Go To The Doctor

People trying to sell you on marriage, at a loss to point to a good reason for a man to marry, say that husbands benefit from having a wife nag them to go to the doctor.*

Think about that.

You're paying over half of your salary and giving up your time and freedom and control over your life to ...have someone nag you to go to the doctor.

But here I am, telling you to do it, and I'm doing it for free. That's what other people should do. They should cut out the "middlewoman" and tell you to go to the doctor, not to get married.

Go to the doctor. Now you don't need to get married or even shack up with a woman or even be in a relationship.

Seriously. Find doctors you like.  Make appointments. Set reminders. Go. Be honest with them. Ask questions. Take ownership of your health. Do these things, and you'll be better off than the average married man.

Find doctors you like. You should have an Internist or Primary Care Physician, a Dentist, an Ophthalmologist, and, if you have specific problems, a Psychiatrist, Cardiologist, Urologist (get a vasectomy!), Dermatologist, etc. If you don't have one, try looking around your area for someone who takes your insurance. You need good doctors you can trust. (If you don't have insurance for some reason, see if you can be practice for medical students.)

Make appointments. Just do it. You can always move them if you need to. Ask your doctors' offices how often you should have appointments.

Set reminders. A good doctor's office will send you reminders, but put your appointment in a calendar you actually use, such as in your smart phone, and set reminders.

Go. Keep your appointments.

Be Honest With Your Doctors. There's no point in lying to them. Be completely, thoroughly, brutally honest with them, even if you feel embarrassed or like a failure. They're there to help you. Tell them what you're feeling and experiencing. Tell them what you do. If you're eating a lot of junk, fornicating with skanky women, and abusing substances, having problems with memory, seeing, hearing, erections, urinating or bowel movements, tell them! If there's something that seems off with the twig and berries, say so!

Ask Questions. Ask your doctor questions. Ask about your symptoms. Ask about their recommendations. If you don't understand something, ASK... no matter how stupid you might feel.  If you come up with questions between visits, record them however is best for you so that you'll actually have them handy to ask. Many doctors allow questions through a website, app, or email.

Take Ownership of Your Health. We're all getting older. We can't act like we're not. We can't eat like we used to. We need to be responsible. You already know overeating and substance abuse and sitting around all day every day are bad things. You know sex with someone who hasn't been recently tested and cleared, especially without condoms, is risky. Your doctors might order certain tests for you, like blood tests, urine tests, fecal tests, and stress tests. Don't avoid those! And if you're sexually active, you can easily get tested for diseases and infections that can be sexually transmitted.

If you're prescribed medications, research them to see what they might have as side effects and what the possible alternatives are. Pay attention to how you react to a medication.

Pay attention to what you're eating. The American diet is full of junk. Artificial sweeteners and fat substitutes, a ton of sugar everywhere, loads of sodium, and processed fat. By all means, if there is something you really like, a few bites of it is fine. Don't feel like you need to clean off your plate, though. It's fine to save something for later or even let it go to waste. We all need some fat, sodium, and even sugar in our diet, but most of us can cut way back. If you prepare your own meals at home, it is so much easier to eat right. You can use spices, especially cinnamon, and agave to make things tasty. I like soda ("pop" to some of you). I like the tastes, I like the carbonation, and I like the caffeine. But most of the stuff out there, even diet, is awful for us. But there are lines of carbonated "flavored waters" and there are concentrated "caffeine squirters" as well. Right now I get Kirkland canned carbonated flavored water. I forget what it's actually called, but they have grapefruit, lime, and lemon juice ones. There's very little juice in them. But I can add my own flavoring and caffeine. For most people, natural fats, including on meats, isn't bad. It's not what makes you fat. What makes you fat is eating too much while moving too little, including all the sugars.

Learn to cook. Take classes if you need to. It's never been easier. There's a ton of recipes and other information you can find online for free. You don't need to Food Channel stuff. With a blender, a crock pot, and a skillet, you can have enough variety to never be bored. There are meal kit services, and you can have groceries, even just fruits and vegetables, delivered.

Move more. Whether it's exercising at home or a gym or getting a personal trainer, or going for walks, or going for swims, or bicycling, moving more and keeping active is important. If you're a man, and one who looks like he can handle himself, it's very easy to get more exercise in by doing things like NOT looking for a closest parking spot. Go park in the far corner. You don't really need expensive gym memberships or personal trainers. You can find ways to move more. Even if it's just using a treadmill or stationary bike as you watch your movies or shows, you can move more.

You don't need a woman around to nag you about these things. You can take care of yourself.


