All 'appening for Men's Health Week

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

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

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!!'

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

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

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?

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%.