You Still Have Time
A podcast for older adults, dedicated to meaningful topics and motivating those who believe that getting older is a chance to keep growing.
You Still Have Time
Men's Health Crisis
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Men in the U.S. live about 5–6 years less than women and have higher mortality in most leading causes of death.
- Men die by suicide at roughly four times the rate of women and had substantially higher COVID‑19 death rates (about 1.6 times, roughly 60% more deaths).
- Many serious conditions for men (hypertension, diabetes, colon and prostate cancer) are “silent” until advanced, so skipping routine care is especially risky
This episode is a roundtable conversation on why men underuse health care, how that increases preventable illness and early death, and what might help change that pattern.
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Hello, and welcome to your host. I'm Hope, and I'm Harold. And we'd like to thank you all for joining us once again today. Uh to listen to a special episode. That's what I think it is anyway. Uh go ahead, Harold.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I this is an episode that was the impetus of this episode was an article that we saw in the New York recent New York Times about the crisis in men's health care. And uh I just thought that it would be important to bring men together in this podcast to talk about the situation.
SPEAKER_00And as a result, I am not part of the discussion today. But I don't want that to discourage. I don't want neither the topic nor the fact that you know it would be three guys talking about it uh to discourage women from listening to this because women, as I think we all know, play a very important role in men's health care.
SPEAKER_03And you will hear that in our discussion that we will make specific points about the value of having women. I I don't want to say nah, but push us, encourage us, encourage us.
SPEAKER_00Encourage. And I think that most women understand what we're talking about. So I encourage everyone to listen, and hopefully you will find the episode uh insightful, that you'll learn something from it, it may make you think about something you hadn't thought before, but bottom line, we hope that whomever is listening to it, male or female, that it will encourage us all to take better care of ourselves. And because that's the only way we'll still have time. So let's talk about men's health.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to the podcast. I know both of you, but could you introduce yourselves to the audience?
SPEAKER_01I'm Charlie. Uh I guess I've been on this planet for 74 years. Uh spent time working with ATT. Uh currently, my wife and I own a hair salon in Hillsboro, New Jersey. Uh, we've probably been in that business for the last 22 years with about nine employees.
SPEAKER_02Ron. Good morning. I'm Ron Carson. Um known Harold and his wife since she's 1980s. Um, I grew up in the Bronx myself. Um and um I'm also a product of communication. I work for New York Telephone, 9X, Mellow, Atlantic, and then eventually Verizon. And I had a 33-year run with them and then went on to teach at a local college. Um and I'm in the midst of trying to write a book on education and the failure of education.
SPEAKER_03Ron, you have written a book.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this one's on the failure advocate. The other one's associated with um is college really necessary? Or could you will go in and work in a trades trade school or technical program?
SPEAKER_03The impetus for this podcast I saw an article recently in the New York Times, Sunday magazine section, and it was about how do we get men to get engaged in the healthcare. And and they showed uh a there's a facility in Cleveland where they have uh pool tables, they have uh big screen TVs, all of these things that they have to do to get men uh to come to a doctor. And and Hope asked me, say, why are men so reluctant to s to seek you know medical care? And I said, let me let me just look at the statistics and see what what the statistics say about men in health care. And I'm sure some of you know this already. Men live on average five to six years less than women. Native American men and black men even shorter than that. Men die by suicide nearly four times more than women. Um men face mortality rates in eight of the ten leading causes of death. And during COVID, men died sixty died at a rate of sixty percent higher than women. You know, one of the reasons that they give is that for most men after pediatric care, the next time they go to a doctor is when something goes wrong. So, and I just thought about my my own health journey. When I was a kid, I had asthma. So the doctor would come to the house and give me, you know, the little thing that you spray and I was good. As I outgrew the asthma, I never had to go to the doctor again until I got a job, and that was my next visit for you know, I would go for a physical, but other than that, I never had any experience with a doctor, and I never remember my father going to a doctor. So I just curious how either one of you could jump in. What what was your history? Do you remember going to a doctor as a young person?
SPEAKER_01Only when I probably had the flu or some sort of virus, my mother would take me to the doctor and I would get the penicillin shot. Probably the only time. No real I was sure we had to go for uh checkups and you get the measle shots and the chicken bob shots, all the vaccines. But probably when you reach adolescent, I don't think there was any need to go to a doctor. Well, I mean, I'm sure there was a need, but you know, you pretty much weather the storm if you had a cold or something like that.
SPEAKER_03Do you ever remember your dad going to a doctor?
SPEAKER_01Our family wasn't like that. I don't remember. I'm sure he I would like to think he did. I know he was before I was born, he was extremely sick in the hospital, but I think he got a Mickey in his drink or something like that. At least that's that's the story I hear from the background. You know how culturally how everything is in the is behind closed doors. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Leave the skeletons in the closets. Yep.
