As a male myself, I figure, I can say this & it will be taken with good humour.
When compared to women - men don't tend to suffer pain as a normal part of life, when considering period pain, labout pain, etc.!
As a result - if they do have pain, then, well they're obviously dying!
So if there's a good chance that they are dying, then they sure as hell ain't going to see the doctor in case they tell them that they are dying!
Other factors of note include;
Women are more likely to have attended medical practices with their childrens problems, as well as their own, so it's not such a strange place to them - they're more familiar with the enviroment & the staff.
Fear that amongst male friends & colleagues that this may be seen as a weakness - possibly due to the pack hunter gatherer deep within our psychi.
In a modern western society reliant on apparently 'quick fix' pain killers, that execessive use ultimately undermines a healthy pain threshold and may cause other short & long term disease. Well we seem to be progressively losing the capacity to cope with pain.
The Upside
Those that live longer are those that visit the GP less.
The Downside
By the time we admit we have a problem & submit to seeing the Doc, then the problem may have progressed too far to do much about it.
And at the end of the day - women tend to live longer than men - ouch!
A quandry indeed - open to discussion.
RE: Pain, men & the doc!
You're right of course 😉 But the partner, if a chap has one, is also equally responsible for getting him to the GP's for help, and there appears to be a problem with ignorance (I don't say that in a disrespectful way) amongst people as to what constitutes a real emergency and therefore a GP or hospital visit.
I think the Media is doing what it can to highlight realities and potential problems, but frankly, we could drop the sex education at school and start teaching kids general health and how to look after your body? And without scaring them, perhaps what to look for when the body begins to show signs of distress and therefore illness of some kind.
Love and Light 😀
Gilly xxxx
RE: Pain, men & the doc!
I agree, but even in the best relationship, the guy suffering still has to admit he has a problem, before his partner can encourage, help, etc.
[:@]
With regard to the issue of knowing what constitutes an emergency, is the very reason I started a thread on this issue regarding 'back problems' on the general health forum, before the set up of forums for specific conditions. I did ask Mike if he could move to the new back problems section, but no luck yet.
Not sure about dropping sex education, but definitely with you on teaching general health stuff. My one resevation would be is that it would be very orthodox medically biased. A very thorough study done in the late '90 showed that only 15% of orthodox medicine was based on good research. NB The study was done by an orthodox medical consultant. [:o]
On the other hand holistic medicine is inhernetly difficult to study by it's very nature, by not being prescriptive. Qualititive rather than quantitive research is really the only way, but the orthodox school expects the holistic approach to fit into their model of research, which it simply can't. So it's a complicated issue. [:-]
What we all agree on is that stress is a major contributing & aggravating factor to the large majority of problems, so maybe a good starting place would be teach self awareness, stress management or ideally meditation & yoga. But, of course these only work if practiced regularly. 😉
But, of course, some things just plain come out of the blue with little or no warning and all you can do is your best & try not to give yourself too much of a hard time when your best doesn't seem good enough. And maybe bark at the moon on occasions.
Thank you for taking up the mantle, the irony being (assumed) that your female, which comes back to the sweeping generalisation about men not being so keen to help themselves.
RE: Pain, men & the doc!
Hi And,
It IS a complicated issue, I agree heartily. People say that children are only able to learn in a sort of 2 dimensional reality until they are about 10 or 11, and so not to teach them serious stuff like medical health, yoga etc., until they are older, but, this is disproved entirely in the Eastern Cultures, where many children are practising Yoga, Tai Chi, Aikeido, Judo, and many more disciplines at a very early age.
Cossacks put their kids on horseback at 6 months and by 4 years old they are brilliant riders, and so on. This makes me believe that any education, started young enough will be taken on board thoroughly, and sort of Programmed, if you like, into the brain. Hence including in the cirriculum a simple yet accurate assessment of the human body and how it can malfunction, what the signals are, and how to get help, would be a sensible road to go down.
But in the UK, regretfully, (as in many other countries) commonsense is not something which is applied to Education.[:-]
Where most men are concerned, they seem, at least in my experience, to have the thought that if they don't acknowledge a condition, it will go away 😮 As we know it often doesn't. In some respects, actually ignoring symptoms of what could be a serious problem is 5th on the list after football, sex, food, work, more football. [8D]
In my own husband's case, recently, it took him over a month to admit to me he may have a problem, and, I got him inot the surgery that day. I know of another lovely chap who died because he didn't want to worry his family about the increasing pain in his chest and feeling of numbness in his left arm (client of mine's late husband). Immediate diagnosis and ACE inhibitors would have given him another 20 years. Very sad.
Do you know, my thoughts are that we will all be using destressing techniques such as yoga and meditation and so on. The trend seemsm to be hotting up, and so many clients of mine, who you would not normally think were interested in such things are taking them up with a vengence. We are indeed moving forward.
But, on the other hand, stress is also a part of life, and we cannot escape it surely? The question is, how far is modern life to blame for harmful stress? Was it more stressful to live in an age where you lasted until 40-50 at most, or died early of TB or cholera, for example, or a ruptured appendix: when child mortality rates were very high and 1 out of two mothers died or nearly died giving birth, usually due to poor hygiene. And, what about work, and making enough money to feed the family when there was no DS, housing or help for the poor or working class per see? Does this equate with stress today?
Ah, yes, last time I looked, I was indeed female 😉
Love and Light
Gilly xxx
RE: Pain, men & the doc!
Mmmmm.... I think women are more in touch with their bodies from a very early age, starting when they have their periods and then having to take responsibility about contraception etc. When you think most girls have to go through this from 12-16 then they are on the road to taking care of themselves very young aren't they? I can remember sitting in the Doctor's surgery when I was sixteen because I had horrendous periods and him telling me to take asprin! He had all that experience (he was in his sixties) and I was very young, but I knew who the fool was.
Throw in childbirth and smear tests etc and we are pretty much geared up to being self-aware. (Most) men just don't go down this road so when something happens they aren't really equipped to cope with it.
I have a friend who had a massive heart attack when he was 42. He was entertaining clients in a nightclub in Hong Kong when it happened. The clients put him in a taxi as he wasn't too well, chucking up etc, pains in the chest. He went back to the hotel, chucked up a bit more, had a wash and got straight back into a taxi and went back to the club (okay, yes, he did like a good time). He was lucky that when the biggie struck later he was nearer the heart specialist hospital and got taken straight there. Unbelievable really. Still alive, still drinking and smoking! But I think that sums it up.