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Men's Issues
Written and researched by Bob Murray, PhD
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Divorce Ruin Scares Australian Men
June 10, 2002
Australian men are avoiding marriage because of the financial ruin that divorce can bring, according to an article in Australia's Sunday Telegraph. The paper quotes figures to show that 29% of Aussie men are not likely to marry and the trend is rising. Increasingly men are opting for "no-strings relationships." According to Family Law reformer Sylvia Smith "Property settlements are meant to be 50/50 but in the vast majority of cases the result is more like 80/20 to the women."
Read more in the Sunday Telegraph
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House Husbands' Heart Risk
May 20, 2002
The study, presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association, found that the pressures on men of staying at home to look after the children can be so stressful that they have a damaging effect on health.
Researcher Dr Elaine Eaker, of Eaker Epidemiology Enterprises in Wisconsin, said the key to the problem was that some men became stressed about the fact that they were performing a role not traditionally associated with them by society.
Men who do stay at home to look after the family tend not to have the same levels of support from peers, friends and family as women who do the same. The findings are based on a 10-year study of 2,682 people aged between 18 and 77 who lived in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts.
Men who described themselves as house husbands had an 82% higher death rate over the period of the study than men who worked outside the home. Heart disease accounted for most of the extra risk. The finding held good even when other factors such as age, blood pressure, and cholesterol level were taken into account.
Jack O'Sullivan, of the Fathers Direct group, was quoted as saying: "Home dads can be quite isolated. Society expects the main carer to be a woman, and society is structured around that. Daycare is called 'mother and toddler groups' and some men feel awkward about belonging to those groups."
Professor Cary Cooper, an occupational psychologist at the University of Manchester, said many men were guilty of under-estimating the task of caring for a family. He told the BBC: "Most men think being a house husband will involve popping on a bit of washing, taking the kids to school and then putting their feet up with a cup of coffee. They are crazy. Housewives do much more multi-tasking than almost any man ever has to do in the workplace."
It is estimated that men have taken over the main homemaker's role in one in seven homes as increasing numbers of women become the main breadwinner.
The study also found that women in high powered jobs were more likely to develop heart disease than those in more junior positions. For men, that finding was reversed.
Read more in BBC News
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Depression "Boosts Fatal Stroke Risk"
January 7, 2002
Middle-aged men who have symptoms of psychological distress, such as depression and anxiety, are more than three times as likely to have a fatal stroke, research suggests.
A research project involving 2,124 middle-aged men in South Wales has shown that depression makes a man three times more likely to suffer from a fatal stroke even though psychological distress was not linked to a significantly increased risk of having a non-fatal stroke. Further there was no apparent link between mood disorders and an increased risk of the mini-strokes that sometimes precede a major attack.
Each man in the study was subjected to a battery of physical and psychological tests, and then monitored over the course of the next 14 years. In that time 137 strokes occurred, including 17 which were fatal.
In general, men who had strokes were older, heavier and had higher blood pressure levels than men who did not have strokes. The men who had strokes were also more likely to be current smokers and to have at least one other chronic disease.
However, analysis of the data also revealed that they had also reported more symptoms of anxiety and depression. This was particularly true among those who died from their stroke. The worse the depression and anxiety, the greater the risk.
Professor Robert Carney, of Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, has examined the findings. He believes there are several possible explanations for the link between depression and fatal strokes. He said: "Depressed people often don't take medicines as prescribed so some of the men may not be taking medicines for high blood pressure, thereby increasing their risk for stroke."
However, there is also evidence to suggest that depression and anxiety has an effect on the way the autonomic nervous system works. This system regulates heart rate and the contraction of the blood vessels.
"Those changes may produce alterations that contribute to the severity of stroke or heart attack." Professor Carney said that the findings of the study should impress on both doctors and patients the need for vigilance. Depression and anxiety are often downplayed by physicians who fail to ask about psychological health and patients who are reluctant to discuss depression.
Read more in BBC News
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Research Explodes Male "Health Myths"
January 7, 2002
We all know Uncle Norman. He's the guy who "smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish and never exercised" and lived to a ripe old age. Now health researchers have produced evidence which they believe proves that the Uncle Normans of this world are largely mythical.
The team from Glasgow University said the fabled "Uncle Norman" was actually six times more likely to die from a heart attack than health conscious people.
Researchers compiled their findings from a 25-year study of 6,000 men from the west of Scotland aged between 45 and 64. They said the conclusion would help to put health stereotypes in perspective.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) Social and Public Health Sciences Unit surveyed men from the Paisley and Renfrew areas. They found that 48 of the 107 "Uncle Norman" figures, defined as overweight heavy smokers, in fact died before the age of 70. By contrast, only 12 of 337 lifelong non-smokers who were not overweight -- commonly referred to as "the last person you'd expect" -- died of heart disease before they reached 70.
