Men’s preventive health knowledge training

There is no magic bullet for men's health care. The core is to identify the core risks according to age groups and avoid the three common pitfalls of "carrying on, blind compensation, and saving face." By doing three small things that can be implemented every day, more than 80% of high-incidence health problems can be avoided.

To be honest, I have been working as a men's health missionary in the community for three years, and I have seen too many men say "I'm fine". Those in their twenties feel that they are young and can't do anything bad, and those in their thirties and forties feel that there are seniors and juniors who cannot fail, and they forcefully turn small problems into big problems. Last week, a 32-year-old programmer was admitted to the outpatient clinic. He stayed up late to work on a project and relied on energy drinks for a week. His physical examination revealed high blood pressure and uric acid that was twice the normal value. When he got the report, he still said, "Isn't health care something only my dad's generation has to worry about?" 」.

Don’t really think that health care is only for middle-aged and elderly people. The risk points of different age groups are very different, and the pitfalls are also completely different. Young men in their early twenties should not always stare at the "kidney-tonifying remedies" on the Internet and speculate. The biggest problem at this age is "work": staying up for two nights in a row playing games, saving up to urinate at the table, drinking cold beer and eating skewers for a week. It is really not alarmist. Last year, I met a 22-year-old boy who sat for 36 hours in a row to play copies of the game. He directly developed deep vein thrombosis in his lower limbs and almost died of pulmonary embolism. There is really nothing else to do with health care at this stage, just don’t use youth as a shield.

When you reach your 30s, you will find that it takes three days to stay up late, and you can't lose weight no matter how much weight you have on your belly. At this time, the focus is not on preventing "eating", but on preventing metabolic decline. There is a lot of quarrel on the Internet about this part now. One group says that you need to completely cut out carbohydrates to lose weight. The other group says that you can just move and don’t worry about it. In fact, from a clinical point of view, you don’t need to go to extremes: you don’t have to force yourself to go to the gym every day. Just get 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise every week. Walking two stops after get off work and playing basketball on weekends count. You don’t have to completely cut off milk tea and barbecue. It’s perfectly fine to eat once or twice a month to satisfy your cravings. On the contrary, it is better than completely avoiding food and overeating to hurt your body. Oh, by the way, don’t think of a beer belly as a “lucky sign.” If your waist circumference exceeds 90cm, your risk of diabetes and hyperlipidemia will triple. You should be careful about this.

Speaking of blind patching, this is also the pitfall I encounter the most. There is a lot of controversy about nutritional supplements on the Internet right now. One group says that supplements are all a tax on IQ and you just need to eat well. The other group says that office workers who eat takeout every day will definitely not be able to keep up with their nutrition and must supplement. My advice has always been neutral: if you can eat 1 punch of staple food, 2 punches of vegetables, 1 punch of protein every day, and eat deep-sea fish twice a week, then there is no need to spend extra money on supplements. ； If you eat takeaways that are heavy in oil and salt every day and can’t eat vegetables twice a week, then there’s nothing wrong with taking a regular brand of multivitamin every day. In particular, I would like to remind you not to blindly buy unknown tonics from roadside aphrodisiacs. Last year, we received several cases of liver and kidney damage after taking the so-called "ancestral aphrodisiacs". Most of those drugs were illegally added with large doses of sildenafil. If you have high blood pressure, taking them may even induce a myocardial infarction. If you really have problems related to sexual function, go directly to the men's department of a regular hospital. This disease is so common now and it is not difficult to treat. There is really no shame.

After the age of 40, the core of health care is no longer "prevention", but "screening". Don’t always think that physical examinations are a waste of money. Last year, I gave education to Lao Zhang in the community and persuaded him to get a gastrointestinal endoscopy. He originally said that he had nothing wrong with him and didn’t want to go. But it turned out that early-stage adenoma was found, and it was removed directly under the microscope and everything was fine. If colon cancer develops a year or two later, it will be very difficult to treat. The annual physical examination does not miss the prostate specific antigen (PSA), low-dose lung CT, and gastrointestinal endoscopy. The cure rate for cancers screened out early is mostly over 90%. If you really wait until you have symptoms to check, it is often too late.

Oh, by the way, there is another question about tobacco and alcohol that people often ask. Don’t use the case of “my relative smoked all his life and lived to be 90 years old”. The big data is here: the incidence of lung cancer in smokers is 18 times that of non-smokers. Alcohol is a clear first-level carcinogen. There is no such thing as “moderate drinking is good for health”. Drink less if you can, and it’s best to quit. Last time, a man who drove a truck came for consultation and said that every time he drank alcohol, his knees hurt the next day. He thought it was rheumatism, but in fact it was high uric acid. If he drank more, gout would be mild, but severe cases would directly damage the kidneys.

In fact, after all, I never prescribe complicated health care plans to people who come for consultation, just three very simple things: drink enough 1.5L of warm water every day, don't hold your urine, and stand up and walk for two minutes after sitting for an hour. Really, if you can persist in doing these three things, you can reduce your prostate and metabolism-related minor problems by half, which is much more effective than spending thousands of dollars on supplements.

What I’m talking about today isn’t any complicated truth, it’s all real things I’ve encountered in the past few years when I’ve been running around the community and attending clinics. To put it bluntly, the core of men's health care is not to think of yourself as invincible. If you take care of your body, it can help you withstand the pressures of life, right? If you really feel uncomfortable, don't bear it and go to the hospital. There's really no shame in it.