malehealth editor's blog

Who's afraid of Gregor Dallas?

2011-06-29T11:14:00.006+01:00

A slightly off topic post today but it's on a topic which as an author of the sort of books that don't sell very well - ie ones about men's health - is close to my heart.

The Society of Authors, the trade union for British authors, is having the first election for its management committee that I can remember in the entire 15 years I've been a member. You'd imagine there'd be quite a state of excitement but today I got my copy of the Society's magazine and there was barely a word about it (nor is there anything on the Society's website). How am I supposed to make up my mind about the candidates?

I can see from the way the ballot paper is laid out that this is an election for four places between four candidates proposed by the board themselves and one other, Gregor Dallas, who was proposed by three other members.

I know Gregor Dallas and have even read one his books. He is an excellent historian, a passionate speaker and a nice man. Perhaps he is a terrible threat to the Management Committee, perhaps his ideas are, but I would like to have been able to make my own mind up.

The Society of Authors is the organisation of George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf and hundreds of thousands of others who were not threatened by new or different ideas but embraced them. Shame.

The future of health online

2011-06-17T09:02:00.002+01:00

We’ve had a successful Men’s Health Week drawing men’s attentions to the benefits of using reliable internet sites to find health information. But changes in the way the internet works mean this may become harder to do in the future.

‘Liking’ something is fine for the latest gadget, music or amusing video but can you ‘like’ the latest war footage or, more pertinantly to us at the Men’s Health Forum, information about erection problems? In an Observer article on his new book the Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser says that what is good for consumers is not necessarilly good for citizens.

He’s also concerned about personalisation. Internet search engines are no longer neutral. Since the end of 2009 Google has been tailoring your results to what you looked at before without telling you. It’s like buying a newspaper a couple of times and then being force fed the same paper every day. This is a partial world picture at best. Essentially you give up a whole load of personal data to your favourite search engine and they filter out the stuff they don’t think you want to worry your pretty little head about while bombarding you with adverts for the things that they think you might want to buy. A Faustian pact for the internet age. What will its impact be on health online?

All 'appening for Men's Health Week

2011-06-07T16:15:00.002+01:00

It's all coming in thick and fast now ahead of Men's Health Week which kicks off next Monday at White Hart Lane. This year's Week is all about encouraging men to get online and access quality health information. There's a free iPhone app and the Health Clicks mini-manual. All the Men's Health Week latest is on the MHF website and Twitter.

Listen to the docs

2011-05-26T09:43:00.000+01:00

Another shocking neglect of blogging duty on my part! Put it down to Men's Health Week and related activities again (actually, there's a book in this year's Men's Health Week). But the call by Britain's doctors for David Cameron to axe Andrew Lansley's proposed health bill has prompted me back to the keyboard. There is currently what the government calls a 'pause' and everyone involved in health including the MHF have been encouraging the public to make it clear what they think of the bill.

As every patient knows, doctor doesn't always know best but you need to listen very carefully to what he or she says. The government should now do so. If you want to have your say, it's not too late - you've got until 31 May.

Random acts of social media kindness

2011-04-26T10:23:00.005+01:00

My colleague at the MHF Aine sent me a tweet from someone - a men's health doctor no less - describing this blog as 'great stuff'.

Now I had a great Easter celebrating my dad's birthday but after the machine that is Manchester City effectively ended the champions league hopes of the attractive-looking, occasionally-brilliant, terminally self-destructive jalopy that is Spurs last night I was in severe need of a lift. This retweet was it. It was even enough to make me update the blog after a month's silence forced on me for a variety of reasons including poor health, Men's Health Week preparation, other writing commitments and bone idleness.

Now the cynical among you might well consider that this tweeter's real agenda is to publicise his own work rather than mine. And you might well be right - Dr Will Courteney has a book to promote. But whatever the reason, it still seems like a - cliché alert - win-win situation. He gets publicity. I feel better about malehealth's pathetic web presence and this blog even gets an update. (All it needs now is some readers!)

We know that random acts of kindness make both actor and recipient feel better. Perhaps this is the real health benefit of social media: it makes these random acts so much easier. So go on, retweet something or post a nice comment today.

The end of 'I'm on the train!!'

2011-03-18T09:14:00.003Z

I love my computer but I must admit I'm not a big fan of the mobile phone. I have been heard to argue after a drink or two that they're infantilising devices for social control and I'm not entirely joking. But obviously I have one and my preference for texting rather than calling will be increased by a new review of the mobile phone safety research: Keep phone away from ear to reduce cancer risk.

In 2007 we ran a story on malehealth in which Professor Lawrie Challis, then head of the government's committee on mobile phone safety, suggested that mobile phones and electromagneticism in general could be the cigarettes of the 21st century. Since then smoking has been banned in public places. Is it possible that one day something similar will happen to mobile phones?

The pies have it: salt

2011-03-17T09:33:00.004Z

Coming from south London, I'm a big fan of pie and mash. In places like Manze's and Goddard's, the pies are as crusty as the bloke behind the counter and the nearest thing to a vegetable is the motes of parsley in the liquor sauce.

I've no idea what's in the pies and I have always thought it best not to ask. Now, thanks to the Consensus on Salt and Health (CASH), we know a little of the answer: there's a lot of salt. Of course, they didn't test traditional pie and mash shops - they stuck to pubs and supermarkets - but I doubt the results would be much different. The bottom line is this: we should eat no more than 6g of salt a day (about a teaspoon) and even the best pie meal in the test contained nearly 4g. Fortunately CASH have provided tables showing the healthiest and unhealthiest options and tips for enjoying pies without piling on the salt. So I won't have to give up the pie and mash just yet.

I don't know, they'll be telling us that eels aren't good for you next.

The curious case of the recidivist stammerer

2011-03-15T09:37:00.007Z

Although I don't have a stutter, I found myself identifying with a lot of things I learned while writing our new section on Stammering.

David Seidler, the writer of the Oscar-winning film The Kings Speech which deals with King George VI's stammer, says that he took up writing because his own stammer made speaking such a nightmare. I too am writer in part because I hate public speaking. I've sat through innumerable meetings, classes and conferences without uttering a word. Shortly before I went freelance, my voluntary sector employers organised a senior staff 'away-day' at which we were all to make a presentation. I nearly passed out after mine having forgotten to breathe. I realised that any career that involved presentations - Powerpoint was just beginning its ascent - and chairing meetings was not for me.

My interview with Donald, a retired actuary, revealed, as he puts it, what a 'curious' condition stammering is. Donald stammered as a child, spoke fluently at work and then started stammering again when he retired to France. I too speak French very poorly for someone who has spent so much time there and get more tongue-tied the more people there are in the room. Donald says he suddenly becomes fluent if he's interested in the subject and I have noticed how much easier it is to discuss le foot and l'incroyable Garett Bile (French for Gareth Bale) than the latest trial (or not) of Jacques Chirac.

The head of the British Stammering Association Norbert Lieckfeldt told me 'there is no cultural element to stammering, and very little difference between nations, ethnic groups and cultures' but when I see the confidence with which some of today's children express themselves, I wonder. Yes, it may be a pain listening to interminable stories about their over-indulged classmates or ill-informed opinions on your clothes, haircut or gay taste in music but you have to be impressed by their stamina. They do it without hesitation, repetition or deviation and for far more than just a minute. Is stammering a condition that will die out with the stiff upper lip?

Does male happiness all come down to the job we do?

2011-03-01T12:33:00.006Z

Psychiatrists are saying that male depression will get worse during the course of the 21st century.

Currently, women are twice as likely to get diagnosed with depression as men but men's health campaigners have always contended that this not because men are twice as happy as women but because unhappy men are far less likely to go to the doctors for treatment. They're more likely to self-medicate with booze or drugs. The fact that men are three times more likely to take the final step down the path of mental misery and kill themselves is surely evidence enough of male unhappiness. (In 2009 there were 4,304 male suicides - 17.5 per 100,000 of population - and 1,371 female suicides - 5.2 per 100,000).

The American shrinks identify two main causes of this increase in depression - the decline in male jobs and the fact that society encourages men to talk about their feelings more or, as they put it, to 'stop being so tough and stoic'.

Now, the latter may be a reason why men are more likely to be diagnosed with depression since they're more likely to feel able to talk to someone about it but it is surely not a reason for depression in the first place.

This leaves just one cause: the changing job market. Does it all boil down to work? Men are in big trouble if it is. We need to find a different way of living in the 21st century or 50% of the population are going to be very unhappy with, if the experience of the previous 20 centuries is anything to go by, thoroughly unpleasant side-effects for the other 50%.

Sick as a parrot

2011-02-06T10:50:00.003Z

What's the link between football and men's health? Rather more than you might imagine, I think, if a recent unpleasant experience of mine is anything to go by. It's all on malehealth: Cold Turkey at Tottenham

The problem with breasts

2011-01-27T11:49:00.011Z

(That's not a headline I ever imagined writing.)

Breast cancer awareness-raising has been brilliant. Every female this side of Venus knows all about it (and most blokes this side of Mars). It is estimated that screening saves about 1,000 lives a year.

High fives all round? Not exactly. A lot of women have become the worried well. Breast cancer remains rare among young women - 4 in every 5 breast cancers are diagnosed in women aged 50 and over. But you wouldn't know that from the media coverage or to hear some folk talk about the disease. It is one of women's major health fears despite the fact that 96% of them will die of something else - heart disease or another cancer probably. (A 2005 survey in the USA found it was the biggest fear of all: Women's Health Fears Often Don't Line Up With Reality)

Inspired by this, some campaigners have tried to get the prostate to do for men's health what the breast did for women's. Instead of pix of pouting beauties cue images of handsome hunks. This has been pretty successful - look at the excellent Movember. But is there a danger of men's health being seen as all about the bits just as women's health now is? Both are partial and dangerous pictures. Smoking is the biggest killer whether you've nice boobs, a cute prostate, neither or both.

Chris Hiley, a woman who used to work for the Prostate Cancer Charity, understands these issues better than most. In her blog Breasts are a poor vehicle for women’s health: might men’s health now turn to bollocks, too? she puts her finger on the problem.

Would you like to email your doctor?

2011-01-25T12:17:00.006Z

Personally, I'm not optimistic about the planned NHS reforms. They strike me as ideological rather than about patient care. It's hard to believe the new arrangements will lead to anything other than the further privatisation of much NHS provision either in the short or - in the optimistic scenario - medium term.

But there is possibly one bright note - at least as far as men's health concerned: developing the use of the internet. I'm not talking about gimmicks for mobile phones or little online gadgets to tell you how long you'll live, I'm talking about using the potential of the web to deliver real services: booking appointments, collecting test results, storing records and communications with various health professionals in one place.

Of course security is an issue and the government don't have a great track record here but it must be worth exploring. It seems to me it will make things easier for two categories of patients, particularly: the busy ones who don't consult health professionals often enough and those with long-term and multiple medical issues who otherwise have to consult them too much. What do you think? Tell us in the latest malehealth snap survey.

The real meaning of this study of death

2011-01-20T10:11:00.005Z

Fascinating stuff on death - always popular with the men's health activist. New research seeking to help answer the question 'why men do die younger than women?' suggests that in the UK about 59% of the gap is down to smoking and 19% to booze. The implication is that men's poorer access to health services - whatever the reason - is not a major factor. This is not so. You can't compare chalk and cheese. Access is not a cause of death in the way that smoking is. Prompt access - seeing your doctor sooner rather than later as women tend to - may mean your smoking-related cancer is cured and you live to die another day from another cause, late access may not.

No, what this research really shows is that the gender death divide is very, very largely about social issues not biological ones. This was a European study and the excess in male deaths varied considerably from 188 per 100,000 of the population a year in Iceland to 942 per 100,000 in Ukraine. Men are biologically much the same in both countries but their behaviour is not. Smoking may be on the decline but I'm sure we men will come up with another way to kill ourselves prematurely - work, for example.

Who really benefits from the 'man flu' jibes?

2011-01-19T11:48:00.002Z

Happy new year everyone. Apologies for the lack of posts but yes, I've had 'flu. Was it 'man flu'? I don't think so and I'm sure my girlfriend who also had it - worse than me - would agree.

However, the suspicion remains that men make a lot of fuss about nothing. Do we? Frankly I couldn't care less. What does worry me is that men already visit the doctors less than women and the fear of looking like whinging malingerers might deter them further. Our snap survey on the latest Boots advert suggests that many of you agree - although perhaps not for the same reasons.