SPEAKER_03How about you, Ron?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, in my my case was a lot different. My father was exposed to radiation during World War II, as most of the Negro troops were intentionally, and he developed uh leukemia from it. And so my doctor, my dad was sent the doctor's at least once a month, uh having a situation, you know, getting treatment for leukemia and stuff like that. And then um, my mom, uh, there were five of us, my four sisters and myself. And if we sneeze, we were at a doctor's office, or the doc Dr. Sussman was there at the house with his black bag and checking up on us. And the joke was Mrs. Carson, it's okay once in a while when the kids sneeze, all right? But um, yeah, we always got we always went for medical care. And um I was never reluctant about going to the doctor uh back then or even now.
SPEAKER_03So so these these numbers don't really speak to you. I mean, as far as you know, the excuses that men give for not going. I mean, because one of the major excuses is that society suggests that men toughen it up. You know, in other words, you know you you're showing the signs of weakness if you go to the doctor.
SPEAKER_01Well, how you know, a a lot of the things that we we come across now is like just hidden hidden illness. So you don't really feel it. Like, you know, diabetes is a big thing. You wouldn't really know if you had diabetes unless you went to the doctor. Somebody might say, Oh, you feel a little sluggish, you know, and now maybe we're a little more educated. If you got a colon problem, you wouldn't know about your colon.
SPEAKER_03Not unless you went to a regular physical.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if there's a whole, I mean, unless you're in that routine, there's not a lot of people go there for a physical every year or something like that. I mean, I only get a physical now because I'm on Medicare.
SPEAKER_03Well, and and I and I guess that's the point of uh of this conversation that we're having, because as you just described, many of these killers are silent. You wouldn't know uh that you, you know, your your blood pressure is a little high, or your your A1C is high, or that you have polyps that might be uh malignant, or that you wouldn't know any of this until the situation got to a point where it may be too late. And and I guess the whole conversation regarding men and their health is that unlike women who usually interact with the healthcare system very early because of gynecological care, they they're involved early on. For men, there's no on-ramp. There's nothing that says, okay, this is the time you need to start going to a doctor regularly. And to your point, Charlie, you know, we talked about this a little earlier. Everybody knows about breast cancer and breast cancer awareness. Very few people talk about prostate cancer and prostate cancer awareness. So there might be uh systemic failures where women's diseases just uh I I I'm I'm not saying that there's any uh planned, but it's just that women's diseases get more attention than men's diseases.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I would agree with that. And um it's just I I you know I I I just to give you perhaps one of the things that I had to go through that I was ignorant of. I had a good primary who was very concerned about making sure all the all everything was dying. I was poaching 60 years old and I never had a colonoscopy. All right. Probably didn't pay any mind that you're supposed to get it at fifty. Was pretty much, I would just say, ignorant to the fact that when you were supposed to have that child. Well, what my primary did with daughters talking about toughen it out, she sent me a certified letter saying you need to get a colonoscopy. So certified kind of means to me it must be pretty serious if you took the time to do this. Got my colonoscopy found out. I had I had so many polyps I had to go for two days. Plus, I had one that they couldn't do through the colonoscopy. As a result of that, I had to have surgery and they took away about 12 inches of my colon in order to remove this here particular polymer. Well, now once you get into the system, you could go on a regular basis because you don't want to go through that again. But you know, it took a good primary who was more concerned about my health. Otherwise, I might have gone to my 70s and never had a colonotrophy. And right now I could have been a strong victim of colon cancer because my doctor said if I had waited another six months, I probably would have had to do some sort of colon, uh some radiation or some chemo in order to get this result. So that's one of the things I think is you gotta have a good primary. You got to tell the primary, please test me for everything under the sun, because I found out through the years that blood work is only as good as what you tell the doctor. If you don't want to communicate with your doctor, then you're gonna run into troubles probably later on in the years. That's my experience on that. And I do have another one, but I'll talk about that later.
SPEAKER_03Let's hear from Ron.
SPEAKER_02You know, um as I was listening to Charlie, I I don't think that this kind of information as we were growing up in the 50s and 60s was part of um our education. No, it wasn't. All right, you went you went to the doctor when you had a you know something wrong with you, but in terms of colonoscopy and stuff like that, I didn't find out about that until I developed colitis um in 1982, and and you know, I kept having issues and through asking questions here and there, I said, Well, you need to go for a colonoscopy. I'm like, what the heck is a colonoscopy? We we we went to the doctor because we got cut or we broke our wrists or we hurt something, or you got a boo-boo in the head, or whatever.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but it better be it better be blood.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we there was never, I don't recall anything about preventive medicine growing up.