The statistics also showed that one in 25 men in the "last person" category died of a heart attack, compared to a quarter of "Uncle Normans" -- four times the number.
Professor Graham Watt, from the Department of General Practice at Glasgow University, was quoted in the BBC News as saying: "These interesting results put lay stereotypes in perspective. 'The last person' and 'Uncle Norman' are both real people, but they are both rare.
"The most important finding from the study is the huge difference in coronary mortality between men at high and low risk. In betting parlance, 'Uncle Norman' and 'the last person' are both outsiders; one should not bet against the established coronary risk factors as predictors of deaths from heart disease."
Dr Kate Hunt, Senior Research Fellow at the MRC said "the last person" was a rare occurrence but often loomed looms large in public consciousness because such deaths were often "dramatic, unexpected and premature".
Read more in the BBC News
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Men 'Stressed in the Womb'
December 8, 2001
Research carried out at the University of Cambridge suggests men may be predisposed to stress because they release more of the stress hormone cortisol than women. Scientists examined levels of the hormone in unborn lambs and found that males released twice as much cortisol as females.
They believe the findings, presented to the Society for Endocrinology's annual meeting, can also be applied to humans and may explain why the two sexes respond differently to stress.
"We have known for a long time that men and women respond differently to stressful conditions," said Dr Dino Giussani, who led the study. "It has been thought that this was down to environmental factors but we have shown that these differences between men and women may be pre-determined from birth."
The study on unborn lambs found little variation between males and identified a significant difference compared with females. "The males released twice as much cortisol and there was little variation between them," Dr Giussani told BBC News Online. "This is a new idea, which may have direct clinical implications. However, this work also suggests that males may be more predisposed than females to overreact to stressful conditions later in life."
He added: "Our results show that there may already be differences between men and women's ability to deal with stress even before birth."
Read more in the BBC News
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Body Image Problems Hit Men Too
November 10, 2001
It is often assumed to be women who suffer from extreme dissatisfaction with their body image. But experts say men are just as likely to be unhappy with the way they look.
In an article in the British Medical Journal, experts estimate triple the number of men suffer from body dysmorphic disorder -- a severe form of body image dissatisfaction -- now, compared to 25 years ago. But they say the condition is under-recognised and under-diagnosed.
Although concerns about appearance can seem trivial, many patients need to be admitted to hospital, become housebound -- or even attempt suicide. Sufferers can become socially isolated and experience problems at work.
Men are most likely to be preoccupied with their skin, because of acne or scarring, hair loss, the size or shape of their nose, or their genitals. The trend for men to look muscular has also caused body image problems for men. Signs of an intense preoccupation with their appearance are examining, fixing or hiding the perceived defect. They range from checking how they look in the mirror, comparing themselves with others and excessive grooming, to seeking reassurance about how they look.
The rise in 'muscle dysmorphia' is of concern, say the authors, because it can lead to the abuse of anabolic steroids by men trying to build up their muscles. Men with the condition believe they are too small and "puny," but often they are unusually muscular and large, regularly working out in the gym. More doctors need to be aware of the condition, say the authors, because patients often do not talk about their body image concerns.
Read more in the British Medical Journal
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Study Questions Reasonableness Of 'Reasonable Woman'
November 10, 2001
A new analysis of 62 studies that looked at how men and women define sexual harassment finds little difference in what both genders believe constitutes the more serious types of harassment, but did find gender-based disagreement about the more subtle forms of harassing behavior.
These findings call into question the "reasonable woman" standard still used by some US courts to decide harassment cases, especially in cases involving the less obvious forms of harassment, according to a study in the current issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology.
It is well known that men and women sometimes differ in their perceptions of what constitutes sexual harassment. Research indicates that women tend to perceive a broader range of behaviors as harassing than men do.
That prompted courts to adopt the reasonable woman standard, requiring judges and juries to adopt the perspective of the harassees, which often tend to be women, when evaluating the circumstances in a sexual harassment claim.
However, some say such a standard may be unfair to men because it does not consider their viewpoint when deciding if sexual harassment has occurred. In recent years, most courts, including the US Supreme Court, have gone back to consistently using the "reasonable person" standard, but the debate over which standard should be used continues.
In their meta-analysis involving 33,164 participants in 62 studies, the authors found evidence that women do perceive a broader range of social-sexual behaviors as harassing.