Much excitement in many news outlets including the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail about a survey suggesting South Korean men 'overrate' the symptoms of a cold. Maybe - but the key point may be found in the final buried paragraphs where the researchers suggest Korean men might get more colds than women because they tend to be the main bread winners, and hence 'may experience higher levels of work-related strerrors'.

The Mail then quotes Dr Olivia Carlton, president of the Society of Occupational Medicine who describea the findings were a wake-up call for employers and Dr John Hobson, editor of the scientific journal Occupational Medicine who says men with colds 'may be under work-related stress, which is something that an employer or manager may be able to do something about.'

Indeed, conspiracy theorists might suggest the whole 'man flu' business is an employers' ruse to get us all into the office when the real issue at this time of economic difficulty is stress at work.

The cost of missed appointments

2010-12-14T10:45:00.004Z

An NHS survey shows that men are more likely to miss appointments than women - blokes failed to attend 3.9 million outpatient appointments at hospitals last year. This is clearly not good - it costs the NHS money and means other people have to wait longer.

But the the total number of appointments cancelled by the hospitals - 4.9 million - is higher than the number of male no-shows. Yes, we should take more responsibility. Yes, we should be asking why are people not turning up for appointments. But we should also be asking why are hospitals cancelling more than 1 appointment in every 20?

We should also be asking what it costs. I asked both the NHS Information Centre who provided the missed appointment statistics and the Department of Health how much DNAs cost and neither of them knew. The Department suggested I contact Primary Care Trusts or Strategic Health Authorities. Both these bodies will be abolished under the government's latest plans so who will collect this data then? Individual GPs and hospitals? The new NHS Commissioning Board? We really are wading through treacle here yet the question, how much does a missed appointment cost?, is a very simple one. Worrying.

What do you know about the prostate?

2010-12-06T15:08:00.004Z

If the answer's 'not much' then you're not alone. Here's a brilliantly simple idea from the European Men's Health Forum. Your Prostate is a website where you can ask questions about your prostate - peeing, sexual problems, disturbed sleep, supplements, cancer, anything at all. You can even ask what a prostate does. You'll get fast, free, confidential replies from specialist nurses and doctors.

By asking your question, you'll also be helping with a research project - and this is the bit that's so simple you wonder why nobody thought of it before - to find out what European men want to know about a subject we know we find it difficult to talk about. Yes, instead of doctors assuming they know what we want to know, this time they're asking us first. The results will be used by the EMHF to design some health education materials. To be effective though this project needs as many questions as possible so please, ask yours.

Questions and answers in English, Spanish and German so tell your friends across the world.

Getting it off your chest

2010-11-23T08:26:00.005Z

I'm not a big fan of cosmetic plastic surgery. It clearly has a role in modern medicine - for transexuals or people in accidents, for example - but you don't have to look at the lamentable state of health care around the world for very long to despair of the waste of resources involved in all this vanity butchery. Despite the recession Americans still managed to spend $10 billion on boob jobs, tummy tucks and the rest last year.

However, it is equally clear that appearance is increasingly important in the world. People lose their jobs because they don't look right and all but the very strongest can entirely resist the advertising industry's drive to ensure that we're all disappointed with our bodies. More and more men are turning to plastic surgery with the most popular operation being the breast reduction. If you're considering this you need to reflect on it very seriously indeed and that's why we've posted all the FAQs on malehealth: Don't be a tit when it comes to breast reduction.

Good Sex writer suggests a Christmas gift

2010-11-22T15:15:00.006Z

'If you want a male health book to recommend to your readers for Christmas … this slim, jolly and readable text is probably the best male health handbook on the market.' Thanks to Dr David Delvin for reviewing my User's Guide To The Male Body is such glowing terms.

Winner at this year's Medical Journalists' Association Book Award, David is a specialist in Family Planning and Sexual Medicine and author of 32 books on family health and sexology including the Good Sex Guide and Backache. (I imagine you can buy the two as a pair on Amazon.) So he knows what he's talking about on many subjects of particular importance to men. Indeed, the top story on Google when you search for 'Dr David Devlin' is Facts about penis size. And there's not many men who can say that!

(If on the slim chance you are interested in this topic there is a Penis Size FAQs article on malehealth.)

Blackberry back? Working is STILL making us ill

2010-11-05T09:47:00.007Z

I heard today that a friend, another journalist, had RSI - repetitive strain injury. I've had some problems with this myself. They severely affected my ability to work so I know how nasty - and painful - RSI can be. I found the page I wrote on malehealth on FAQs about work and health as I thought it might useful for him and was surprised to discover that although I put it together in 2003, it was still almost entirely relevant. Nothing has improved. In fact the way we now use new technologies at work is only likely to increase the risks of RSI or create new ones - stand by for iPhone finger, Blackberry back or Facebook faceache!

Some of the articles the FAQ links to are even older - last century in some cases. Amazing how contemporary they still are. No wonder in 2008, for Men's Health Week, malehealth ran an article showing that work was the main cause of ill health in developed world. With unemployment - a known killer - at its highest level in the EU in more than a decade and the UK coalition's cuts yet to kick in that's probably truer than it ever was.

Hey, what about Twitter twitter? (That's enough new forms of RSI! -Ed)

How healthy is Facebook?

2010-10-28T10:02:00.005+01:00

I didn’t know until I saw The Social Network that Facebook began as an exclusive service for Harvard students before being rolled out to other top US colleges and eventually the rest of us. It suddenly made a lot more sense.

I'm on Facebook. But watching the movie, I began to wonder why anyone would want to sign up to the virtual version of a particularly brutal American rite of passage built around the public playing out of popularity. The social network is one of dysfunctional rich kids, dysfunctional geeks, dysfunctional scantily-clad women all dysfunctionally desperate for acceptance by the coolest frat club. Facebook, of course, becomes the coolest of the lot.

Today there are 500 million of us playing out this ritual, day in day out. Driving up and down on the same old strip like the kids in American Graffitti, permanent adolescents, a night that never ends. No wonder all the characters in the film end up suing each other.

The Social Network is written by the brilliant Aaron Sorkin who created the West Wing. Like the characters he writes about he’s very smart and part of the secret of his success is the way he uses detail, very precise detail, to make us believe that this is real. I felt I was at Harvard just as I felt I was in the White House.

The result can be stories that are interesting and exciting on a theoretical or intellectual level but less so on an emotional one. No problem in a series when there’s plenty of time for us to engage with the characters - no problem at all in The West Wing where we're prepared to wait for what, a hundred episodes?, for Josh to finally kiss Donna - but a potential Achilles heel in a film where the audience needs to find someone to sympathise with fairly early on if we’re to be pulled in.

Sorkin seems to deliberately avoid using the obvious candidate for this role – Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin who put up the initial capital – to this effect. Perhaps Aaron’s even cleverer than I realise. The medium is the message and this film is pretty much absent of real emotion – it’s all the anaesthetised synthetic emotion of the courtroom. A mediated second-hand sort of emotion. Sounds a bit like Facebook really.

Are you a sucker or A Sugar?

2010-10-26T12:00:00.004+01:00

Are you a trained salesperson or marketer or indeed pretty much anyone with so-called people skills? If so you've probably heard all about mimicking - you know, when you sit the same way as someone else or copy their language to try to create a bond. It's not always about selling, of course - counsellors might do it too.

So what? It's part of every day life now. Well, a 2009 research article I missed the first time round but saw in Wired found that people who do this - the mimickers - are far more easily fooled by the mimickees than non-mimickers. When you mimick you're less able to tell if the other person is telling you a lie or not. Generally we're all pretty hopeless at detecting lies but when you mimick you're even worse. In fact the study - You want to know the truth? from the journal Psychological Science - suggests that people's ability to detect deception is improved when they are given explicit instructions not to mimic.

So now you know. Are you a sucker for a lie? Is that the secret of Alan Sugar's success - a man who would never knowingly mimic anyone?

More about health at work on malehealth.

We're now on twitter

2010-10-21T09:28:00.002+01:00

Malehealth is soaring high with the tweeters - or is that twits? You can follow us at: http://twitter.com/#!/MHFmalehealth. (Or go to twitter and search for: @MHFmalehealth or jim pollard). Sign up. Right now it's like that awkward moment at a party before anyone turns up - and you know how painfully unhealthy that is for a host. Penetrating comment on the news and regular life-changing health tips - @MHFmalehealth is a real tweet for the soul.

NHS reform: a big challenge for a big society

2010-10-06T17:54:00.006+01:00

Some say that to the Cameron Conservatives don't really regard the national debt as the terrible legacy of Labour mismanagement as they love to say but as a heaven sent opportunity. They argue that the Tory austerity package is more to do with an ideological commitment to reducing the size of the state - replacing big government with, snigger, the big society - than economics. Today's conference speech in which the Conservative leader appeared to reintroduce the old Elizabethan poor law distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor will only have increased those concerns.

So is the government plan for the NHS, evidence for or against this? If money was the main concern why spend an estimated £3 billion on another reorganisation - especially when you were constantly criticising Labour for behind the scenes fiddling while front-line services burned? Certainly the plan for GP consortia to replace Primary Care Trusts sounds horribly like GP fundholding, the disasterous pre-privatisation plan of the last Conservative government that hemorrhaged the NHS along an artificial purchaser-provider faultline.

The MHF wisely hasn't engaged with this ideological debate in its response to the government's health white paper. Instead it has stuck to the purely practical, offering the government help with, for example, a Gender Equalities Board to ensure that inequalities in health outcomes are addressed. This is one of 10 specific suggestions which if they are adopted could reform the NHS for the better. They won't protect the health service from the drip-drip of privatisation but they will protect the hundreds of men who die prematurely (before the age of 75) every single day. In a country where 42% of men die prematurely, they've got to be worth trying. Yes, 42% - a big number for a big society.

Will you put Viagra on the shopping list?

2010-09-28T17:57:00.004+01:00

News that Tescos are joining Boots in selling drugs for erection problems over the counter without prescription - in this case Viagra - has obviously thrilled the sketch writers as MHF press officer Colin Penning reports on the MHF blog.

But there is a serious issue here. How would you feel about picking your Viagra or Cialis up with the weekly shop? Pleased with the convenience or a bit embarrassed to have to explain to your ten-year old daughter why Daddy's £52 treat is fine when her £5 doll is 'a waste of bloody money'. The men's health campaigner in me loves the idea of ED becoming an everyday supermarket conversation - as banal as last's night's Eastenders - but the man himself is squirming. What do you think?

Anyone for tennis at BMA Awards

2010-09-15T08:01:00.002+01:00

I was at the British Medical Association’s Book Awards last night. It was an awe-inspiring event for someone who gave up sciences at 16. I haven’t seen so many doctors in the same place since a fellow patient provided free drinks to celebrate the end of his treatment.

My book 'The User’s Guide to the Male Body' was highly commended in the category Popular Medicine – an interestingly named category as taking medicine is anything but. It didn’t win – beaten by a cracking book on the ins and outs of condoms.

The BMA also give out awards for what they call patient information, a category in which the MHF’s malehealth was highly commended a few years ago and for which our Yorkshire Man written by MHF president Dr Ian Banks was commended this year. The men’s health citation went to a booklet for men with enlarged prostates by the Urology Informed Decision Making Project. Well done to them.

However, if these awards are any guide, men’s health in the UK is rather like British men’s tennis over the last decade or two – a couple of good players and not a lot else. Apart from those three titles – mine, Ian’s and the Project’s – there were few other nominations that could have been considered ‘men’s health’. By contrast I counted five nominations in the patient information category alone about breasts and breast cancer including the winner from Breakthrough Breast Cancer. Men’s health still has a very long way to go before it is truly mainstreamed. Women’s health by contrast is like French men’s tennis – a new semi-finalist in every competition.

The overall patient info winner was the healthy hearts kit from the British Heart Foundation. The overall winner of the BMA Medical Book of the Year Award 2010 was 'Surgical Exposures in Orthopaedics: The Anatomic Approach'. Ah, so that’s the secret of success: a catchy title!

Getting it right online

2010-09-02T17:45:00.002+01:00

Two interesting statistics found their way to my in-box today. The National Statistics Office reported that 9.2 million UK adults have never used the Internet. The other is that the number of searches on Google and other search engines in the USA over the last year has gone down by 16% from 10.5 billion to 8.8 billion.

To me, as editor of a men's health website the first of these stats tells me that a key group of people that we need to reach are never going to even see malehealth. Many of these are people who would benefit enormously from its information. We must not forget them.

But what explains the decline in searches? Increased bookmarking? Greater use of smartphones? The economic downturn meaning people are buying less? And what does it mean for those of us who are trying to deliver health information via websites? These are not rhetorical questions. I really would like to know.

