Job insecurity: destroying us from the inside out

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

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

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

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.

Cooking up a health treat at White Hart Lane

It's rare that I get the chance to write about football in this blog and to be able to do so twice in the same week is a rare treat so thanks to MHF chair Professor Alan White for giving me the opportunity.

The MHF are backing a new Premier League initiative which will deliver a men's health promotion package worth over £1.5 million. 17 of the current Premier league clubs are involved. The idea is to help football fans become healthier. How? Well, Alan, the world's first professor of men's health, puts it perfectly: 'The biggest lesson I've learned is that if you sit in your nice clinic waiting for men to come to you, chances are you'll be waiting a long time. But if you go out to where the men are, you'll have more success.'

Fulham will be giving 'specific attention' to sexual health, apparently. Chelsea will encourage local men to take their coaching badges (the credit crunch must have hit Blues owner Roman Abramovich harder than I thought). West Ham will target bowel cancer (the disease that killed former captain Bobby Moore at just 51). Everton will offer health MOTs on matchdays (a job for Mikel Arteta, perhaps, out for six months with ruptured cruciate knee ligaments). Newcastle will appoint two health trainers to work with dads and, catching them young, their kids. Tottenham Hotspur, innovative as ever, will be running 'cooking sessions'. This is presumably because their fans have been feeling sick all season.

Why is Defoe injured and not Ronaldo?

As the Carling Cup Final approaches, this is the question all Tottenham Hotspur fans are asking themselves. Why is their star player Jermain Defoe out for ten weeks while their opponents Manchester United can still call on the talismanic Cristiano Ronaldo and all their other big name stars.

Of course, to sports fans, the headline Spurs Player Injured is about as surprising as Cyclist On Drugs. Spurs players are notoriously injury-prone. (When Spurs enlarge their ground capacity it's not to add additional seating but additional treatment tables.) But is it just Spurs' bad luck?

When Jermain Defoe limped out of a training session earlier this month, it didn't just sum up his club's season but, arguably, English football as a whole.

Defoe was the fifth Premier League player this season to go down with a broken metatarsal bone in the foot (the injury made famous by David Beckham). He joins on the treatment table fellow Spur Alan Hutton, former Spur Michael Carrick (are you detecting a pattern here?) plus Liverpool's Phillip Degen and the man who put the ars in metatarsal, Newcastle's Joey Barton. But none of this will surprise osteopath Don Blyth who has been monitoring metatarsals for years and, as he explains on malehealth, these injuries have nothing to do with foot shape, flimsy boots or playing too many games. It's about sedentary lifestyles and failing to toughen up the feet, especially in childhood.

Nineteen England internationals have fractured their metatarsals since 2002. No African players have. Don says: 'a disproportionate amount of English and European players are fracturing their feet compared to African players which rules out the boots, studs, pitches and number of matches which are the same for all players.'

Intriguingly, Cristiano Ronaldo was considered a likely candidate for a metatarsal injury when I last spoke to Don in the summer but so far the Manchester United and Portugal international has been spared. Why?

'Cristiano Ronaldo's feet are bearing up well, considering his lengthy lay off last summer. This suggests his feet are tougher and of a higher density, than the average Brit/European. I suspect his upbringing in Madeira may have helped, maybe playing bare foot beach soccer has hardened his feet more like an African's. Maybe he drinks a lot of milk? Maybe he does barefoot kick boxing as a hobby? Barefoot keepy uppy? All would help prevent the injuries.'

So the key to a healthy and successful football career? Play barefoot on the beach like the Brazilians. If Harry Redknapp reads this, Spurs training sessions may never be the same again.

RSI - it's just like childbirth, really

RSI or repetitive strain injury is back in the news today. The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy tell us that levels are as high as they ever were.

Now, in general the idea that you can only understand something if you've gone through it yourself does not convince me. I don't think you need to experience genocide or cancer or an episode of Top Gear to know they're not very pleasant. Being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes is part of what makes us human. But with RSI I'm prepared to make an exception.

Some 220+ British workers succumb to RSI every single working day. Make no mistake. It is clearly the employers fault. Employers have a legal obligation to prevent preventable injuries and we've known about RSI for at least 20 years now. But I don't think the problem is a callous disregard for health and safety. I just don't think the bosses get it. They don't realise just how painful and debilitating simply using a computer can be. Until they really know what it's like, nothing much will change (after all, the media only started writing about RSI when journalists started getting it). I know how the bosses feel. Even those of us who have experienced it, forget.

I've had RSI on and off since the early 1990s. At first it was so bad that I couldn't work and lost my job. Even now I know I could never go back to regular office hours. (As a freelance I can pace myself and spread out the working day.) But sometimes I forget, overdo it and get a flare-up. The result is an excruciating pain that knocks me for six every time. Your body forgets just how much it hurts - like childbirth, I suppose. Whilst you're going through it, you can't take the lid off a jam-jar or even open a door (again, just like childbirth.) But then you rest, it settles down (unlike childbirth) and over time you forget again.

So shut your boss's hand in the door today. Put his wrist in a vice and turn the handle. Twist his arm behind his back and tie it there for a week. What are these? Dick Cheney's favourite refined interrogation techniques? No, an RSI awareness-raising campaign.