Published April 13, 2005 in the North Island MidWeek

Are you having trouble getting the man in your life to go in for a medical check up! Lots of men see going to the doctor as a weakness because it means there’s something they can’t handle. Many men have a "don’t ask don’t tell" policy. Prevention isn’t even a consideration. They see a physician only when they are experiencing serious symptoms. How do you motivate him to be more proactive about his health? Tell him that he deserves the rewards of being healthy, having more energy to do the things that he loves and to treat himself as well as he treats his wife and children.

To counter the idea that getting healthy is work, sacrifice and restriction help him by making changes for yourself as well. Get rid of the junk food in the house. Serve foods that are low in bad fats(margarines, trans fats, animal fats), high in good fats (olive oil), get the "white" (white rice, flour, breads, sweets, white potatoes) out of your diet and start a walking routine with him. Start serving green tea instead of coffee and using soy milk (organic and non GM) instead of cow’s milk (it is as good for his prostate as it is for your breasts).

Decrease your wine at meals to twice per week. It is a sugar and contributes to weight gain.

Ben, age 54, came into the office with his wife Sue one day. She had been seeing me for years and now he was ready to get more help for himself. He had high blood pressure and was taking Lipitor for his cholesterol. He really wanted to get off the medication he was taking as it was making him feel terrible. Aside from having no sex drive he felt that, in spite of taking the medication, he was heading straight for a heart attack. I explained to him that I wasn’t allowed to stop his medication but that with the medicines that I prescribed his blood pressure and cholesterol would come down, and that he could then discuss with his MD the possibility of weaning off the medication.

First of all I had him start Carlson’s Cod liver oil to not only raise his vitamin D status which decreases the incidence of prostate cancer but also makes the platelets less sticky, lessening his chances of having a stroke. It also lowers blood pressure, LDL’s and triglycerides and at the same time raises HDL’s, the good cholesterol. A wonder "drug" really, that everyone should be taking! A good quality calcium magnesium along with a bonito fish protein called Vasotensin lowered his blood pressure gradually over the next three months. The green tea extract called Thea Stat worked wonders at lowering his LDL cholesterol as well as raising his HDL cholesterol. I explained that as he got his diet and exercise program together we could wean him off some of the naturopathic remedies over the next 6-12 months as well.

I also encouraged him to add a few things to his yearly check up regime. Stool for occult blood is a stool test that detects blood in the stool that you can’t see. If this test is done on a yearly basis it helps in detecting colon cancer at an early stage making treatment curative! A yearly blood PSA test for the prostate along with a digital rectal exam will also help to detect problems early on. If prostate cancer is detected early men will die of something else rather than metastasis of prostate cancer, as it is often a very slow growing cancer. I want men to know their PSA numbers so they can compare themselves to themselves instead of an artificial "normal" PSA reading. Homocysteine and CRP are two blood tests that I order routinely in my practice for measuring heart disease risk. If homocysteine is between 5-6 and CRP is less than 1.0 then I can assure these men that they are not going to suffer from a heart attack anytime soon, especially if they are thinning their blood with fish oils and taking a B complex. Taking zinc along with selenium reduces the incidence of prostate cancer by a whopping 75% according to some urologists. These nutrients should be in the water supply as everyone needs them!

Sue and Ben were armed with some very simple medicines and Ben felt he could easily incorporate these few changes into his lifestyle. Over the next year Ben lost 15 pounds, his blood pressure returned to normal, his cholesterol readings normalized. His supplements regime was reduced to a calcium magnesium mineral combination, fish oils and a B complex. They both did a detox program several times per year to "change the oil in the engine" and his friends are asking him what he is doing to get that glow back to his face! His homocysteine had been at 8, but over the year with B complex, extra folic acid and B12 his levels had come down to 6.0. Now he feels confident to plan to travel in his retirement, knowing that he has a much lower risk of having a heart attack.