Ian's child-care advice for the prime minister

2010-08-25T16:05:00.005+01:00

The BBC is a unique institution. Its bosses may at times be the corporation's own worst enemies but it's staffed by heroes. Where else could you find MHF president Dr Ian Banks giving childcare advice to the prime minister?

Yes, any blokes getting into a misty eyed, nappy-changing mood now that David Cameron has become a father again, should look no further than Ian's terrific Baby Manual. It combines his medical wisdom, unique writing style and experience as a father of four to create pretty much the perfect book for the new Dad. I hope Sam has bought the prime minister a copy.

Speed camera debate suggests public know where to draw the line

2010-08-20T09:07:00.007+01:00

Saying you'll 'end the war on the motorist' ticks so many boxes for the new government, it's like the Cones Hotline never happened. Cynics say it's the only war they can end but I won't be going there. My concern is road safety. Fast cars kill kids. It's not a fact we're keen to accept but fact it is.

In theory stopping people driving too fast by fining them when they do it is an idea we can all sign up to. The debate has been distorted by the perception that speed camera partnerships are a licence to private companies and the individuals that run them to extort money from the motorist. The cameras are placed not in the dangerous places where accidents have occurred but nearby where they can catch the maximum number. I have no idea if this is true but suddenly the debate is not about the real issue: safety. This is what happens when you blur the line between public and private. The speed cameras debate suggests the public instinctively understands what the state should be doing and what it shouldn't.

That being so, motorists who don't like private companies profiting from their occasional zeal on the gas pedal should ask themselves how they feel about private companies profiting from their next doctor's visit or their child's education as health and education services are contracted out. If you don't like speed camera partnerships will you like 'free' schools (when the private sector steps in for the local authority) or a GP-run NHS (when the private sector steps in for the primary care trusts and strategic health authorities)? Governments who want to be reelected should think about it too.

Ian Banks: Cuban Heals

2010-08-16T11:48:00.005+01:00

A guest post today from the Men's Health Forum's president, the wonderful Dr Ian Banks. He's just back from a well-earned holiday in Cuba. Like me, he's blogging in a personal capacity here not on behalf of the MHF:

There is an old saying in Cuba. In fact just about everything in Cuba is old especially the cars. I sat behind the wheel of a pre war Pontiac. This was just about as far as I got as there was no engine and the horse power was too busy eating grass. Forget the Tardis, travelling back in time you need no more than a Virgin Atlantic ticket to Havana, mind you Dr Who probably enjoys a tad more leg room. Immigration was swift until I was mistaken for a Cuban, beards are common not least because you can’t get hold of a half decent rusty razor blade. I wondered why they were so keen to make sure I was not ‘native’, all would come clear later in this most amazing journey into the past but also paradoxically the future.

Cuba is economically blockaded by the USA. So OK, common knowledge but the impact of this misguided and vicious action extends to far more than beards, women cannot get sanitary towels until the age of 14 and then they are rationed to 10 packets per year, the moon seems to skip a beat.

Everything is recycled, and I do mean everything, horses are a major form of local intra city transport yet streets are completely free of any dung. This is collected and resurfaces as courgettes. Although the economy revolves around sugar they actually import it along with oil. A favourite sport is to stand in the clear blue sea with a bottle of Havana Gold while getting jelly fish stung and eaten alive by mosquitoes. Please do note that you cannot get mosquito repellent or fly spray even from ‘international health’ (the private sector for tourists). I followed the Cuban custom and most mosquitoes in my vicinity lived on Bloody Marys.

So why was it so exhilarating? Well for starters they were the most literate people (even in English) I have met despite such an externally imposed poverty but ironically their average life expectancy exceeds that of the country denying them access to modern medicines. Unlike the UK or the USA which import fully trained doctors and nurses they actually export doctors and import medical students sending them back home fully trained. Doctors pay is the same as for plumbers but at least you can get one out at night.

There is no shortage of people wanting to train for medicine and women have equal status. The reasons are complex, being a doctor provides respect but also the potential to travel internationally denied to almost all other Cubans. Even so there is a very real pride in simply being a doctor in Cuba, perhaps something eroding in the UK under past and especially present administrations.

Back to the 1980s

2010-08-09T10:32:00.002+01:00

When David Cameron packaged himself as the heir to Blair and dragged his party kicking and screaming into the modern world, many assumed it was for political expediency. Then he went into coalition with the Lib Dems and even the most hardened cynic softened.

So what should we make of a leaked letter in which public health minister Anne Milton suggests she'll be abolishing free school milk? Milton could not have evoked the spectre of Margaret Thatcher more directly if she had waved her handbag around her head like a mace and despatched a task-force. The press coverage resonates with the screeching and hissing of a thousand cats coming out of the bag. Former Tory health minister Stephen Dorrell tried to put former nurse Milton in her place this morning on the Today programme by asserting that the proposal had only been discussed at a 'junior level'. Hmmm.

In yesterday's Observer a gentlemen described by the paper's subs as Britain's leading GP (actually Steve Field, the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners) lays it on the line to patients: Don't take offence if we lecture you on how to stay alive and healthy. He is arguing for folk to take more responsibility for their health care. That's a fine idea - one men's health campaigners have always championed - for those who can afford it. But in some of Field's hardline populism (let's call obese people fat), there is another chilling echo of the past. Remember when the poor were blamed for being poor? Victorian values they called it.

The MHF often describes its goal as it own redundancy - that a nation of healthy men will render us obsolete. With male life expectancy improving under the last government and the gap with female life expectancy narrowing that day was not impossible to imagine. It is less easy now. Things are changing and some terrible ideas that we thought were dead and buried seem to be back among us.

There are apparently sane men walking around the streets with mullet haircuts. Is it back to the 80s in politics too?

Join the MHF/malehealth advisory panel

2010-07-19T15:00:00.004+01:00

The MHF is looking to recruit a men's advisory panel to give men a louder voice when it comes to their health. This sounds like a great idea to me.

The panel will be asking men what they want from the NHS and the MHF. This includes the content on malehealth so the website itself will benefit too. I'd really like the panel to reflect as wide a cross-section of blokes as possible - all ages, classes, backgrounds and opinions. No special requirements whatsoever other than an X chromosome. Why not give it a go?

• Meanwhile thanks for the kind comments on the commendation of my book The User's Guide to The Male Body in the Medical Journalist's Association's book awards. The book has now also been highly commended in the British Medical Association's book awards. I went to the journalists' do earlier this year and the BMA one will be in September. It's the perfect opportunity to conduct some serious research: who really provides the best plonk? The hacks or the docs?

Smokers tilting at windmills

2010-07-05T09:49:00.006+01:00

There is an army of Don Quixotes out there who, when they aren't nipping out for a quick fag, are hunting through cyberspace for signs of anti-smoking giants. Whenever we write about smoking - or more particularly smoking bans - the comments and the emails arrive. It happened a couple of years ago when they found an article I'd written a few years previously that mentioned, alongside the great Joe Jackson among other things, passive smoking.

It's happened again. This time the offending article is one reporting on a poll conducted by You Gov suggesting that most smokers now support the smoking ban. The poll was commissioned by anti-smoking organisation Ash and our story makes this very clear. I actually nearly didn't publish it all because frankly I don't think it's really new. We know that most smokers want to quit and most smokers I know tell me that the public places ban has reduced their consumption. Where's the story?

I honestly think that this ship has sailed, boys. Tilting at windmills just means the smoke blows in your face. And even big tobacco know that. If you want to read some articles on malehealth, and I'm delighted you do, there are far more interesting ones than this tired old tale. Start with this one: it answers the question we all want to know the answer to: how many more years will I live if I make healthier choices?

Malehealth now on facebook

2010-07-02T17:55:00.003+01:00

John Pritchard, our great volunteer, has taken malehealth into the exciting world of social networks. We now have a page on facebook. Apparently people have friends but pages have people who like them so please visit the page and say you like it. Even if you love it.

EU investigating till receipts scandal

2010-07-01T09:38:00.009+01:00

Well, not quite. But further to yesterday's post about the men's health risks associated with till receipts - MHF president Ian Banks reckons they're fine so long as you eat them with low-fat dressing - there is activity at European level to reduce our exposure to BPA.

Following an 'urgent request' from the European Commission, the European Food Safety Authority is reviewing the compound, which is used in plastics and appears to interfere with hormones, and will provide an 'up-to-date overview of the safety of BPA'.

An open letter from various scientists and international health organisations and NGOs including the Health and Environment Alliance is calling for a reduction in the EU's Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI). The letter says that 'only a tiny minority of studies have articulated that BPA exposure is safe… but it is these few flawed studies that EFSA previously relied on to declare BPA safe.'

A reduced TDI could lead to a reduction in or elimination of the amount of BPA in food contact materials, such as baby bottles, drinking water bottles and the lining of tins containing food and drink. No mention, yet, of till receipts.

Plastic that's not so fantastic for male shoppers

2010-06-30T11:07:00.010+01:00

Shocking shopping news this morning with the Daily Telegraph reporting that the levels of a toxic compound used in plastics - Bisphenol A (BPA) - on some till receipts are enough to suppress male hormones in the body and possibly cause impotence. Gulp. It's enough to make your credit card wilt. (And gives a whole new meaning to the phrase hard cash.)

It sound ridiculous - at least one MHFer asked if it was April Fools Day - but BPA is a real live health issue. In the US, environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council is suing the US Food and Drug Administration over its failure to regulate BPA. Canada has banned it. France has banned its use in baby-feeding bottles and, with The Independent and Breast Cancer UK leading the campaign, many experts are calling for something similar here.

The issue has been around a while. BPA causes brain damage in monkeys - there's a shopping-related gag in there if you want to look for it - and there are wider concerns over plastic bottles.

Whether there's enough in a till receipt to make a difference as Berlin-based urologist Frank Sommer apparently said is another question but if, as I have, you've just finished your annual accounts and have been handling a whole year's worth of till receipts, it's enough to make you start buying the Telegraph - well, not quite. But it would certainly be a good thing if this silly season story finally gets the BPA issue the serious treatment it needs.

Desperately seeking doctors

2010-06-28T11:31:00.006+01:00

We've 'enabled comments', in the technical jargon, on the MHF and malehealth websites. This means, as you'll all know from more technically advanced websites, that you can say what you think about the articles online. We look forward to hearing from you.

On malehealth, we've already had hundreds of comments but most of them we cannot publish. This is not because malehealth readers are foul-mouthed perverts or link-happy spammers but because most of them are questions from people looking for help with something health-related that they're worried about.

Unfortunately we cannot answer these questions at present. I wish we could. If we could find a suitable sponsor, we'd do it tomorrow. Let us know if you or your employer or a rich friend would be interested in sponsoring an Ask The Doctor section on malehealth. It will probably cost less than you think - our docs don't charge Harley Street rates.

In the meantime, if you have a health question, you need to ask your GP or contact NHS Direct. There's more in our what to do when you're ill section.

World Health Organisation catches a cold

2010-06-04T13:16:00.003+01:00

It is hard not to comment on reports from the British Medical Journal, the Bureau of Investigative Reporting and the Council of Europe of a lack of transparency and conflict of interest at the World Health Organisation.

We don't know if the emergency committee that decided to declare a swine-flu pandemic had commercial links with the drug companies that stood to profit from their decision because the names of that committee are secret.

What we do know is that there was a conflict of interest around earlier guidance given around the need to stockpile drugs and an apparent change in the definition of a 'pandemic'.

A previous conflict of interest and a present lack of transparency are bound to lead to questions around the WHO's independence. At the very least they need to tell us who is on the secret committee. Their credibility is at stake.

User's Guide 'highly-commended'

2010-05-21T11:48:00.003+01:00

A few people - one of whom I wasn't even related to in any way - have asked me how my book The User's Guide to the Male Body got on in the Medical Journalist's Awards. Well, I didn't win but, hey, as my mum always says, it's not the winning, it's the taking part. (This is also of course the motto of the England football team.) Anyway, the book was highly-commended and there are pix and more details on the malehealth website. Thanks to those who have bought the book - I hope you both like it.

The dangers of self diagnosis

2010-05-19T16:54:00.002+01:00

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the blogosphere.

This column has returned from the dead, bug-eyed and gurning, more often than Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, each time with a new improved excuse for its unremarked absence. Well, I’ve got a good one this time. You’ll like this. I’ve been laid low by a tooth infection.

Now the phrase ‘go and see a health professional’ probably appears in malehealth more often than the Vic has been torched in Eastenders. It’s ever-present. Not sure about something, don’t try to guess, ask a doc. Let me tell you, it’s bloody good advice.

