Football, Beer and Health Equality

A few years ago I had a conversation, at a local healthy living exhibition, about how to get the health message across to men. The person I was chatting with, apart from being a friend, was also a trained nurse and a health promotion professional.

She had come to the conclusion that holding events, such as the one we were at, was simply not working; men didn’t, by and large, attend and were showing no real interest in their health. The conclusion was that, almost evangelically, the message had to be taken out into the ‘market place’. The market place was broadly defined as football grounds and pubs. In other words, places that the target demographic were likely to be, in large numbers, on a regular basis.

Now, to put this in a geographic context, the demographic in question is situated in the North-West of England where, for a majority of men, football and beer are two of their most important life-aspects. Conversations around healthy eating, the benefits of vegetables, the danger of excessive cholesterol and a regime of regular exercise are fairly rare, and often viewed as deeply un-manly and possible even somewhat feminine.

Imagine my surprise when, having reached that certain dangerous age of such previously unmentionable subjects as furring arteries, expanding waistlines and heart-attacks, that upon enquiring of my GP whether I could have a Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) blood test I was refused.

Now, here was a presenting bloke actually interested in health prevention. I was questioned as to whether there was a reason for asking for the test; had I any symptoms that were worrying me? I hadn’t. Did I know the test was not conclusive? I did. So could I have the test? No.

Over the next 2 years I broached the subject two more times, and the answer was always the same. If you have no symptoms, you can’t have a PSA blood test. In other words, unless the medical profession thought there was a good chance that you might already have Prostate Cancer, you were not going to get a test.

So much for preventive medicine in the male population.

Compare this to health prevention in the female population. Breast screening is now an almost universally accepted option as are cervical smears and even, in young girls, cervical cancer inoculations (but that is a whole other issue). All these measures are now an integral part of female health prevention.

But for men?

So eventually it came to the point where, nearly 3 years after that first conversation with my Doctor, I was discussing another health issue with my GP Nurse, and the PSA subject came up again. I was asked the same questions and gave the same answers. I then asked the nurse whether that, If I was a woman, and I asked you for a cervical smear, would I get one? She thought for a few seconds, and admitted that, yes, I would. She immediately wrote me in for a PSA test. The results were negative, and all is fine.

However, the point of this is not my health. It is to do with the reluctance to offer equal preventative health options to men as to women. Simple as that. As far as I can tell, this inequality still broadly exists. It is not good enough to say that men are just not interested in their own health. It is the job of the health service to be far more pro-active in reaching out to the male population, especially where it is more difficult to connect to that population, with preventative care.

We cannot really talk about equality and diversity, etc., and ignore such an outrageous situation. Men’s health and Women’s health are equally important, other equality means nothing.

Are we being Chemically Coshed?

Brave New World is a classic book, in every sense of the word. In Huxley's tale of a "negative utopia", society was encouraged towards the mass consumption of a drug called, Soma. The use of this drug kept the majority of the population compliant, happy and generally non-aggressive.

Interestingly, it may have been a visit to the newly opened Brunner and Mond plant, part of Imperial Chemical Industries, or ICI, Billingham, which inspired him to write the classic novel.

Some of what we read about in BNW has come to pass in one form or another, particularly the ability to engineer embryos for artificial insemination or for the specific purposes such as genetically matched organs, reflects Huxley's vision of factory produced children. However, it is the aspect of Soma production and use which is where we will focus.

The World Government of Huxley's novel encouraged the widespread use of Soma, and in the UK today, our Government is increasingly encouraging a state of affairs where the population is being pharmaceuticalised beyond anything that can reasonably be termed, necessary.

For instance. There is currently a debate raging concerning whether all (repeat, all) over 50s should take Statins While the drug is effective at reducing Cholesterol and thus reducing the possibility of heart attack or stroke, it also has severe side-effects in many people. This writer was prescribed the lowest dose of Statins some time ago, and within 4 months was having quite severe muscle pain in one leg which occasionally prevented walking. All the symptoms vanished within 7 days of ceasing the medication.

During the recent near pandemic of Swine 'Flu, the anti-viral drug, Tamiflu, was mass prescribed. Many people thought this was a cure, it was certainly presented implicitly as such in the media, but at best it only reduced the effect of the virus by about 24 hours, by slowing down the rate at which viruses infect cells in the body and, therefore, how fast they spread and make you ill.

Despite this, and despite the acknowledged side-effects (nausea, vomiting, retching and diarrhoea), which often were more severe than the disease they were supposed to be 'curing', the Government went all out to enforce a mass-vaccination programme.

The fact that Swine Flu was not the feared pandemic we were all told it would be, and that the majority of people only suffered mild symptoms, the fear of the disease was greatly exaggerated. Why? Was this to encourage a certain compliancy within the population to allow themselves to be unnecessarily pharmaceuticalised?

You might find this Mail Online article interesting.

and this one!

Of course, for the aged or those with long-term illness, vaccination is nearly always beneficial.

We've looked at Statins and Tamiflu. Let's examine the increased use of Warfarin with the elderly as a routine procedure. Warfarin (known more commonly to most of us as rat poison) acts upon the blood as an anticoagulant thinning it out. Of course, although it is a poison, in lower doses it does not kill. The reason it is used is to prevent heart attacks and especially strokes in the elderly. By elderly we are talking about the over 70s. Such prevention is a good thing only if it is being used as a necessity and not as an age determined generality. For the assumption is that everyone over a certain age will benefit from Warfarin medication, and this is simply not true.

Case in point: A gentleman I know personally, and have know for over 40 years, was put on Warfarin about 3 years ago. At that time he was a very active 80 year old, used to do lots of outdoor physical activity (gardening especially) never bothered about any chilly weather and had a very good quality of life. Now he wears his outdoor clothing inside because he is always cold; holding his hand is like clutching the palm of a dead man. His quality of life is greatly reduced. Prior to being pharmaceuticalised, he had barely suffered a day's illness, presented no symptoms indicating any potential heart problems, and yet he was still prescribed Warfarin simply because he had reached 'that' age.

In all these instances, we have to ask a question: who is really benefiting from the wide-spread, and possibly completely unnecessary pharmaceuticalisation of the population? One answer may be whichever political party is currently trying to convince the public that it really cares. Another, much more likely answer would be an economic one. Money, industrial fiscal profit, is a huge motivator. The pharmaceutical industry is in business, not as a charity, but to make profit selling product. This product is pharmaceuticals; pills, potions and vaccinations.

Finally, let's mention the Government's current obsession with vaccinating underage girls against cervical cancer with Cervarix. It is not a bad thing that women, or in this case, underage girls, are protected against a serious disease. The anomaly is that while 70% of cervical cancer is caused a sexually transmitted virus, the approach is vaccination rather than the more obvious solution of encouraging sexual abstinence. But then, no Government has dared approach this, or any other sexual problem, for instance, the ever increasing rate of teenage pregnancies, with a moral solution rather then a pharmaceutical one.

And, of course, a moral solution would not produce share-holder profit for Roche (Tamiflu) nor for Bristol-Myers Squibb (Warfarin) nor for GlaxoSmithKline (Cervarix) nor the manufacturers of the varied range of Statins.

More general drug info can be found on this excellent medical site

So when a Government is looking for serious solutions for serious problems, who might be whispering in their collective ears, who might have a huge vested interest in persuading that Government that the pharmaceutical route is the one to choose?

Think about it - it's not rocket science!