7 Health Facts That Men Need To Know

7 Health Facts For Men

It’s Men’s Health Week which encourages all men to talk about how they are feeling. Men often feel they can’t talk about their own health or emotions and tend to battle on, ignoring the warning signs and hoping it will go away and they’ll feel better again. Here are seven health facts for men and what they need to know.

Mental Health

Inactive men are 60% more likely to suffer from depression than those who are active.

Some studies have found that exercise can be a moderately helpful treatment for mild to moderate depression in adults. Exercise should therefore be considered as an important lifestyle change that is used in addition to other treatments for depression.

The benefits that can be attained from exercise depend on the amount of exercise that is undertaken. Most studies showing that exercise was helpful used aerobic exercise (such as running or walking), for at least 30 minutes, three times a week, for at least eight weeks. However, more research is needed to work out the best type of exercise, how often and for how long it should be done, and whether it is better in a group or individually.

The current recommendation is at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity on most, and preferably all, days of the week.

Sleep

Men who sleep 7-8 hours a night have about 60% less risk of fatal heart attack that those who sleep 5 hours or less.

It’s not completely clear why less sleep is detrimental to heart health, but researchers understand that sleeping too little causes disruptions in underlying health conditions and biological processes like glucose metabolism, blood pressure, and inflammation. The same may be true for oversleeping.

Drinking

Those who consume 4 to 10 drinks a week at most have a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Drinking more that 10 drinks a week almost doubles your risk of type 2 diabetes.

Heavy drinking can reduce the body’s sensitivity to insulin, which can trigger type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is a common side effect of chronic pancreatitis, which is overwhelmingly caused by heavy drinking. Alcohol contains a huge amount of calories – one pint of lager can be equivalent to a slice of pizza. So drinking can also increase your chance of becoming overweight and your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Nutrition

Getting your 5-7 servings of fruit and veggies is as simple as 1 apple, half an avocado, 1 stalk of celery, half a grapefruit, 5 pieces of broccoli.

In most instances, men are significantly less likely than women to recognize the health benefits of fruits and vegetables, such as their role in reducing the risk of many cancers, heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

Activity

Men who climb 50 stairs or walk 5 city blocks a day may lower their risk of heart attack by 25%

A sedentary lifestyle is one of the 5 major risk factors (along with high blood pressure, abnormal values for blood lipids, smoking, and obesity) for cardiovascular disease. Evidence from many scientific studies shows that reducing these risk factors decreases the chance of having a heart attack or experiencing another cardiac event, such as a stroke.

Lifestyle

Only 30% of a man’s overall health is determined by his genetics. 70% is controllable through lifestyle.

Junk foods high in salt, fat and sugar account for about 35 per cent of adults’ energy intake and about 39 per cent of the energy intake for children and young people. Most Australians (93 per cent) do not consume the recommended five serves of vegetables a day and only half eat the recommended two serves of fruit.
Just 3 per cent of children eat enough vegetables, though 70 per cent consume the recommended amount of fruit.

Almost half (45 per cent) of adults aged 18 to 64 and 23 per cent of children are not meeting the national physical activity recommendations. These are for adults to accumulative 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity each week. Children are advised to accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity every day.

Choices

Men live 9 years in poor health, mostly preventable by making small lifestyle changes.

Lifestyle choices have a huge impact on the risk of chronic disease; an estimated 31 per cent of the burden of disease in Australia could have been prevented by reducing risk factors such as smoking, excess weight, risky drinking, physical inactivity and high blood pressure.

To view our services please visit www.linkhc.org.au/services