A few years ago I had a problem with bleeding gums and sensitive teeth. A visit to the dentist and a special toothpaste sorted it out easily enough. So this time when I had similar symptoms and sipping tea was like someone drilling through my molars with a blunt Black and Decker, I assumed the same problem. The special tooth-paste seemed to help a little and I made no connection between this and the procession of colds and coughs I'd been enduring so stoically throughout the winter.

Then suddenly I had the sort of toothache that had me wailing like a five year old on the karaoke machine, cutting deals with God, the devil and several tumblers of whisky. I had no choice but to go to the dentist. He poked around, unleashed a river of pus and removed – or to use the technical term, whacked with a small hammer until it fell off – an old crown that fell into my lap looking like the barnacle burnished underside of a long-sunk dredger.

The result: a temporary crown, an extracted milk tooth, pain-killers and an antibiotics. The latter were about two inches wide and presumably designed for use on horses. After a week or so in which I've been higher than a helium-filled Pete Doherty, they seem to have both cleared up the infection and improved my dressage. Next step: more root canal surgery. Hmmm.

A routine visit to the dentist would have saved me a lot of pain. Health columnist, heed thyself.

Can Gordon Brown deliver a remedy that will make all men feel better?

2010-05-07T11:12:00.005+01:00

What has the general election got to do with men's health? Or more to the point, what the hell do I think I'm doing blogging about it?

Actually I think an electoral system where most votes don't count is very unhealthy - and I don't just mean for our politics. What the system means is that most of us simply aren't being listened to. In my experience, this feeling, the sense of powerlessness, the sense of everything being beyond your control is central to a lot of male mental health problems. Of course, I'm not saying proportional representation will solve domestic violence, drunkenness or other manifestations of male distress but it will increase everyone's sense of genuine involvement in society and that has got be a good thing for us all. In short, a sense of impotent isolation kills and 'first past the post' politics contributes to this.

Can anyone deliver the change we need? prime minister Gordon Brown just about has the votes to create a grand coalition to introduce electoral reform but while this change might make most men feel better, it's probably going to make the man who needs to do it feel very ill indeed. I think there's much to admire about Gordon Brown so who knows - perhaps after a decent night's sleep? I'm not betting on it. Betting, now that's enough cause of male mental anguish!

'Of course I'm enjoying it, darling - I'm about to update my status'

2010-05-06T19:15:00.003+01:00

According to a new survey, 11% of American under 25s check their emails and texts during sex.

The survey was conducted by a consumer electronics website for the purposes of self-publicity so the whole thing needs to be taken with a large pinch of salt. But nonetheless the figures suggest a worrying level of addiction. Some 56% of social media users feel a ‘need’ to check FaceBook at least once a day (48% check during the night or when they very first wake up) and there are an impressive 12% who check in every couple of hours.

Is this the latest madness from the country that brought you President Bush or just proof that people will say anything in an opinion poll? Given that in umpteen surveys at least 3% of the US population claim to have been abducted by space aliens, it’s probably a bit of both but all the same.

Perhaps it depends what sort of sex you’re engaged in – many of the lads in the age group concerned will have a hand free most of the time.

Why get active? It's a question of health.

2010-05-04T11:34:00.003+01:00

I've spent most of the last week or so preparing the malehealth online quiz A Question of Health. It's all part of Men's Health Week 2010 - the theme of which is physical activity and the aim of which is to get a million more men moving.

Winners of this online quiz will be invited to the Week's national launch event to compete in a live Question of Health against a celebrity team including snooker legend Jimmy White, former World Darts Champion Andy Fordham, and rugby league celebrity Steve Prescott. Quizmaster is fisherman and broadcaster Keith Arthur. There will be sporting prizes for the winning team. And prizes for those who do well in the quiz but can't come to the event.

A Question of Health will be held at West Ham FC (Upton Park, London) on Monday 14 June, 4.00 to 6.00pm and will be followed by a drinks reception and a free tour of West Ham's ground.

There are two further quizzes just for fun - well worth doing to warm-up for the real thing!

A reader writes and why a runner runs

2010-04-20T08:35:00.004+01:00

Quite incredibly someone seems to have noticed this blog. It's been so neglected during the upgrading of the malehealth and Men's Health Forum websites that the last thing I was expecting was to be mentioned in someone's ten best blogs list.

But Nursing School Search.com, the US site for would-be nurses looking for info on colleges, education and careers, have included it in the general section of its 100 Best Men’s Health & Fitness Blogs. Thanks, guys. They say the malehealth website is 'a great place to find health information for men, and the editor maintains this informative blog as well' - now I just need to do it!

Marathon correspondence

Interesting research from the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference following yesterday's post on my mate Ian's marathon run. A survey of marathon runners found that men and women tend to run for different reasons. Men were more likely to give personal goal achievement and competition, such as time or place in the field while women were more likely to run for reasons around feeling better - ‘to improve my mood’ or ‘to feel at peace with the world’ - or to keep weight down. What do you think Ian?

Trying to run faster than the missus

2010-04-19T11:46:00.003+01:00

A good friend of mine braved the hottest day of the year so far and the imminent descent of the ash cloud to run the Brighton Marathon yesterday. Apparently his main motivation was that once his wife ran the London one last year he 'really had no choice but to try and go faster'. Hmm, what can I say except there's plenty more on the idiosyncracies of the male psyche on malehealth. Of course, there are, I imagine, many good reasons for being able to outrun your wife and Ian is pleased to report that he managed this.

If you'd like to support Ian, he was doing the run for the Alzheimer's Society. He says: 'It's not something I'd given much thought to until a relative of mine began to suffer the effects and I've seen the impact on the rest of the family. With the advances in medicine to cure other illnesses it's a sad fact that many of us are likely to have our lives or the lives of ones we love impacted.' Very true. There's more on Alzeimer's on the site and of course, everything you need if you want to train to run a marathon yourself. You can sponsor Ian here.

My User's Guide has been shortlisted for a respected book award

2010-04-02T10:49:00.004+01:00

My most recent book The User's Guide to the Male Body (Sheldon 2009; £8.99) has been shortlisted for the Medical Journalists' Association Open Book Awards in the self-help general readership section.

Now I've no idea how many general self-help books were published during the eligible period but all the same, it's great to have something that you've done recognised by your peers (especially as I'm not even a member of the Medical Journalists' Association!) Thanks very much. Since the book's not medical or even technical and at just 120 pages makes good health as simple as possible, I'm hoping it's the writing, based on the interviews I've done for malehealth, that they liked.

Our first newsletter of the year

2010-03-24T11:08:00.005Z

I've just sent out the first malehealth newsletter of the year and the first since the site was redesigned. I must confess that the Men's Health Forum's sites are still a little buggy but malehealth seems to have fared a little better in this respect than the organisation's website. The sites have always had great content - i hope now it's a little easier to find.

If you received the newsletter, hope it worked. let me know what you think. If you'd like to receive the next one - they go about once a month - sign up here.

Is feminism man's best friend?

2010-03-22T12:01:00.003Z

In a world where women put in two-thirds of the working hours for less than one-tenth of the income, I've long felt that feminism seems to have done men more favours than women. We've shaken off the shackles of traditional sex roles and now have the right to be interested in our kids, to be bored to death by cars, to be useless at DIY etc while women seem resolutely chained to lower-paid jobs and the kitchen sink. I'm exaggerating for effect obviously.

My short opinion piece to this effect in Prospect magazine offended some and I now seem involved in an interesting little online spat. The publishers not surprisingly are keen to publicise it so if anyone wants to pitch in, please do.

My original was why feminism favours men. Laurie Penny's reply is here and my latest installment here.

Meanwhile, apologies for the lack of updates to the websites (and this blog!) I'm so bogged down in technical stuff there's been no time for writing!

The bully or the bullied?

2010-02-22T08:24:00.005Z

Accusations about Gordon Brown all over the media.

Bullying is a pernicious and soul destroying experience. Nobody should be subjected to it at work. Unfortunately modern working culture makes it more and more likely as the increasingly heavy workload buck is passed down the line. Work is becoming the major cause of ill-health in the developed world - much of the toll is mental.

Bullies seek to destroy an individual's individuality. This also sounds like a good description of the media pack of wolves in a frenzy of blood-lust and it is possible that voters will wind up feeling that Gordon Brown is as much the victim of bullying as he is a bully. What is clear is that people who report bullying have to be able to do so in total confidence and if organisations like the National Bullying Helpline (NBH) don't understand this their days are surely numbered. This is a shame as an organisation like this is sorely needed.

Bullying at work is too important an issue to become a political football. If the NBH have evidence against Gordon Brown, his office or indeed any other minister's office, they should pursue them through internal human resources, the cabinet office, the victim's trade union, even due process of law. In short, there are many channels more appropriate than the screaming press release.

The logic of Labour's inequalities agenda

2010-02-01T18:53:00.011Z

While all around they've been trashing Gordon Brown I've written before on the Men's Health Forum's website about the good things Labour have done for public health and men's health. By seeing health as an inequality issue (with men - unusually - getting the rawer deal), they effectively opened a door that the Conservatives had kept tightly shut.

But recent figures suggest the low-hanging fruit may have all been picked, that the win-wins may have all been won. (Insert the management cliché of your choice.) The Office for National Statistics suggests that the reduction in smoking has come to a coughing and spluttering halt. In the ONS's latest annual lifestyle survey 21% of adults smoked. The same as in 2007. There was even a small increase in smoking among people in 'routine and manual groups'. At the same time we learn that suicides increased during 2008 - the first rise since the 1998 peak. The male rate remains triple that of the female and indeed the gap has widened.

The TUC have pointed out today that the link between unemployment and depression was established a lifetime ago (1940 if not earlier). Their Recession Report cites research by the Social Exclusion Task Force showing the link between depression and job loss is much the same now as it was nearly 20 years ago. In 2008, as in the 2001 recession, as in 1991 recession, about a third of people who lost their job got depressed compared to less than one in five who stayed in work.

So why are we so reluctant to see a link between the economic structures we have in place and public health? Not of interest to the middle England middle ground 50,000 swing voters who determine UK elections? Come on, Gordon, you can do better than that.

Job insecurity kills men and makes them ill. If Labour really can bite the bullet here and follow the implications of their inequality agenda through to a conclusion that these recent figures have only made more obvious, could it yet pull the election iron from the fire of recession? Or will I have to find some new management clichés?

MHF dates for the diary

2010-01-25T17:55:00.004Z

Continuing problems with the websites are making uploading difficult. Sorry.

MHF visitors might like to note the following dates for the diary:

24 February - deadline for entries for the the chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson's Public Health Awards.

9 March - MHF Conference ‘Marmot and the Third Sector: Addressing health inequalities together’ in central London offers the third sector a unique opportunity to discuss Michael Marmot's review.

30 March - Conference on 'Finding solutions: effective practice in male mental health at the University of Reading on 30 March (10am – 4pm). This image should be available as a flyer soon.

Malehealth back from the dead

2010-01-22T12:20:00.002Z

We're back. The MHF websites are now live.

Malehealth is here. The MHF's organisational website has been upgraded too.

They're still works in progress and will be for some time to come. Please be gentle us. We've had, ahem, one or two little hiccups along the way. If you find a problem you'd like to alert us to please include the address of the page you found it on. Hope you like the new sites.

The excitement mounts

2010-01-19T15:36:00.002Z

Redesigning websites is a nightmare. I rediscovered an article I'd written called 'Repressed anger at work can kill' - never a truer word.

We've had more teething troubles than a baby crocodile. Hope to be going live this week.

Sorry our sites are down

2010-01-08T09:53:00.002Z

The last couple of months have been very difficult ones in the history of the Men's Health Forum websites and as a result of a dispute completely out of my control as editor of the sites, both of them are currently off line.

Please accept my apologies for this on behalf of the Forum. We hope to be back online very soon with new sites with new design and greater interactivity but all the usual quality content. Please bear with us. Thanks very much.

British bosses blowing billions

2009-11-05T15:02:00.004Z

NICE published some new guidance today - subject: the incredibly obvious. The MHF have been making the business case for health at work and against stress at work for several years now. In 2008, Men's Health Week was devoted to the subject; we published reams on malehealth and also looked at work addiction.

It's good to see NICE responding with some new guidance called Promoting mental wellbeing at work. Of course, they have no authority over British business who will no doubt continue with the sort of short-termism that has made them famous. But NICE have, at last, put a figure on the amount of money industry is wasting by not taking stress at work seriously: £28.3 billion a year. Bottom-line numbers like that ought to make even the most self-centred, narrow-minded, unimaginative of bosses take note. After all, just think of the bonuses they could pay themselves with savings like that.