"Men and women agree that sexual coercion and sexual propositions constitute sexual harassment," say the authors. "However, they do not necessarily agree that sex-stereotyped jokes or repeated requests for dates after refusal do. Therefore, a woman may perceive that sexual harassment has occurred after a number of the latter types of social-sexual behaviors have taken place, whereas a man may be less inclined to do so." For example, men may interpret repeated requests for dates as flattery, whereas women may perceive it as something that may escalate to harassment.
The origin of these gender differences -- whether innate or a product of socialization and a person's value system -- is not clear, according to the researchers.
Men and women do agree on one thing -- sexual harassment depends on the status of the harasser. If the perceived harasser is a boss or supervisor then the harassment is real and serious even if the same actions by a peer or fellow-worker would not be.
Read more in the Journal of Applied Psychology online
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Is Environment Triggering Male Reproductive Problems?
July 10, 2001
Doctors and scientists are almost certainly missing evidence that adverse environmental factors may be responsible for an increase in a range of problems in male reproductive health, according to a leading Danish fertility expert. Professor Neils Skakkebaek told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting at Lausanne that rising testicular cancer incidence, poor semen quality, high frequency of undescended testicles and hypospadias (an abnormality of the penis) may all be symptoms of a single underlying entity which he has now named TDS -- Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome.
He said that the different ages at which the various conditions present in boys and men, coupled with the fact that medicine is highly specialized, means that these reproductive problems are being looked at in isolation by specialists as varied as urologists, andrologists, oncologists and pediatric endocrinologists.
Professor Skakkebaek, who is a professor at Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet, said: "There is evidence that male reproductive function seems to have deteriorated considerably during the past 4 to 5 decades. For example, recent figures in Denmark show that reproductive diseases, including testicular cancer, are still increasing. Nearly 1 in 100 (mostly young) men are now treated for testicular cancer, over 5% of schoolboys have undescended testicles, nearly 1 in 100 have penile abnormalities at birth and over 40% have subnormal sperm counts.
"There are also concerns about a low and decreasing birth rate in many industrialized countries, where up to 5% of children are born using artificial reproductive techniques."
TDS may be caused by genetic or environmental factors or a combination of both. But there is growing evidence from clinical observation of individual patients and from larger epidemiological studies that there is a synchronized increase between countries in male reproductive problems such as testicular cancer, genital abnormalities, reduced semen quality and subfertility. "In Finland, for example, the rates of testis cancer, undescended testis and hypospadias are lower than among Danish men. But Danish men have poorer semen quality."
He said that the association of male reproductive problems was probably not coincidental but reflected the existence of a common underlying cause resulting in maldeveloped testes.
"Biological and epidemiological studies leave little doubt that TDS can be a result of disruption in embryonic programming and the development of the sex organs in the fetus," he added. "As the rise in the incidence of the various symptoms of TDS has occurred rapidly over few generations, we must consider that adverse environmental factors such as hormone disrupters, probably acting on a genetic susceptibility, could be to blame."
I believe that the common factor that may underlie many of these male fertility problems is overpopulation. Most species whose numbers grow too large for their environment to support tend to develop a low fertility rate. This is also true of rats in experiments. BM
Reported in Uniscience
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Prostate Cancer: Is Testing Worthwhile?
April 9, 2001
Over 8,500 British men will die of prostate cancer this year. The vast majority of them (70%) will be over the age of 75. Most forms of treatment -- radiation or surgery -- are ineffective and carry the risk of most unpleasant side-effects.
Added to this is the fact that this form of cancer is usually not particularly dangerous. Only a minority of prostate cancers spread beyond the gland to cause disease and shorten life.
This being the case, does it really make sense to carry out mass screenings for the disease? Under intense pressure from lobbyists from various men's groups, the British government is to undertake a mass screening of 230,000 men between the ages of 50 and 69. They expect to find that about just under 10% of men in this age group have the disease.
Those diagnosed with a localized cancer will be offered counselling and treatment. The object of the study is to see if screening is economically worthwhile and to determine the difference in effectiveness between various forms of treatment.
Read more on BBC News
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Bottom Slapping Isn't Sexual Harassment High Court Says
January 26, 2001
ABC-TV's Good Morning America broke the news on Jan 25. In a ruling that has shocked feminists throughout the world an Italian high court has ruled that a man can slap a female co-worker's posterior providing he doesn't make a habit of it! Bottom slapping is not, in the high court's view, an "act of libido."
We believe that this ties in nicely with a Rome University study reported in the Sydney Morning Herald recently that Italian men's libido is declining fast. The culprit, it seems, is the gym. The more men work out the less energy they have left for sex. Italian men, it would seem, are more interested in their own bodies than those of the opposite sex.
The best they can manage is a libido-less bottom slap! Casanova would be mortified!
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About the Author
Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
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