Masculinity vs Health

[If you're in Johannesburg on June 17, please do join us for a live event where we'll be talking about concrete steps anyone can take to improve their health. I'm hoping that in honour of Men's Health Month and Father's day we can get some men to turn out, but all are welcome.] 

I write these words ten days after the untimely demise of South African journalist and activist Eusebius McKaiser. I didn’t know him personally, but many of my friends did. They are still dealing with the shock of his sudden and unfortunate passing at the young age of 45 from what appears to have been an epileptic seizure.

I don’t know Eusebius’ medical history. Fatal seizures, though rare, can happen to anyone who suffers from epilepsy for reasons that are not well understood. But from one perspective, Eusebius’ death follows a pattern. Over the past few years, I have seen people - men in particular - who are very good at what they do, very passionate about life in general, but who end up passing away far too early from health related issues. Could some of these deaths have been prevented had those people prioritised their health?

Among these now deceased men are people I would consider close friends and role models who only started to think about their health after they received a diagnosis.  Our health is something we take for granted until we lose it. Think about the last time you had a health issue. I recently had a bad case of the flu. For half a day I could barely move; my energy was so low I couldn’t even read. When I started to feel better it took me at least a day or two before I could even think about work, family, recreation, or anything else. When I didn't have my health, I had very little. If I did not have a strong support system of people who could take care of me when I couldn't take care of myself, things might have been even worse. 

When we don’t have our health we don’t really have access to anything. 

Intellectually, most of us know this. But few of us - few men in particular - act on it. Given that there is data showing that men tend to have worse health outcomes than women in general, why do men seem to have a hard time acting on the fact that our health is such a fundamental priority?  

I don’t know the answer to this question, but I suspect it might have something to do with how men are socialised. Men are seen as the primary earners of the family. We hyper-identify with our jobs. We take pride in being the "bread winner" or something equivalent to that. (Earlier generations might have used more pejorative terms like "wage slave" which gives that identity another connotation.) To the extent men take pride in other things, those tend to be the products of being a "good worker" - money, cars, gadgets, etc. Worrying about health is not seen as masculine. "Suck it up" and "I'll sleep when I'm dead" are things that I not only heard as a young man in a hyper-masculine environment (St. Albans School for Boys), they are statements I repeated to others before I knew any better. 

For men like myself (and perhaps Eusebius too), our sense of self comes from being part of movements for social justice, from using whatever power we have to work in solidarity with those who don’t have power. There’s nothing wrong with that. But maintaining our health should also be a priority, if for no other reason than because without our health we are not able to make those contributions to society. It's hard to say much about any particular case, but when I think of all my friends who have died in the past few years from cancer or heart disease or COVID or something else, it seems safe to say that some of those deaths could have been prevented had those individuals been taking better care of their health. 

Is there a danger of taking this too far? At what point are we worrying about our health too much? The answer to that question will depend on the individual. Hypochondria is a thing, so yes, there is a potential problem of being dangerously obsessed with one's health. But for most of us, that point is so far away that it’s irrelevant. We need to do more to prioritise our health so that we can be better activists, better fathers, better partners and better people.

And the good news is that it’s not that difficult. There has been a lot of research in recent years about lifestyle interventions to reverse disease. The same categories of things tend to crop up - among them diet (or navigating our toxic food environments, as I like to think about it), exercise, fasting, sunlight, and relationships. Specific recommendations will vary depending on a person's needs, priorities and current health status.

It's never too late to learn these things and it's never too late to take time to prioritise your health. If you're in Johannesburg the weekend of June 17th, and interested in taking the next steps on your health journey do join us.