SPEAKER_03No, no such thing.
SPEAKER_02And and I mentioned we did have we had a nurse and a dentist in my grammar school. So the dental aspect of it I was aware of, and and the nurse, you know, if if somebody was sneezing in the class, you go the teacher would say go to the nurse's office. That's all I could tell you. But with again, it wasn't common. We didn't see advertisement on TV, we didn't hear the terminologies that we hear now, right? Right, right. So on down the line. So uh and and as Charlie, you know, PASSA was a cultural thing. Um going to the dentist, you you were like a wimp, or not the dentist, more so to the doctor. Oh, come on, man, just shake it off, just shake it off. I remember uh getting a concussion, you know. We were playing off the point, I think it was called at the time. And I tripped and hit the wall and had a lump of that stuck out about eight inches. Oh, just go home and put some ice on it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, I just, you know, while we're having this conversation, I'm just thinking, like, obviously, our generation, we were informed about a lot of a lot of things that could be going on with our body. But I'm now listening to all of this, I'm a little concerned about how much is the younger generation dealing with it? Are they concerned like like we, you know, now, you know, we're obviously we're feeling all the effects of illness or anything going on with our body. But do the younger people like, I mean, they seem like they're going through the same thing that we went through, but there's a lot more education out there or information for them to find out.
SPEAKER_03And Charlie, that's exactly why I wanted to do this podcast because you're 100% correct. We weren't aware of all of these illnesses. We weren't, but today there's that's not an excuse. There's no reason for a young man turning. Well, we we call them young, a young man turning 50 years old. I I think they may have even dropped the number for a prostate exam.
SPEAKER_01Um they have they have 45? It could be 45, might even be 40.
SPEAKER_03Right. There's no reason for you not to get a prostate exam, uh, not to know about it. And and all of the other illnesses that that we didn't know anything about, hypertension, high blood pressure, A1C, we didn't we didn't know. No, no, we didn't know, but but that's no longer an excuse.
SPEAKER_01It's no longer an excuse.
SPEAKER_03So so one of the reasons I think that for men, we need to start at least have this discussion. If you have sons, if you have nephews, if you have stepsons, you have friends who have sons, uh this is something and start to think about the quality of your health care. And you don't need to wait until you're 50. You could start it a lot earlier. Because a lot of times, if you wait until you're 50, this is something that maybe you've had for the last 30 years.
SPEAKER_01Harold's well aware that I had uh, well, I had two brothers. One passed away. But my youngest one, I used to tell him all the time well, when you're about in your late 40s, you're gonna start feeling these little aches and pains. But because you're not used to going to the doctor, you think they're all gonna go away. You get a little bit older, they become a little more intense, they last a little longer, but you still says, hey, they're gonna go away. Now you're in your 60s and they're not really going away, but you still won't go to the doctor because now the fear factor has kicked in that the doctor's gonna tell you something you don't want to hear. And I think that's what holds a lot of men back is the fear factor that they're gonna just tell me something bad. But something it could be prevented if you win. And you know, and I think both of us probably or all three of us have probably had incidents where if we didn't go to the doctor, we could be in some serious, some serious situations right now. And that could be your colon, it could be your heart. We lost somebody on a prostrate because he thought it was gonna clear up and the cancer was moving all through his body and eventually took his life. I have a brother who had a blood clot and he says, Well, I'll go to the doctor tomorrow because you know, but I'm feeling the same symptoms the last time. Well, he didn't make it to the mall. So it's it's I mean, you know, yes, you will you be called a wimp because you're overreacting, but I think your life is more important than any than being called a wimp. And I think we just have to accept that, that your life is important.
