That's men for you Padraig O'Morain's guide to men's healthHere's a startling statistic for men: In 17 European countries, including Ireland, there are 190,500,000 men. Of these, 50 per cent will be dead before they are 75. Of the women in these countries, only 25 per cent will die before the age of 75.
In Ireland, the average Irishman can expect to die at 73 years of age.
Forget the statistics for a moment.
I recall being at the funeral some years ago of a man who had done a lot of good work and who was a generally decent human being, someone who made the world a better place by being here. Unfortunately, he ignored warnings to go to his doctor for a heart check-up.
The heart attack which killed him may have deprived him of 20 or more years of life, deprived his family of his company and presence and deprived those with whom he dealt of a positive force in their lives.
That's the flesh and blood reality behind the health status of men and it is one with which too many people are familiar.
What's going on? Here are some possibilities:
Relatively little is done to make us men aware of health issues. For instance, newspapers and magazines are saturated with articles about women's health but men's health is a poor runner-up as a topic.
Men are reluctant to go to the doctor. We complain about the cost and about having to take time off work. Many of us will only go if we are dragged along by the woman in our lives.
We seem more likely than women to downplay the importance of our symptoms.
We are afraid to look for help. A study carried out for the South Eastern Health Board last year found three reasons for this.
One is the fear that we actually have something serious wrong with us. Our way to avoid dealing with that fear, all too often, is simply to avoid finding out.
The second reason is the fear of being sent to hospital - some of us would rather risk death than spend hours and hours in an A&E department.
The third reason is our embarrassment at having an intimate, personal examination carried out by the doctor.
As a result, bowel cancer and prostate cancer, for instance, may be diagnosed too late - and it's worth knowing that there is now a simple blood test, called a PSA test, which involves taking a blood sample from your arm to test for possible prostate cancer.
Men are more likely to be involved in fatal traffic accidents than women and are more likely to drink and eat too much.
Essentially, I suppose, our attitude to possible illness is to "soldier on". And is there a clue in that to the origins of our reluctance to seek medical help? Could that reluctance be an outcome of roles into which men were forced - or into which we forced ourselves - throughout history?
After all, you could hardly fight a war against the people on the other side of the hill if all the men started saying, "Look, sorry, but the doctor says I've to watch my blood pressure and, frankly, taking part in a battle sends my stress levels sky high."
Nor could the "dark, Satanic mills" of the Industrial Revolution have generated the profits their owners demanded if the men - and indeed, women and children - who worked in them took the morning off to go to the doctor.
So there may be historical reasons as to why we were encouraged to see ourselves as tough guys, unworried about wimpish things like the state of our health.
But it was not, let's face it, for the good of our health that we were encouraged in this belief - rather it was for the advancement of the interests of those who benefited from our blood, sweat and tears.
So the act of going to the doctor or of cutting out unhealthy behaviours can be quite radical in its own way. It involves rejection by us of roles imposed on us in the past.
More importantly, though, it can keep us alive, in better health, for longer.
pomorain@irish-times.ie
Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.