(This report has already done wonders for my health at work. Pointing out the short-comings in British bosses may be as easy as hitting the proverbial posterior of a bovine with a banjo buy, hey, it gets us through the day.)

A breathless Nick Clegg

2009-11-03T14:12:00.006Z

I'm not a member of the all politicians are scumbags club. I think a lot of them go into it with the intention of doing good things. But, like most people I guess, I've found myself disappointed by them more often than not. Therefore when I heard ahead of yesterday's report launch by the Coalition of Men and Boys that scheduled speaker Nick Clegg had not circulated a speech in advance I assumed that he wasn't intending to turn up.

The Coalition brings together the Men's Health Forum with other organisations interested in men's and boys issues including Relate, Respect and Action for Children. It is a relatively new and largely unknown organisation so securing Clegg's support at the launch of its first major report was quite a coup. Clearly in the run-up to an election the Lib-Dem leader had bigger fish to fry.

But he came. Hot foot, breathless and late having been detained by parliamentary protocol apparently. But he came and made some comments which suggested he genuinely understood what the Coalition were trying to do. Moreover, knowing he would be late he sent an aide ahead of him to deliver the speech. Pretty impressive. OK, so it doesn't put him up there with the saintly Jed Bartlett - the president in TV's The West Wing - but given the terrible impression politicians have been giving of themselves lately it was a step in the right direction. Now, if only the bankers could rehabilitate themselves.

(There's more on the report and a response from the Women's National Commission on the MHF's website.)

50 Cents is on the money: modern business kills

2009-10-27T08:13:00.005Z

Much gnashing of teeth over the new book from rapper 50 Cents in which he draws interesting parallels between modern business practice and his experiences of selling drugs in southside Queens. The musician, real name Curtis James Jackson, told The Times this week that people in the neighbourhood where he grew up wouldn’t rule out killing the competition. 'I now hang out with people who absolutely have those intentions for their competitors but they don’t have the physical act of killing them as part of their strategy. Two different routes, but they want the same outcome.'

The only difference between 50 Cents and most business people is that he admits it. His central idea is not particularly new. Joel Bakan's 2004 book The Corporation shows how the modern public company whose only obligation it to its shareholders is obliged to behave like a psychopath.

What's this got to do with health? Well, psychopathic behaviour is ultimately pretty unhealthy both for the psychopath and his victims. In this case, the victims are not just competitors but also employees. We heard once again yesterday about how dangerous long hours are to the men who work them. Earlier this year, research was published showing the damage long hours could do to the brain. According to the International Labour Office, one in five workers around the world - or over 600 million persons - are still working more than 48 hours a week, many merely to make ends meet, a significant majority of them men. (Not having a job can be pretty dangerous too.)

In 2008, work was the theme of Men's Health Week. I suggested on malehealth that work was 'the main cause of men's ill health in the developed world'. Nothing that has happened since has made me change my mind.

When someone is killed as collateral damage in a gangland drugs scrap we're rightly outraged. But where's the concern about men and women working themselves into an early grave? Reduce the regulation of business and you increase the health problems of all those involved in it. The best possible health strategy? Workers rights.

Too many questions for statins to be the answer

2009-10-26T13:18:00.002Z

We'd all love to find the silver bullet - a pill we could all pop that would make us live longer and/or reduce the risk of serious disease. Drugs companies and alternative practitioners alike sometimes like to imply they've found it. I doubt we ever will.

For a while it looked as if statins, drugs which lower cholesterol, could fit the bill. That all changed a few years ago. Ever since cerivastatin was removed from the US and European markets in 2001 because of a link to rhabdomyolysis, a muscle-wasting disease that can cause kidney failure, statins have been controversial.

New research published today adds to the confusion by suggesting that statins might slightly increase the risk of diabetes. This research while not particularly alarming in itself adds to the impression that we still don't really know how statins work. Given that we also don't really know the relationship between cholesterol and heart disease, there seem to be just one or two too many unknowns to justify giving these drugs to otherwise healthy people.

The danger of diabetes

2009-10-19T16:02:00.006+01:00

A good mate of mine was diagnosed with diabetes recently - one of the 300 people diagnosed with the disease every day in the UK. Before you ask, he wasn't remotely overweight and didn't have particularly unhealthy refuelling habits. Yes, diabetes really can hit anyone.

There are 2.6 million people in the UK with the disease. Seven million of us also have prediabetes. This means we have blood sugar problems - not severe enough to be called diabetes but still, say Diabetes UK today, potentially dangerous to the heart. That means 1 in 7 of us are directly affected and we all must know someone. You'd think with something this common we'd all know the signs and symptoms but we don't. Ask people what diabetes is and they'll usually say 'something to do with sugar'. We all need to do better than that.

Why? Because we all know about sportsmen like Steve Redgrave and Gary Mabbutt, who became world-beaters despite their diabetes, we assume that the disease must be relatively trivial. It isn't. Diabetes can be controlled very well but it needs to be diagnosed first. Undiagnosed diabetes can kill - as Lee discovered in this month's feature on malehealth. If you think diabetes is anything but serious, read it.

Online GP consultations CAN work

2009-10-08T10:16:00.011+01:00

Last night I checked out the new online surgery that I wrote about on Monday. I've had a few health problems recently so it was legitimate but, of course, as a journalist, I couldn't help throwing a couple of curve balls too.

To recap on how it works, it could hardly be easier: you just log on using a nickname if you like and talk to a doctor live online in a private chat room. My verdict is that this sort of consultation can be useful - up to a point.

The downsides first. It's far more time consuming than a real GP's appointment. We spent half an hour on something that would have taken 10 minutes face to face and had all sorts of fun trying to agree over the units we were talking about for some recent blood tests.

At times I got the impression the doc wasn't reading my comments properly which led me to ask if he was talking to other patients at the same time. He assured me that he wasn't. That being so I can only assume he wasn't seeing my inputs properly or in real time. The technology probably needs tweaking and there's a good case for a little IT training for doctors - and I suppose, patients - in using it.

But the positives made up for this, I think. I was far more comfortable in this environment. The doctor-patient relationship felt far more equal. There are no pedestals online or intimidating white coats or ties. I was able to ask what was really on my mind and the doc was able to clarify a few things. The limitation of this - the reason I say online consultations are only useful up to a point - is the same problem as we had on malehealth with our Ask The Doctor feature. Ultimately, the best advice, the only advice a doctor can give over the internet in all confidence, is: you should go and see your own GP about this.

Of course, a good online consultation beforehand can ensure you're better prepared, less intimidated and don't waste anybody's time (a common reason for not using the doctor according to research out today). All good reasons for developing the use of online medicine I think.

The curve ball? This particular online surgery is funded by Pfizer, the drug company whose extensive portfolio includes Viagra. It's a legitimate concern that a doctor's surgery funded by a drug company might result in the over-enthusiastic promotion of their products. I'm delighted to say this didn't happen. At the risk of mixing my baseball and cricket metaphors, the doc played my questions with a straight bat. He gave very good advice about what erection problems might mean and the tests used to find out without once mentioning the sponsor's product.

This particular surgery is open till Friday 9 October. There are also two similar online facilities being run by the European Men's Health Forum, one for questions on sexual health, the other on prostate health. Again, I've written about this EMHF service before. Why not give one - or all - of them a try and let us know what you think.

New GP's surgery online - for one week only

2009-10-05T09:52:00.006+01:00

For my 100th post to this blog, I'm writing with some very good news. Well, some good news tempered with a little reality.

An online GPs surgery has opened. Rather than go to the GP, you can log on and talk to a GP in real-time. We know that a) men are reluctant to go to the GP and b) they like to use the internet, so this is a service I've been wanting to announce ever since I became editor of malehealth.

So what's the dose of reality? Well, it will only last for a week and it's being provided by a drug company, Pfizer, rather than the Men's Health Forum. Like the National Obesity Forum and Sexual Dysfunction Association, the MHF is backing the idea. The surgery is staffed by independent GPs, contains links to malehealth and MHF mini-manuals and provides an out of hours service (6pm-11pm) which no GP can match.

In an ideal world, men would go to their GP at the first sign of trouble and, if a site like this were needed, it would be provided by an independent organisation like the MHF. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world. Coming on the heel of the online consultations provided by European Men's Health Forum on erection problems, premature ejaculation and prostate problems, this new online surgery enhances still further the options available to men with health concerns and that has to be a good thing.

News headlines are no way to discuss complexities around vaccination

2009-09-30T08:21:00.006+01:00

There has been understandable concern following the death of 14 year old Natalie Morton shortly after she was given the HPV vaccine Cervarix. We don't know whether the vaccine played a part in her death but we do know - or ought to - that sooner or later someone probably will die as a result of the HPV vaccination programme in the UK.

In the US there have been deaths linked to their HPV vaccine, Gardasil and few if any vaccines are entirely risk-free. The question is whether the number of lives saved is worth the risk. The HPV virus causes cervical cancer which kills over 1,000 women every year in the UK. These issues of balance are not easy for the news-driven media to cover.

But the debate over HPV is not going away anytime soon. Earlier this month the US Food and Drink Administration voted to recommend Gardasil for males ages 9 to 26 to prevent genital warts. Two years ago malehealth readers voted that boys SHOULD get the HPV jab. It's a complex issue - as well as genital warts, HPV is also responsible for 50% of cases of penis cancer - more serious than warts, true, but incredibly rare and, even then, rarely fatal. Vaccinating boys will, of course, protect girls from HPV too.

We need to discuss these difficult issues around vaccination. Otherwise, what will be the reaction when the first vaccinated boy dies? Killed by a vaccine against a virus that is not - in males - life-threatening.

The business case for a shorter working week

2009-09-28T10:40:00.004+01:00

Following the fantastic news in New Scientist last week, I don't know if the mag's readers will be out of bed yet to read this. Yes, NS reported favourably on research in the state of Utah, USA in which all state employees except emergency services have been put on a four day week (same hours but worked over four days). So far it has reduced energy costs by 13%, reduced sick leave and 70% of employees prefer it. A full report is due next month.

Health campaigners have long argued that long working hours are dangerous and the Utah experiment could help demonstrate this. (I've even suggested that work will become the main cause of men's ill health in the developed world.) On the other hand it could make things worse if working days become longer and blackberryaholics continue to work over their three day week-end just as they continue to work over a two day one.

What is clear is that if businesses can see that their obsessive need to have people in the office is costing them money, this debate may finally get somewhere. At last there is a business case for a work-life balance.

Online buying: even regulators don't get the real problem

2009-09-25T09:11:00.002+01:00

My Radio 4 Case Notes interview is now online. I'm talking about the dangers of buying drugs online without a prescription. The message is still not getting through. And not just to the men who are buying them. Even the regulators don't understand.

The interviewee on the programme from the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) only talks about the fact that it is illegal and you might get counterfeit drugs or drugs that don't have the patient information leaflets or are out of date or come in a foreign language box. All true but not the main point. Hardly anyone reads the patient information sheet anyway.

The main point - and it can't be made often enough - is that diagnosing yourself may mean you miss something serious. If you're having erection problems, for example, it may be a symptom of heart disease, diabetes or depression - these are serious illnesses which if left untreated can be fatal. Simple.

We need the regulators and indeed the drug companies to make this point and stop just babbling on about illegality. This mantra misleads men and leads them to assume that all that is really at stake is drug company profits. It's not. It's their own lives. It may be a bit embarrassing to go to the doctor because you can't get an erection but it might save your life.

There's more on this in our Buying Drugs Online section.

Help us update our award-winning websites

2009-09-19T09:15:00.005+01:00

Malehealth was commended in the British Medical Association's patient information awards this month.

Obviously we're about communicating with patients or potential ones rather than medics but I was still delighted to see the site recognised once again by the doctors. We’re currently overhauling both the Forum’s sites to bring them up to date with modern media technology so to win an award before this is implemented is a real tribute to the “by men for men” content of malehealth.

The current websites are built on technology that is seven years old - an eon in techie terms - and are currently kept on the road with much the same combination of luck and sweat as a vintage car. But as well as rebuilding the technology behind the scenes, we're updating the design and interface of the sites for, as the marketing men say, a brand new, improved user's experience - looking up health information has never been so easy or so much fun! What do you think of our new designs? Your feedback is warmly welcomed - just post a comment by clicking on the word 'comments' below. Clicking on the image will give you the full size page dummy and then use the back button in your browser bar to return to this page. (Ignore the typos. We do know how to spell exercise - honest.)