*While some of the reason married men AS A GROUP are healthier than "unmarried" men is nagging, some of it is also selection, meaning women are more likely to marry healthy men than sickly men. And they're more likely to marry wealthy men than poor men, and of course wealthy men can get better health care and personal trainers and the like. Also, men who died too young to marry skew statistics. Personally, I was healthier unmarried and I'm confident I'd be healthier than I am now had I never married.

Bit By Bit

I could stand to lose weight.

I spend way too much time playing butler, driver, and commuting to and from work to squeeze in much exercise.


My wife's sister's husband lost weight, tracking his steps with one of those special wristbands. (His wife is still obese and he was never obese, but that's another story). So my wife asked me if I wanted one.

I declined. I already know how to eat less and move more.

But after my wife's most prominent ex-boyfriend died suddenly of a heart attack, my wife didn't ask me again; she bought me one of the devices and informed me after the fact. Mind you, this was the woman who insisted on having our most recent exercycle removed from the house because it was "taking up space" (if you could see where it was, you'd  laugh because there was plenty of space). I think I'd used it a grand total of zero times after she insisted on buying it to replace the previous, broken cycle (which I had used regularly for quite a while). One of the reasons, besides my additional time-consuming responsibilities, that I didn't ever use it is that the kids kept playing on it and, in doing so, had removed some parts. I had tried to keep the parts close to the machine, but what was futile. So, the money spent on it was entirely wasted.


My wife apparently thought that by buying me this  wristband device, I would suddenly find the time and will to actually track and input my food consumption and to exercise more. Never mind that from the time I get home until I finally get to sleep late, I'm usually butler to her and the kids.

The other day, I joked about fooling the device by tying it to something else that was mobile. Her reaction made it very clear to me that I was not to joke about the device, ever.

I had previously told her not to buy it for me. She did anyway. And now she expects that I'm going to change my behavior because I have a device I didn't want in the first place. Oooookaaaaay.

If she REALLY cared about my health so much, she'd prepare at least some of my meals, instead of none of my meals. (Remember, she's a SAHM.)

If she REALLY cared about my health so much, she'd make lovemaking a priority, and not a rare and brief thing.

If she REALLY cared about my health so much, she'd change things a bit so I could get more sleep and have less stress.

Of course she has reasons to want me alive. I wait on her and the kids hand and foot. I take care of the finances and mail. I keep the kids from beating her up (when I'm around). I do chores and errands.

But not enough to do anything to promote my longevity herself. No. Only enough to try to get me to add more to my figurative plate while putting less on my literal plate.

News Flash: Men With ED Don’t Have Sex Often

Okay, so my headline is a little sarcastic. There’s a report out on a study suggesting that an active sex life in older men reduces the chances of ED.

It’s tempting, I’m sure, for older men to quote this to their wives who have been reluctant to engage in lovemaking. It might not be helpful, because if she doesn’t want to have sex to begin with, it might give her incentive to decrease the frequency even more hoping the man will get ED). Of course, anyone involved in research can tell you that correlation does not establish causation. How do we know that it wasn’t ED that led the men who had less sex to have less sex in the first place? Perhaps the things that caused ED (such as obesity) also turned off potential sexual partners. Or, in the case of women attracted to money – if a man has less testosterone and is therefore less aggressive or ambitious, he might find himself with ED and without a sexual partner – independent of each other, with both cause by the hormonal imbalance.

In a study that followed nearly 1,000 older Finnish men for five years, researchers found that those who were regularly having sex at the start of the study were at lower risk of developing erectile dysfunction (ED) by the study's end.

In fact, the more often the men had sex, the lower their ED risk.

The implication, say the researchers, is that men should be encouraged to stay sexually active into their golden years.

Hey, I don’t need any more encouragement.

Overall, those who said they had sex less than once per week were twice as likely to develop ED over the next five years as men who had sex at least once a week. Furthermore, compared with men who had sex three or more times per week, their ED risk was increased nearly four-fold.

A number of factors contribute to ED development, many of which could also affect a man's sexually activity -- such as age, diabetes and heart disease. However, after taking account of those factors, sexual activity itself remained linked to ED risk, Koskimaki's team found.

That’s key to making determinations.

It may be a matter of "use it or lose it," according to the researchers. Just as exercise boosts physical fitness, they note, regular sexual activity may help a man preserve his erectile function.

ED occurs when there are problems with blood flow to the penis. Regular sexual activity, Koskimaki's team writes, may help maintain healthy blood vessel function in the erectile tissue.

Sex is a form of exercise.

The news report doesn’t mention the marital and fidelity status of the participants, nor their masturbation frequency. The personal characteristics of a man’s wife just may have some correlation to whether or not he develops ED.

Along with what we know about prostate health, wives should take note: If you want a healthy husband, encourage him to have frequent erections and ejaculation. The best way to do this, of course, is to be his "girlfriend".