Man Slayer: Heart Disease
Today's biggest headlines on the Men's Health News page are: How Being Fat Makes You Stupid, Hurricane Sandy: Your Netflix Survival Guide, 5 Ways to Ride Out Hurricane Sandy, 3 Steps to the Perfect Handshake, 10 Things You Can Learn from Twitter, Are You a Sex Addict?, The Best and Worst Kids' Fast Food Meals, 7 Crazy Things Testosterone Does to Your Body, Predict the Future - Instantly, and Why Tyson Chandler's Photos Started a Bidding War. Only one of these ten articles has a bearing on the physical health of men and that article is How Being Fat Makes You Stupid. What about the testosterone article you may ask. Six of the seven crazy things that testosterone does are about sex and money, and not really health. It is noted that higher testosterone levels decrease the risk of heart disease however, which makes sense as a man with higher testosterone will most likely be more competitive and more athletic.
On the CDC's website the number one killer for men might surprise you: heart disease. One might think it was kidney failure or cancer, but no, our biggest killer is our heart. Men's Health site writes that one in three men currently have heart disease and that it killed 390,000 men in 2007. A government site (http://www.doh.state.fl.us/chdokaloosa/CHIP/CHSR/CHSR_11_Heart.pdf) pins that number closer to 310,000, however; Men's Health sites the American Heart Association for that number so it might be estimated high to garner more attention to the problem. I couldn't verify the number on the American Heart Association's site because it is at the moment under construction.
The first article that pops up when you search for heart disease on Men's Health, and as there was nothing on the first page search I did, is about the danger of heart disease and a quiz you can take to see if you are emotionally at risk for heart disease. The questions ask pertinent questions about stress and the ability to cope as life throws you curve balls, and in general those are signposts that can lead to heart disease. Certainly stress and feeling a lack of control in your life are attributing factors. This article is followed by an article on heart disease prevention. The prevention article gives five different ways to prevent heart disease. As someone who has been warned about my cholesterol from my doctor and given advice on how to reduce my risk of heart disease I can vouch for most of the things on the list. I had to look into lowering blood pressure but that too was reported accurately.
Men's Health doesn't strive to be a place of end all information in the articles I've seen it serves as more of a overview of what they view as important pieces of information. More than once in the articles I read I was advised to talk to my doctor about testing for heart disease. Men's Health does a good job of giving enough information to make you interested in a topic, a few small things that you can do to help yourself, and to admit that you can't fix everything by reading their magazine. You still have to go see the guy in the white coat.