Choice is not the issue, especially in health care

2009-09-18T14:43:00.003+01:00

Choice is surely the weasaliest word in the modern politician's lexicon. Has choice made our education system better? No. Has it met the pushier aspirations of the handful of middle-class marginal voters who decide elections in our first past the post electoral system? Yes.

I've argued before that when it comes to health care, choice is the reddest of herrings. Yes, the opportunity to register with whichever GP is more convenient makes sense, as health minister Andy Burnham outlined yesterday but if it is accompanied by league tables or some other ludicrous 'performance indicators', it will only increase the risk of a two or even three tier health care system.

If resources follow patients what will happen to the health outcomes of those left in the less popular practices? And in what parts of the city will those practices be, do you think? Let's talk Glasgow, as an example. Are these popular practices more likely to be in, say, Calton, a deprived part of Glasgow with a male life-expectancy of just 54 or in those parts of the same city where the life-expectancy is already 28 years longer? Come on, Mr Burnham, the clue's in the question.

So let's talk about what really matters in health care. More choice never made any sick patient feel better. Quality treatment does. And that should be available to everyone regardless of who their GP is.

The male mid-life crisis at midnight

2009-09-16T08:37:00.006+01:00

My odyssey round the studios of the BBC continued yesterday when I was the guest on Richard Bacon’s great little late night show on Radio 5 Live. The subject was mid-life crisis.

Of course, the desire to hang around television centre at midnight getting excited about the prospect of seeing the guests on Later might be a sign of a mid-life crisis in itself but we’ll let that pass. The advantage of a programme going out live is that no editor will cut you for not saying the right thing as happened with the vasectomy programme I posted about yesterday. The disadvantage is that you come out thinking of all the things you should have said but didn't.

I was debating with a comedy writer from New York who thought that mid-life crisis didn’t exist. I said that the mountains of very similar emails from women to malehealth proved that it did. He argued that it was just an excuse for a lot of men to behave badly. Now I can’t disagree with that, but just as swine flu is an excuse for a lot of people to skive off work for a week doesn’t mean that many other people don’t have it and that, for a minority, it may be very serious.

Clearly there is something going on at the mid point in many men’s lives. (The French date it a bit more precisely than we do by calling it la crise de quarantaine – the crisis of the 40s.) Even if a lot of these guys are just swinging the lead or refusing to face up to responsibility, it’s still interesting to ask why. But, because of the argument about whether it existed or not, we never really got onto. My take on it is that, handled properly (ie. not denied), a mid-life crisis could be one of the best things that has ever happened to you because you’ll come out of it knowing yourself better.

I don’t believe you can make yourself happy – although you can make a major mid life mess if you don't understand this point – but you can be happy. And that involves being content and comfortable with who you really are – not who you or someone else would like you to be. In some men it takes a crisis - doing something stupid - to realise this. But I never quite managed to say this during the programme.

I must admit I still find going on the radio exciting and get really nervous beforehand even though I’ve done it a fair few times now. You get caught up in the roll of the show and don’t always manage to get your point over. So was it worth traipsing up to Shepherd’s Bush at the witching hour? You bet. The sight of Jeremy Paxman running out of the Newsnight studio closely followed by a fat man with a clipboard and the Archbishop of Canterbury is not something you see everyday. The perfect image for radio, it was funny to witness but probably even funnier in your mind’s eye. Next stop: Radio 4's Case Notes and online drugs.

Another kick in the nuts for men with PVP

2009-09-15T18:47:00.005+01:00

Forget yesterday's post. Email from the lovely Dawn at BBC Scotland who interviewed me for the vasectomy programme:

'I've just seem your update on malehealth and thought I should email straight away. Unfortunately in the end I did not use you in the programme as my editor wanted it to be case study heavy and to feature the actual operation.' Great radio, Dawn but what will we learn?

Mark Williams is also on the cutting room floor. 'What my editor wanted in the end was a programme that represented the normal experience of a vasectomy.'

This editor does to seem to have understood that post-vasectomy pain (PVP) and poor erections are the normal experience of vasectomy for too many men. So this decision is a bit of a kick in the crutch for them really - rather like having another vasectomy.

The BBC, eh? No, I'm not going to join in the chorus of criticism. The reason this timidity has come as such a surprise to me is that it's so rare that the beeb miss the real story. Perhaps Dawn can persuade her editor to do a future programme on PVP.

'You’d never catch a urologist having a vasectomy'

2009-09-14T11:48:00.003+01:00

Vasectomy continues to be one of the most popular topics on malehealth. I'll be talking about it on Radio Scotland at 11.30am on Wednesday 16 September 2009.

One malehealth reader Mark Williams will also be on the programme telling his story of ‘a continuous and sometimes excruciating pain’. He was told, amazingly: 'You’d never catch a urologist having a vasectomy'. Shame then that he'd already had the operation.

What's going on here? We are building up quite a file on vasectomy at malehealth. How come this supposedly routine operation seems to leave so many men in pain? And why are there no meaningful guidelines on the procedure from any of the Royal Colleges or the National Institute of Clinical Excellence?

It seems to me that the truth is as uncomfortable as a post-vasectomy patient. We'd all like vasectomy to be a pain-free and simple as described because, if it was, it would be ideal way to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Trouble is it doesn't work like that and a lot of doctor, health campaigners, men and women are struggling to accept that we may need to talk about the more complicated alternatives.

This online service is just what we've been waiting for

2009-09-11T11:22:00.003+01:00

Ever since malehealth's Ask the Doctor feature closed down for lack of funding we've had dozens of emails a month from men wanting to ask a doctor a question online. Prostates, erection problems and premature ejaculation have been common topics.

Now, thanks to two pioneering new websites from the European Men's Health Forum (EMHF), men can at last get an answer to these questions in complete confidence without ever going near a GP's surgery or even talking on the phone - it's all online and all anonymous. The two sites are Your Prostate (www.yourprostate.eu) and Malehealth Questions (www.malehealthquestions.eu) which will deal with any aspects of ED and PE.

These are among the topics we are most frequently asked about on malehealth. There's lots of stuff out there on the internet all these issues but can you trust it? The EMHF is a trusted source. The MHF are members. Nobody will try to flog you anything and nothing goes on your medical records. There's no pressure and because it's by email, you go at your own speed at your own convenience at a time that suits.

Men have been asking for this for a long time and at last it's here. In fact, I was so impressed by what they were offering that I was happy to let the malehealth name be used. The service won't be available for ever so if you have a question on prostates, erection problems or premature ejaculation - and most men will have something to ask on at least one of these - now is your chance to ask.

Approach your problem side on

2009-09-08T08:38:00.002+01:00

Here's an idea that may make it easier to talk about what's on your mind: Be active to the front and talk to the side.

By focussing on an activity in front of you, something arty, fixing the car, gardening or just doing the dishes will make it easier for you to discuss what’s on your mind with someone standing or sitting next to you. This will improve your mental health and may help improve other aspects of your relationship with that person too.

Good advice? Don't thank me, thank an anonymous malehealth reader. For our Men's Health Week competition, we were looking for an original and simple health tip. And this one leapt out at me - it works and yet I'd never heard it before. It was the best of nearly 1500 entries to the competition and many of them are equally simple yet effective. It proves what I've always believed: that good health is pretty simple and rarely requires major life changes. It also proves that you can never know it all and that there are always good ideas out there.

These two ideas are at the forefront of my mind as we redevelop the malehealth website. In the future it will be easier for you to share ideas with our readers. Watch this space for news of our redesign because we'll be looking for your views.

Meanwhile check out our Men's Health Week readers' tips plus our regular tips of the month section.

Latest Exercises for Scott Pearson's column

2009-09-02T11:48:00.003+01:00

This month's videos from Scott (Sept 2009). Scott's column is here.

Incline/Wall Press Up:

Chair Squat

Box - or tricep - dips:

Bodyweight lunge:

Take our swine flu vaccine survey

2009-08-24T10:34:00.001+01:00

Will you take the swine flu vaccine if it's offered to you? Tell us in the malehealth Snap Survey.

Ashes win and the flame of desire

2009-08-24T09:16:00.007+01:00

Your team's sporting success can give you a shot in the arm of testosterone just as if you were playing yourself. Indeed, it's so effective, that it's one of malehealth's top ten health tips that any fool can do.

So English cricket fans - and, even more incredibly, Tottenham Hotspur supporters - should have a spring in their stride this morning. But while testosterone - like alcohol - might increase the desire, it won't make a lot of difference to performance which could result in disappointment for many blokes (and their partners).

If you want to celebrate with a roll in the sack but can't, what do you do? You might be tempted to ignore it but don't. Erection problems may be the sign of another more serious health problem such as heart disease or diabetes.

Phil Tufnell, the England spinner turned TV pundit has been fronting a drug-company website aimed at helping men with erectile dysfunction (ED). (This blog isn't just cobbled together, you know, one item leads on seamlessly to another!) But, of course, drugs aren't the only treatment for ED and self-diagnosing with drugs and self-prescribing could mean those more serious problems get missed.

Check out malehealth's advice on sorting out your sexual problems and talk to your GP. Unless he's an Australian, he'll understand.

We're not all Psychos

2009-08-20T11:19:00.004+01:00

Good stuff this morning from Time For Change, an organisation trying to improve public understanding of and attitudes to mental health problems. Peter Byrne, a leading psychiatrist and film expert, says that characters with mental health problems are being depicted as ‘more demotic and crueler than at any time in movie history’.

Cinema is very sensitive these days to charges of racism or homophobia but when it comes to dealing with 'nutters' it's still a free for all. Byrne's report says that this affects public attitudes to mental health and it's hard to disagree. Male mental health is poorly understood in the media, in the medical profession and among men themselves. Simplistic screen misrepresentations can't help. Cinema is supposed to be about innovation - it would be great to see some here.

Byrne's report is mainly about schizophrenia which is particularly badly represented and particularly widely misunderstood. But what about more common mental health problems? Anyone know of any movies that portray male depression accurately? Garden State, perhaps, or Sideways?

I'm surprised more NHS staff aren't sick

2009-08-19T09:58:00.004+01:00

As a regular user of the NHS, the news that NHS staff are 50% more likely to be off sick than those in private hospitals comes as no surprise - in fact, I'm amazed it's not higher.

Over the past 13 years, I've watched the cancer clinic I attend move hospital once and move location within each hospital at least half a dozen times. I've seen procedures and practices change and morph pretty much every other visit. I've seen umpteen health professionals and watched the doctors get younger even more quickly than I've got older. The one thing all these health professionals have had in common is a fantastic commitment to their work in the face of the swirling vortex.

If the NHS staff had done to health services what bankers have done to financial ones, we'd all be dead yet who gets the bonuses? Earlier this week, Alastair Darling rejected the call for a high pay commission to look at the obscene pay differentials in this country. That attitude in the face of a report such as this on the state of the health of the staff in Britain's best loved institution makes me feel quite ill really.

Too much Tamiflu on the shelf?

2009-07-29T09:39:00.003+01:00

We have Tamiflu coming out of our ears. In January health minister Dawn Primarolo told the House of Commons that the nation had 11,000,000,000 milligrams of Oseltamivir (Tamiflu). The adult dose is 750mg per treatment course. She also said that 'the bulk of the current stockpile of Tamiflu is due to reach the end of its shelf life in financial year 2010-11, the remainder is due to expire in financial years 2011-12 and 2012-13'.

Stockpiled for the bird flu epidemic that never really was, this mountain of medication has led conspiracy theorists to suggest that the whole swine flu business is just about getting the stuff down our throats before the use-by date. I don't know about that but I am concerned that by trying to use it all up in time we may not be doing ourselves any favours further down the line.

While welcoming the telephone diagnosis of swine flu, Dr Holden, the British Medical Association's lead GP on pandemic flu, has said in Pulse magazine that he is worried that the threshold for issuing Tamiflu has been set too low, a policy that could come back to haunt the Department of Health if the virus becomes resistant to Tamiflu.

All Tamiflu does is limit by an extra day or two, symptoms that will, anyway, be self-limiting in most of us. That being so, how many of us really need it? Surely it's best to keep it for those whose age or circumstances mean their lives are at risk from the virus while sparing the rest of us both the side-effects of Tamiflu today (nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and headache) and the possible danger of having nothing to take tomorrow.

Dept of Health have forgotten men's health

2009-07-20T13:13:00.001+01:00

The Men's Health Forum, who run the malehealth site, have today hit out at the Marmot Review, the Department of Health's strategic review of health inequalities, because it fails to mention men's health at all.

