Issue date: June 13, 1999

In this article:
National public-awareness campaigns
Viagra
At-work health screenings
Preventive maintenance

Why more men are finally going to the doctor

Men's Health Week is but one reason men are letting doctors check under the hood.

By Monika Guttman

OST MEN STILL do more preventive maintenance on their cars than on their bodies. One recent study estimated that 15 million men last saw a physician when Ronald Reagan was president. "I've often said men don't come in for checkups because they have a big S tattooed on their chests; they think they're Superman," says Lanny Copeland, M.D., president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Fortunately for men - and the women in their lives - this attitude is slowly changing. Doctor visits by men climbed to almost 3 million a year in the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared with less than 2.7 million in 1991. Doctors say better preventive men's health care is why the gap between women's and men's life expectancy recently dropped from seven years to 6.4.

Reasons for the change:

National public-awareness campaigns, such as Men's Health Week (June 14-20). Increasing media coverage of men's health issues and more public comfort with medical words such as "prostate," "penis" and "colon" helps, as does the growth in "men's clinics" affiliated with major hospitals and medical groups, where men feel medical attention is focused on their needs. And awareness is heightened when celebrities like Sam Donaldson, Scott Hamilton, Norman Schwarzkopf and Katie Couric go public with personal tales of prostate, testicular or colon cancer (which is highly curable if caught early but killed Couric's husband a year ago at age 42).

New treatments. Before the PSA - prostate-specific antigen - screening test for prostate cancer, which became widely available in the 1990s, there was no male equivalent for the Pap test and mammograms that drive women into the doctor's office on a regular basis. In recent years, men have been lured by conservative therapy options available to treat early-stage illness. In 10 years, the number of prostate surgeries dropped by half, to 116,000 in 1997, primarily because of better drugs.

Viagra. Not surprisingly, one of the biggest draws in recent years has been Viagra - the impotence drug that has brought otherwise unsymptomatic men to the physician. "It gave docs the opportunity to check guys out while they were there," notes Patrick Taylor, director of the National Men's Health Foundation, which founded Men's Health Week.

Sensitivity. "Doctors are learning they have to look at the male patient as a whole and not just as an organ system," says Ken Goldberg, a Dallas urologist. Doctors are communicating more effectively with men, he says. "What man who has erection problems will pick up a brochure in the waiting room? But if you have the brochures in the exam rooms, you can notice if the man picked it up and use it to start a conversation." (A free booklet, "Men's Maintenance Manual," is available from the National Men's Health Foundation at 1-800-955-2002.)

At-work health screenings. "Particularly for guys in their 30s, employers can make a big difference," Taylor says, noting that many Fortune 500 companies are now giving "health fairs" that offer simple on-site baseline tests, like blood pressure or cholesterol screening. The ideal: mandatory physicals, like those required for military personnel. "There's no better place than the workplace to reach men," says Taylor.

More change is coming. Says Fred Tudiver, M.D., of the SUNY Health Science Center in Syracuse, N.Y.: "Men would never come in even 10 years ago and say, 'I'm worried about my prostate. Can you do the test?' " Now, they do.

Contributing Editor Monika Guttman forces her healthy husband
and son to see the doctor regularly.

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Preventive maintenance

Disease is diagnosed at later stages in men, and conditions such as diabetes and depression are underdiagnosed and untreated in men. In their 20s and 30s, women see doctors for reproductive issues, men for sports injuries.

For change, follow advice from Ken Goldberg, M.D., author of the new book When the Man You Love Won't Take Care of His Health (Golden Books, $22) and the classic How Men Can Live as Long as Women.

Ask. "The average female patient asks two questions. The average man asks nothing."

Track. Record blood pressure, cholesterol and other baselines with at least two checkups in the 20s and at least three in the 30s. Keep a health file alongside car and house files.

Self-exam. Check everything from testicles to mouth and skin. If you find any abnormalities, call your doctor.

For more men's health information check out www.nationalmenshealthweek.com .