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Men’s health is something of a personal responsibility to each and every man. It encompasses physical, mental, and social health, where mental includes emotional (no brain, no emotions).
At the same time, it is a place where we can help them.
It deals with their exercise routine for each day. It deals with their stress management strategies. It deals with their social life. More young men continue to fall in each of those categories of health with increases in obesity, depression and suicide, and lack of friends and social connectivity.
It is about self-management, self-care, and public presentation. How do I look to the outside world of my peers? It is also about the best men’s by which to remain healthy in spite of difficult circumstances.
If a man remains unkempt, unwashed, uncouth, and unwarranted, that amounts to his own problems, but with spillover issues to others around him. Without dietary and exercise discipline, a man can grow around the waist and lose muscular definition.
Lacking proper mental self-care, men can wander into the yonder woods of mental life with isolation and subsequent depression and anxiety issues. With poor efforts in building on the ties and relationships with others, professionally and personally, men can lose friends, even family.
Nothing in life is free. Same for family member ties and friendships. The ties can fray and the ships can sink.
Think about social life: sometimes, it is not pleasant to be around a rude person. Other times, the person is not rude but acting in an inappropriate way for a particular venue, though some overlap with rudeness there. This amounts to a certain social health.
So, this becomes a question for the men. Do you want to be any of these types of guys? The one with weight and so health issues. No one should be shamed for their weight. However, we should not deny the effects of higher BMI on health.
Same with the diet. Diet is important. Imagine all the empty calories consumed in this culture leading to lower life spans and shorter health spans.
That is today, even if a man lives longer than the average, he will live even unpleasantly for those short number of years.
Also, men live shorter than women as men’s poor health habits lead to shorter lifespans than women’s, too.
Mental health is being talked about more and more. It is helping provide a sense of being part of a larger community of caring individuals. Men need more of that.
Males with masculine identities work best in male company and with male therapists for men’s mental health problems.
But men need to get out into the world of these three areas, as at the end of the day these are their personal responsibilities.
If part of a faith community or if part of a secular church, then these amount to their own responsibilities.
On top of that personal responsibility, which many masculine males prefer and even need (need to feel needed), communities and families can work proactively with men and boys to work on these issues in their lives.
Most people notice issues with men. Once past the socially dysfunctional, personally abusive, and socially degenerative epithets thrown against men’s characters, the veneer of mockery gives way to non-functional young men.
We need them. They need to know it. They have begun, sadly and unfortunately, to opt out in various domains after the slow deterioration in their motivation for integration into the society at large.
If we work to help them get some bearings on social life, in mental life, and in physical life areas, we can begin to reverse an unhealthy trend.
A trend, typically, indicative of an increase in crime associated most often with males, failure in school, unemployment, the burden on the social safety nets, and damage to families and with all the aforementioned damage to communities.
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Image Credits: Pixabay