MHF CEO Peter Baker says: 'Our main concern is that gender health inequalities are barely mentioned in the papers published recently as part of the consultation process. Where gender is mentioned, it appears solely as an issue for women. Men's health appears to be consistently overlooked.'

The Forum is calling on its supporters to back their campaign to get gender back on the agenda. Let us know what you think.

One John Hartson

2009-07-20T09:03:00.005+01:00

When a young man like John Hartson is diagnosed so suddenly with such an advanced cancer we all feel a wild variety of emotions, me included. At 34, he is about the same age as I was when I was diagnosed with a different form of cancer. I'm still here and I feel lucky, I feel guilty and I feel glad that I was a bit of a hypochondriac which meant that I kept going back to the GPs when I thought something was wrong.

A friend of John Hartson's has apparently said that he thinks the former footballer was aware of the lump in his testicles for a while before he went to the doctor's. I don't know if he's right but this should be the lesson that we learn: seek treatment promptly if you find a lump. Testicular cancer is not any more common than it was before and it is not any more dangerous than it was before. (Testicular cancer can be cured in 99% of cases provided it is treated in time.) You don't need to examine your testicles every five minutes - I very much doubt John Hartson did - but you do need to be do is to be testicle-aware. If you have a lump, get it checked out.

AFC Wimbledon fans still get a little misty-eyed over a goal of John Hartson's at Selhurst Park that almost kept the Dons in the Premier League. Now the Welsh hardman, also a hero to fans of Arsenal, Celtic, West Brom, Luton and West Ham, has everyone wishing him well - even Eyal Berkovic. Get well soon, John.

McKinnon's crime is the worst: 'embarrassing a government'

2009-07-15T08:23:00.007+01:00

The news that under our totally imbalanced extradition agreement with the USA, this government is prepared to expose a UFO fanatic to a potentially long prison sentence for the crime of hacking into US military computers looking for information about his favourite subject is worrying enough.

The Crown Prosecution Service say there's not enough evidence to charge him with any offence here even though he has admitted to hacking so clearly this is not the crime of the century. (Apparently, he found his way in to the Pentagon's network by guessing that the passwords would still be set to their default of 'password'.)

When you learn that the man in question, Paul McKinnon, has a form of autism, Asperger's Syndrome, it becomes doubly worrying. McKinnon's lawyers told the high court yesterday that former home secretary, Jacqui Smith's decision to extradite him was 'flawed' because it didn't take this into account. They're hoping to get the decision reversed.

If, as we're often told, we're all equal before the law, they should succeed. When Spain tried to extradite former Chilean dictator General Pinochet to answer war crimes charges, then home secretary Jack Straw turned the appeal down and let Pinochet fly home because, after looking at the medical evidence, he considered him medically-unfit to face trial. What's more McKinnon's case is far more clear cut than the General's. There was some doubt about Pinochet's medical capacity at the time and indeed, four years later Chilean judges ruled that he was perfectly capable of facing charges. But Asperger's Syndrome is not something that comes and goes.

McKinnon, whose Asperger's was diagnosed by the UK's leading authority Cambridge Professor Simon Baron-Cohen is backed by the National Autistic Society.

Mark Lever, chief executive of the National Autistic Society, said yesterday: 'We strongly believe that Gary should be allowed to stand trial in the UK where he has a familiar support network in place and his needs in relation to his Asperger syndrome can be better met. People with Asperger syndrome are often much more vulnerable than first appearances would suggest and are particularly susceptible to mental health difficulties; extradition would be highly inappropriate and potentially very damaging.'

McKinnon's only crime appears to be embarrassing the US government and no reasonable human being would want to see a man with a developmental disability clapped in jail for that. Trouble is, as we learned last week through the case of Ronnie Biggs: embarrassing a government is pretty much the worse crime you can commit.

What celebrities can teach us about health

2009-07-13T08:30:00.010+01:00

Celebrities are great for helping to get media coverage for a difficult health story. But you need to be careful.

We've got a really interesting interview on malehealth with Steve Redgrave - a man with nearly as many long-term health conditions (3) as he's got Olympic Golds (5). But listening to all that people like Steve or former Spurs captain Gary Mabbutt have achieved despite having a condition like diabetes might lead you to conclude that diabetes is not a serious condition. It is. It can kill.

Today's news that men over 35 are twice as likely to develop diabetes as women of the same age ought to kick any complacency into touch. Yes, diabetes can be managed but only if you're getting treatment and you can only get that if you see a doc. If Mabbutt's diabetes hadn't been diagnosed he wouldn't have even been playing park football let alone turning out alongside Glen Hoddle and Ossie Ardiles at one of the world's finest clubs. So what is the conclusion you should draw from celebrity interviews like Redgrave's? It's this: managed conditions are not the the end of the world but unmanaged ones can kill.

Talking of celebrity tie-ups, drug company Lilly who make the erectile dysfunction drug Cialis have teamed up with former England spin king Phil Tufnell to raise awareness of the problem. Picking up on the Ashes theme, the site's called Bowl Your Maiden Over.

There are cricket puns all over the shop - a bit like Phil's bowling on a bad day - and a rather stilted conversation between the great man and Dr Rob Hicks about England's Ashes chances. It's easy to be cynical about this sort of puff but if it encourages men to discuss a subject that affects, frankly, all of us at some time in our lives it's got to be a good thing. And Tuffers deserves credit for having the balls - sorry, couldn't resist - to get involved.

Of course, England's jammy Ashes escape yesterday must have put a spring in every Englishman's stride but if things don't go so well at Lords - where England haven't beaten the Aussies since 1934 - the site should get more hits than even Ricky Ponting's bat.

Breast cancer screening: everybody hurts

2009-07-10T09:08:00.010+01:00

'The question is no longer whether breast cancer overdiagnosis occurs, but how often it occurs' says an editorial yesterday's British Medical Journal.

Many women it appears are having unnecessary chemotherapy, surgery and other treatments for breast cancer. This is unpleasant and dangerous for them, a waste of money for the NHS and misleads the rest of us about what modern medicine can really do. The apparent rise in breast cancer is, it appears, linked not to a real rise in breast cancer but to a rise in breast cancer screening.

The problem is that breast cancer screening - the mammogram - is not sophisticated enough. It cannot tell - and nor can the docs - whether the tumours it detects are life-threatening or not. You might argue that it's good to err on the safe side. The problem is there isn't a safe side.

Patients tend to be pro-screening. Ask a cancer patient and they'll demand screening on the grounds that it might well have picked up their cancer sooner. Ask the family of a dead cancer patient and they'll be even more vehement.

It's understandable but it makes no sense if screening is not possible. The MHF does not call for prostate cancer screening because there are no screens currently available that don't carry the risk of overdiagnosis. The same appears to be the case with breast cancer - and to quite a shocking degree. The research into overdiagnosis in several countries including the UK concludes that one in three breast cancers detected in a population offered organised screening is overdiagnosed.

Of course, every case is different and nobody is calling for the end of the mammogram. Overdiagnosis particularly affects older women because they have slower growing tumours and fewer years of life ahead - a point that isn't particularly well-covered in the press today and may lead to younger women making poor treatment decisions. But at medical school all students are taught on day one: first do no harm. That's why the NHS recently scrapped its leaflet inviting women to have a mammogram.

Scientists under pressure for a good story

2009-06-30T08:41:00.005+01:00

Journalists might be about a popular as estate agents and politicians but most of us understand how difficult it is to do the job properly these days when content is just words and pictures to go between the ads.

The other day I saw a story saying that depression can cause Alzheimer's Disease. Now I've been engaged in a lifelong battle with depression and have a memory like the proverbial wire-meshed kitchen utensil so you can imagine I leapt on this like Silvio Berlusconi on a showgirl. But closer examination showed that this was actually a trial for a drug to treat Alzheimer's and that the patients in question were all over 55 and had a mild cognitive impairment to begin with. It's easy to oversimplify in the search for something newsworthy, especially as today's multi-platform, multi-tasking journalists are expected to produce more stories in less time.

No wonder the over-worked hack is a target for the hoaxer. There's a hoax health study that's been doing the rounds since at least 2000 suggesting that looking a women's naked breasts is good for a man's health. It still appears in the media from time to time. But it's not just tabloids and desperate for anything websites and bloggers who can be hoaxed. There was much laughter this week as the editor of the Open Information Science Journal was forced to step down after his title published a hoax paper full of computer-generated goobledegook from an organisation styling themselves CRAP (Centre for Research in Applied Phrenology).

But it doesn't stop there and this is the worrying part for those of us who rely on science for our 'evidence'. Check out the survey showing that as many as third of scientists admit to fiddling their data. In the desire for headline-making, funder-pleasing, career-enhancing research, scientists appear to be under similar pressures to media editors. Are research scientists the new estate agents?

Should we rename breast cancer?

2009-06-29T09:00:00.001+01:00

Looking through the press cuttings for this month's exceptional Men's Health Week, I came across the story of Nicky Avery from Southend. At 27, he is believed to be the youngest man to have been diagnosed with breast cancer. He's now campaigning for the disease in men to be renamed. He says: 'I want to get the terminology changed so men get checked if they find something. For men it’s such a taboo and so many men don’t know they can even get it. I want the name less feminine so I say call it what it is – chest cancer.'

Indeed, many will be surprised to learn that men can get breast cancer. But they can. Would changing the name make a difference? Would the 300 men affected every year seek treatment more quickly if it had a more neutral name?

Clearly it's an issue. I've heard of doctors writing 'chest wall cancer' rather than 'breast cancer' on men's death certificates which puts the disease on the same taboo level as suicide. A recent survey shows that men are 70% more likely to die of cancer than women and not going to the doctor soon enough is clearly a factor in this. But with breast cancer it's not just men who are reluctant to present with a lump, women are too because, as one man with breast cancer put it to me: 'for a woman the loss of a breast is a loss of a part of her personality as well as part of her body'. If changing the name encouraged just a handful more men and women to seek treatment sooner it would be worth it.

Did stress kill Michael Jackson?

2009-06-26T08:23:00.006+01:00

Is it really possible to die of stress? Both Paul Gambaccini and Yuri Geller have fingered it as a possible cause of Michael Jackson's shockingly premature death. If you look at his much mediatised life it certainly makes sense.

Talking about Jackson's proposed concerts later this year, Gambaccini told the BBC: 'I always doubted that he would have been able to go through that schedule, those concerts. It seemed to be too much of a demand on the unhealthy body of a 50 year old. I'm wondering that, as we find out details of his death, if perhaps the stress of preparing for those dates was a factor in his collapse.'

Certainly work-related stress can kill. The Japanese even have a word for 'death from overwork' – Karoshi. In 2007, the government published its highest karoshi figures ever.

The great Gambo's comments reminded me of a TV programme I saw the other day about biologist Robert Sapolsky, a guy who has devoted his life to measuring stress in monkeys. His research shows that monkeys lower down the hierarchy a) tend to die younger and b) have higher stress levels. Asked to explain the death rates, he points out that it can't be smoking, drinking too much or poor diet as all the monkeys eat the same food. He puts it down to stress.

You might counter that Jackson was a multi-millionaire and hardly at the bottom of the food chain. I'd say that when it came to media treatment 'Whacko Jacko' was very much at the bottom of the food chain. The bullying he's been subjected to by the press down the years is not at all unlike that meted out every day to the weaker baboons by the alpha-males and those eager to please them. Many people have complained about the stress heaped on Susan Boyle by the media and rightly so. Michael Jackson, whatever he might have done, was clearly no less mentally frail.

We need better food not more exercise adverts

2009-06-02T18:18:00.000+01:00

Eating too much makes you fat. That's June's tip of the month on malehealth. Wow. Hardly going to knock MPs expenses out of the headlines.

Except that this research proves that just because a lot of people say something doesn't make it true. The research knocks for six the commonly held notion that the USA is fat because its citizens both don't do enough exercise and eat too much. No, it is purely the latter. Food alone is responsible. Lead researcher Dr Boyd Swinburn of the World Health Organisation says Americans have been eating much more but physical-activity levels haven't really changed all that much.

The trouble is with this thesis is that food industry don't like it. They have played the 'reduced physical exercise' card for all it's worth. It's their 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card. Talk about getting off the hook. Every hamburger ad, every soft drink commercial is accompanied by a strapline exhorting us to get active. Now we know that it's the mountains of crap food and fizzy pop doing all the damage. Voluntary organisations and government rightly keen to 'work with industry' now need to find the courage to demand that the food industry do more and that means changing their products and the way they sell them. The WHO research proves there is no alternative.

Videos for Scott Pearson's column

2009-06-01T15:05:00.002+01:00

This month's videos from Scott (June 2009).

