be investigated and treated. Meanwhile, 25 per cent of men who live to 80 will require a prostatectomy, the surgical removal of a portion of their prostate gland.
Culturally we learned as boys and adolescents that only wimps complained about pain, or discomfort. PE teachers in the past may have a lot to answer for. Bruises were a trophy, feelings a disgrace. Many men cut themselves off from their feelings.
To identify and own an authentic, self originating feeling can be a giant leap forward for some men.
Many men ignore unexplained lumps, go heavy on the mayonnaise and drink more than the recommended two units per day. We resign ourselves to high stress levels - part of the job, pays the mortgage - and shackle our feelings to the barstool. The physical and emotional things' that niggle us stay, for the most part, unspoken.
MANY men are too proud to ask their GPs intimate question about their bodies, mental states or feelings. Who wants to be thought a moron for raising an issue "that will most likely turn out to be harmless? We're uneasy about the latent inequality in the doctor patient relationship - they know, we don't. ,Knowledge is power. They've both the knowledge and the power over our bodies. It goes against the grain. It's easier to say nothing.
The first time most of us think about our health is when we're rushed to casualty. It's then, possibly for the first time, that many learn there's a serious problem. Had we been told how we were faring years before, or taken the trouble to find out, we mightn't be there in the first place.
The fact is that women use the health services more intelligently and more frequently than men.
Menstruation and having babies makes them more aware of their bodies. They find it easier to ask questions or, if they don't, they swallow their pride and ask anyway.
Men's health concerns not only gender specific diseases and problems. Diseases like coronary heart disease kill at least one in every three men. High blood pressure affects one in five. One in three of us gets cancer, while one in four dies from it. Many endure too much stress, fatalistically resigned to it instead of realising things can be changed.
Managing our health is more important than managing our shekels, Mondeo or the career plan. We need information about it. We need to learn from women to prevent illness rather than be struck by sickness or death too soon down the road. Our bodies are our tickets to staying a little longer on this planet.
Let's take care of them. Gentlemen, this is your wake up call.