We often hear that “Men consult their family doctors pretty rarely than women do, notwithstanding the fact that they are much more adhesive to accidents, violence, and disease.” . They have a reputation of being poor patients, intolerant of pain or discomfort. Added to this are fear, denial and embarrassment. Researchers believe that from a young age men are taught to hold their heads high and get tough.

Admitting to pain or any other problems is seen as a confession to being weak and threatens male pride and machismo. Medicinal herbs, diet pills , therapeutic fruits, meditation, yoga, exercise have helped them in one way or the other to maintain fitness. Men are disreputably cagey about attending the doctors surgery compared to women.

 

Possibly because of an outmoded sense of stoicism or pride, many men will not seek medical attention for their ailments until their physical condition seriously worsens. Obviously this is not sensible, yet men continue to eschew the doctor except for the times when there is no other alternative remaining. Why is this? Lets explore some of the reasons in this article.

 

Traditional Role: “One reason why men do not attend the doctor is because it has been the traditional role of women to bring the children to the doctor and to look after the health of the children”, he acknowledges. “That connection between mother and child could exclude men from familiarity with the surgery”. It comes down to a conditioning thing that could take another generation to resolve, he says.

Stoicism: Male traits like aggression, stoicism, competitiveness and emotional reticence as barriers that prevent men from looking after their health properly. Mens rigidly stoical stance contributes to some physical and mental disorders that are disproportionately experienced by men

 

Refutation and Fatalism: Male unwillingness to confront health issues may be attributed to a combination of refutation and fatalism. Men do not want to go looking for medical problems in case that is what they find. They would rather prefer to seek health advice from friends or by reading.

 

Lack of Familiarity: Basically, its always the women, who generally are in contact with the doctors, between attending for gynecological reasons or to get smear tests done, and bringing sick children to the surgery. Men, on the other hand, are more apprehensive. The lack of familiarity with their doctor is also a factor that puts off men attendance in the clinic.

Pain threshold: One reason why men and women respond to doctors so differently might lie in their varying responses to pain itself. Men and women clearly experience different pain thresholds and this influence both how they deal with pain and how they respond to treatment.

 

Research has shown that there could be physical reasons why the stereotype of men being like babies about pain compared to women might be true. It seems that women routinely report feeling much higher levels of pain than men do, which implies that one or other gender is not truly representing their true pain experiences.

Less Attention: Generally the clinics and hospitals are pretty women-oriented. Most often hospitals and clinics do not feel like male-friendly places, causing men to shy away even more from visiting the doctor altogether. Thus the feeling of ignominy prohibits them from visiting such places.

 

There seem to be metabolic differences between how men and women deal with these drugs. There may come a day when the choice of a painkilling drug is at least partly based on a patients sex.

 

Impotence: This attributes to a large section of society that prohibits them to visit their GPs. Two main reasons: Incomplete or no knowledge about it AND the embarrassment caused due to it are the main reasons behind this.

 

So, try to eliminate these shortcomings from you, check back to the clinics regularly. Clearly the benefits of visiting the clinics outweigh the possibility of any disease. So think again… Are we going the right way??