Women As Advocates For Men's Health

Want to give your husband, father, brother, or other men in your life the best possible gift for Father's Day? Then, urges The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay, give them the gift of good health.

Senay says women are often put in the role of advocate for the health of men.

The leading causes of death — heart disease, stroke, and cancer — all affect men more than women, as do car accidents, suicide and alcoholism, she points out. Men die five to six years before women do.

Part of the problem is that men visit doctors less often than women. Men are often resistant to getting the basic checkups that can head off many diseases before they develop. It often falls to women as wives and mothers to get their men to see a doctor.

Senay observes that all men need to get routine physical exams, which vary, depending on their current health and risk factors for disease, and family history of disease. Factors such as blood pressure, cholesterol and weight are important to check throughout life. Screening for conditions such as diabetes and certain cancers are important, too.

Men need to become better at self-care, but women can help start the conversation and help steer them toward health care, Senay says.

There are a few tips to help the process along smoothly: Be convincing. Appeal to your man as a loving husband and father who won't be much use to your family if he's not healthy. Be clever. Use whatever stealth tactics or sneaky techniques you have to, to lure him into the health care system. For instance, steer him toward free public health screenings that can be harder to refuse. Be assertive. Take him by the hand to the doctor if you need to. Or recruit help from other family members. Do whatever it takes without losing the underlying message that you're bugging him because you love him. Help him find the right doctor. A doctor your man likes is a big help in persuading him to get checked up on a regular basis.

Senay warns that denial is very common among men who have symptoms of illness, and it can be deadly. For instance, a man with severe chest pain who brushes it off and tells himself it's only indigestion risks death from a heart attack. Some men might even take themselves off medications without consulting their doctors if they decide they don't need them. Often it's left to a wife or mother to see he's not feeling well and drag him to the doctor.