The Burpee:

Dumbbell Swing

Clean techniques

It Boyles down to responsibility

2009-06-01T13:26:00.002+01:00

That Susan Boyle might have a breakdown was surely about as predictable as Simon Callow being a tad arrogant or Piers Morgan coming over a just a wee bit insincere. Do we really care what release form or whatever Susan Boyle signed? When is TV going to take responsibility for the mental health of the people that reality TV propels to fame and then every bit as swiftly dumps with a smug smirk? I don't think there's anything more to say really.

2009-05-31T15:11:00.000+01:00

User's Guide to the Male Body out now

2009-05-25T12:17:00.007+01:00

My new book on men's health comes out this week. 'The User's Guide to the Male Body' is a short, sweet introduction to men's health. You can download the flyer here, find more information here and watch the ’no expense incurred’ promo video featuring the inside of my office and the book jacket in walk-on roles below.

Price £8.99 in paperback, the book is available from bookshops, Amazon.co.uk or Sheldonpress.co.uk. Or order direct from Marston Book Services on 0123 546 5500.

Don't get too excited over the latest male pill

2009-05-22T09:36:00.002+01:00

The male pill appeared to move a step closer this week with the publication of results of a study in China of a hormone-based contraceptive that lowers sperm count. But as that trial moves to Manchester, we shouldn't get too excited too quickly.

The Chinese trial involved men having hormone injections in the backside. The high drop out rate - 312 out of 1045 volunteers (or nearly 30%) - will have women wondering once again whether men can really be trusted to handle any contraception requiring more forward-planning than the condom. Certainly, it's hard to see how monthly jabs in hubby's backside would work for more than a handful of couples as a long-term form of contraception.

Given the amount of booze, tobacco and crap food we shovel down our throats, doctors may find this hard to believe but men do worry about what they put in their bodies. Men will, rightly, be concerned about how long it takes for sperm counts to return to normal once the contraceptive is stopped. For most men it took around 200 days but 17 men still hadn't recovered their fertility after a year. Most men won't want to take that risk. Nor, indeed, will most couples - it's tough enough trying for a baby without having to wait six months for hubby to stop firing blanks.

Yes, despite the enthusiasm we're still a good way yet from an effective male contraceptive.

Quentin Willson and his pen*s extension

2009-05-11T09:07:00.003+01:00

Much media interest in a device being tested in London which could regulate the speed of cars by automatically keeping them to the speed limits. No more boy racers at a stroke.

The motoring lobby, of course, will tell you that speed doesn't cause accidents. This is a heavily-pushed viewpoint - where do they get the money from? - but not one that stands up to any scrutiny. Even if you can show that speed per se is not the main cause of an accident, any accidents caused by driver error, driver fatigue, driver intoxication, or indeed, any mechanical cause, will be made worse - far, far worse - by the addition of speed. We're not just talking about minor injuries here either. Despite improvements in road safety, a person is killed every three hours on Britain's roads - nearly 3,000 deaths in 2007.

So what's the problem with speed limits? Former Top Gear presenter Quentin Willson gave the game away on the Today programme this morning talking about how the device would 'emasculate' drivers. In other words, for drivers like Quentin the car is simply an extension of the pen*s. How long are we going to let these chumps determine public health policy?

In what way are we responsible for our children drinking more?

2009-05-08T10:50:00.005+01:00

Interesting research from JRF showing that young men are drinking less. Not what we've been led to believe.

Alcohol consumption in general is up. We average about nine litres of alcohol each a year - up from 4-5 in the 60s and 70s (but still less than the 10-11 we averaged at the start of the 20th century). So if the lads aren't drinking it, who is? The answer is women and older drinkers. It shouldn't be a surprise. We're reading how women are behaving more like men and how older people never grow up all the time.

There is a statistical point here. The Office for National Statistics changed the way it calculated units in drinks in 2007 to reflect the trend to stronger wines and larger glass sizes. This had the effect of increasing the number of women binge drinkers at a stroke.

But this research remains significant not least because of the curiouser - and more worrying finding - that fewer children are drinking but that those who do are drinking much more.

In 1997, about two 11-15 year olds in three had had a proper alcoholic drink. By 2006 barely half had. Quite a fall. Especially when you look at how consumption has rocketed: 11-15 year old boys were consuming an average of fewer than six units/week in 1997. Now it has more than doubled to more than 13. In other words, those youngsters who are drinking are really caning the stuff.

Why? Is it, as JRF suggest, mainly the influence of the home environment? In part, probably. But have we also somewhere along the line demonised drink among the young with the result that it is no longer seen as the everyday lubricant of adult life but as something abhorrent. Has it moved from being a soft drug to a hard one with fewer taking it but all of them addicted? And if so is there a lesson here for health campaigners about oversimplification of the message?

Swine flu: worried the media is telling you porkies?

2009-05-01T10:26:00.003+01:00

Swine flu is all over the media right now but picking your way through it to the facts is a pig of a job. What you need to know is:

1. There are enough drugs to go round in the UK. The government says it has enough drugs to treat over half the population (23 million treatments of Tamiflu and 10.5 million of Relenza).
2. But tamiflu needs to be taken 24-48 hours of symptoms beginning. Any later and it's useless. So if you're concerned by cold or flu-like symptoms, don't fanny around. See your GP.
3. Meanwhile, take the standard cold prevention advice like washing your hands (especially before touching your face) and getting some sleep seriously.

It's about as simple as that really. More information and links on malehealth.co.uk. And, by the way, you can still eat bacon.

There are plenty of safe online health options

2009-04-23T08:14:00.009+01:00

The Advertising Standards Authority's ruling that the Pfizer-backed ad raising awareness of the dangers of buying drugs online is not misleading or unduly distressing has put this issue back in the news. That's no bad thing.

I say this not because I'm interested in drug company profits but because I'm interested in men's health. By buying drugs online without a prescription you're not depriving drug companies. Global spending on prescription drugs was about $643 billion in 2006 so big pharma won't be passing the hat round anytime soon. What you are doing is depriving yourself of a diagnosis. By diagnosing yourself you might well miss something serious. Erection problems, for example, don't just happen - they are often the sign of potential killer diseases like heart disease and diabetes. Go and see your doctor and get a prescription before buying online.

The attractions of using the internet for health are obvious. That's why malehealth has had three million unique visitors in the last two years. And we know from our own survey that most men would consider buying drugs online in the right circumstances. So it's good to see some organisations rising to the challenge.

If you have a prescription there are umpteen online pharmacies to choose from. If you haven't, Dr Thom have been providing online treatment for erection problems for a while now. Today we report on a new online initiative that can enable the under 25s to test themselves for chlamydia, the most common sexually-transmitted infection at home in private. It's attracting web-savvy men in droves: a shrewd move because chlamydia is symptomless but dangerous - it can make men infertile as well as women.

Times are changing. Smart internet users don't have to turn to the pirates and risk buying dodgy pills, today there are plenty of safe online options and the number is growing.

Why is there no news in our newspapers?

2009-04-21T08:17:00.004+01:00

The government is often criticised for announcing new funding or new initiatives more than once. They're accused of spinning and of trying to pretend they're doing more than they really are. But perhaps it's the media that are spinning? I've discovered another reason why the government sometimes announces something more than once: because nobody takes the slightest bit of notice the first time around.

So it is with the Department of Health's Third Sector Strategic Partner programme. The Department have teamed up with 11 strategic partners including the Men's Health Forum in a move that could radically change the way government works with the not-for-profit health sector.

The scheme was announced in February and covered by the MHF website. It was press released again this week. It's shocking really that nobody in the mainstream media is interested in running with the story. There are big issues here with pros and cons. Will it help government understand patient needs better by working more closely with their organisations? Or will third sector organisations be compromised?

Of course police brutality, MPs' dodgy expenses and the economy are big stories that need covering but it's not lack of space in our increasingly bloated newspapers. No, it seems that as our daily rags get fatter, the news coverage gets lazier. No wonder readers are turning to the internet.

Avoid a hazardous waist, have an NHS health-check

2009-04-09T08:25:00.006+01:00

If you're aged between 40-74 (and in England) look out for your invitation for a free health check. The government reckons it can save over 500 lives a year and prevent over 1500 heart attacks and strokes through preventative check-ups. And the MHF agrees. If you're invited, I strongly urge you to go along. It won't be long or painful - a few questions, weight, height and a simple blood test. Let us know how you get on - especially if you don't find it helpful.

The downside - as usual - is that it will take time for everyone to be seen. Local Primary Care Trusts are designing their own plans and government admits the scheme won't be available everywhere in England until 2012/13

Why now? Well, perhaps the government has been reading Hazardous Waist, a book the MHF helped produce with Radcliffe Publishing back in 2007 but which suddenly, for some unknown reason, has started attracting the reviews it deserves. Edited by MHF chair Alan White and Maggie Pettifer, the book has been described as 'the perfect antidote to the laissez faire attitude that seems to pervade male health problems at the present time' (Dr Jeremy Sagar, Univadis).

While in Perspectives in Public Health, Dr Bashir Qureshi admits: 'the account in this book was so moving that I have decided to do something to shrink my own middle-age spread. I cannot think of any health professional or general reader who would not like to read and benefit from this slim book.'

Praise indeed - if you've not been invited for your free check-up yet, why not give it a read?

Job insecurity: destroying us from the inside out

2009-03-11T12:10:00.008Z

Every so often something that you've long suspected is proven by a piece of research. So it is today with the publication of a study in Cambridge showing the damaging impact of the threat of unemployment on male mental health. We ought to be pleased that we have the evidence to back the hunch but nobody can be happy at evidence demonstrating just how badly wrong we have got things in our society.

According to the study, men are affected by job insecurity - the threat of losing your job - far more than women. This may be because men define themselves in terms of their work far more than women do. The trouble is that all jobs are becoming increasingly insecure. Outsourcing, temporary contracts, freelancing. Nobody gets a job and is set up for life anymore (unless you're Fred Goodwin but I won't get into that again). Yet clearly, psychologically, security is what we need.

In the past to criticise job insecurity was seen as a political position, considered unhelpful by governments who saw job security as a barrier to prosperity. Today's research shows that this is not a political issue but a health one. Not only does this way of working not create wealth, it is destroying us from the inside out.

Congratulations to the government

2009-03-04T09:11:00.002Z

Nobody's got a good word to say for the government at the moment - not even the bailed-out bankers.

However, the announcement earlier this month that the Men's Health Forum is to be an official strategic partner of the Department of Health is good news for men's health and the government should be congratulated on it. Tomorrow also sees the first ever men's health debate on the floor of the House of Commons - an indication of how far we've come since 1997.

Six exercises using a bar

2009-03-03T10:44:00.003Z

For technical reasons we can't currently embed videos on the main malehealth site so here you'll find the videos to accompany our fitness coach Scott Pearson's series on exercises every man should know. For the original article, click here.

Bench Press

Back Squat

Deadlift

Bent Over Row

Military Press

Upright Row

Nicole, stop frightening us

2009-03-02T08:29:00.001Z

Which? have questioned the lack of science behind brain trainers that tell you your 'brain age'. These products have always interested me not just because Nicole Kidman advertises them but because, to be honest, I'm terrified of dementia. I've seen it eat into grandparents on both side of my family and given that I never had much a memory in the first place, I've always wanted to know what i could to avoid the inevitable or, at least delay it as long as possible.

I tried one of these online brain tests and I have to say it did nothing at all to ease my fears, quite the opposite. With every single question a race against a 30-second clock, I felt like a chess player being timed out, reeling from bad move to bad move. I never finished the thing as - thankfully - I was interrupted but I have no doubt that my 'brain age' would have been up in three figures as I panicked, made daft mistakes and clicked in the wrong place.

Like everybody I want to believe that there is a magic bullet out there but there isn't one for Alzheimer's any more than there is for cancer or heart disease. As ever, it's about money. Some of these products are not cheap. Private medicine will always be there to exploit our fears of illness and as science advances so do their marketing techniques. One of the great things about the NHS is that we never have to ask ourselves the question 'Is this treatment for the benefit of my health or my medic's bank balance?' (Under any health care regime where money changes hands between doctor and patient - not just terrible ones like in the USA but even supposedly good ones like France - you're asking it every five minutes.)

The worry for health campaigners - and this is the men's health angle here - is that people who can't afford to be scared because they can't afford the solutions will simply turn off and not take any notice of any health advice. You may not need a 'brain trainer' but doing the odd crossword won't hurt. If anybody wants to help me with mine, I'm stuck on 'instinctive sense of self-preservation on which commerce preys' (4). First letter F.