SPEAKER_02That that's I agree. Um and and yet still, I mean, we we didn't know about well, my family, you know, or specialists. It was either the doctor or the emergency room that you ran to. Okay, nobody told us, you know, to go see a specialist for this. Oh, we went to the eye doctor or the dentist. But again, even going to the eye doctor, you it it was prompted by maybe your teacher saying, You can't see the board, you can't read this, or you know, or they recognize our our handwriting, something was off about it. But in terms of uh evaluating our, I don't think we had enough information provided to us. I and I think that was a major, major, major problem. And I think it needs to, it needs to come to the forefront a lot more in the church, okay, in the schools, at the jobs, whatever it happens to be. I think these things have to be uh recognized and and and brought to the forefront because we we think we're immune. We we're all you know, we all have a lot of people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we do, you know. I mean, there's still some things that I think I'm immune to.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. There was a uh a prostate cancer commercial. Was it a prostate cancer for during the Super Bowl? Hope uh made me aware of it. I don't think, I don't think 10 years ago there would have been a men's health specific commercial during the Super Bowl. So to your point, Ron, yeah, it needs to be a full front attack, full frontal attack, like you said, churches, schools, governed PSAs. We see PSAs for breast cancer, we see PSAs for uh menopause, we see we don't see PSAs for male specific issues. I mean, you know, yes, we see heart, we see A1C, but I'm talking about sometimes male specific issues to get men off the dime and out there being proactive. And you mentioned this earlier, Ron proactive, preventative, not reactive. Because once, you know, everybody, you know, that that doesn't take a lot, you know. breathe and you go to the hospital and you they find out you got three blocked arteries. I mean that that's that's no but going to the doctor when you're feeling fine. I found out enough for instance eye care. Eye care was not I mean I I've always worn glasses but it wasn't until of course my wife pushed me to see uh the ophthalmologist and looking at my eyes oh you know glaucoma okay oh and by the way you got cataracts coming okay all right so what do I do okay you take these drops I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't started going to the doctor so what what we're all saying in different ways is that the information is out there unless you have your head buried in the sand today you have no reason to be able to say oh I didn't know you didn't know because you didn't want to know well I like Ron had said earlier I I still believe there's two two components to make sure that you do go to the doctor one you got to definitely have a good primary who actually cares about their patients and not just oh let me wait for the next person to come in and you need either a good friend wife spouse partner whatever who just sort of bugs you and nagging you to do these things. Did you did you say nags you?
SPEAKER_02I'm saying the word nagging because that's the only way we respond is when somebody's nagging you where you start to raise your voice and says why don't you leave me alone I will go to the doctor and then they might have to take you by the hand and walk you to the doctor and those are the kind of things that pushes men out of the door and if you don't have that going for you if you're gonna rely on yourself to do it I don't believe it's gonna happen because like you said Ron we're invincible we think we're invincible and we're gonna live forever that's just my opinion and I'm in agreement with you and um again you know I as you were speaking I said can you imagine Nike had integrated some kind of information about health into their commercials you know um and and again maybe we need to advocate more for this we need to so say hey guys you know because they don't they don't think outside the box they think sneakers money and and who can we get to wear the Nike emblem and I just use Nike I mean we could Adidas you could use the rest of them but what can you imagine the impact they would have because our our sports is it in in terms of our our culture and and and our young people and that opportunity um I'm so glad to see now that the concussion issue you know they change the helmets they have the tent they pull you right off the field I remember my helmet being split wide open and I just put another helmet on and that was it um you know so that is hopefully our young people are paying attention attention to this but what are we doing um in terms of not just having this kind of conversation well what can we do to go public Harold I love the idea but who's listening to your podcast?
SPEAKER_03Well I mean the as I as Hope and I always say in these podcasts you do what you can do. I don't have a lot of money I don't you know if I had a lot of money I could put up billboards I could I could you know say open up a free clinic but each one of us do does what he or she can. That's all we can do. And I'm sure Ron and Charlie you each one of you interact with young men. You do what you can do you let them know that hey you are not invincible that you do need to take care of your own health because if you don't you're gonna find out sooner or later that you should have and that's all we can do. That's all that's all we can do.
SPEAKER_01I I just gonna say that you know to do preventive medicine is probably one of the toughest things that anybody's gonna ever get used to because we can talk to a younger person uh about life finance health anything and they're not going to really listen until it affects them. And we kind of we kind of grew up that way and I think every generation sort of grows up that way until something happens to them. That's the only way oh you know oh the old timer doesn't know what he's talking about. Yeah my I just had a conversation this week with my brother my brother needs a hip replacement don't want to deal with it goes through AFib all the time in the last six or seven months he's been back to the hospital to get his whatever they do for AFib three or four times. I says when was the last time you had your PSA test now he's about 57 56 a year and a half ago I said well what was the number four then why are you bleeding do you know what your PSA well I haven't been in a year and a half because I'm busy worrying about my heart and I don't have time to worry about my posture now my brother is not an ignorant person but that's how he believes he needs to deal with it. The blood wasn't good enough for him because he's worrying he said well I need my heart well you know I told I've I've told him many a times I gave him an update about this here person who died from prostate cancer and you know and I says hey your your PSA might be a 10 it might be a 12 now and this could be some serious things going on there you need to get checked well you know I got a doctor who called about something else but because I didn't take the test I don't want to answer the phone to me for a person who goes to a doctor every four months like what the hell is wrong with you? Excuse my language but what the hell is wrong with you? You know it's like it to me it no longer makes sense and I've said since I've had medical insurance if I gotta pay for it I might as well use it and a lot of people are holding on today they're paying they complain about the rates but then they won't use the insurance I mean it's it's just a mind blowing yeah it it and and I guess again and it sounds like a broken record here but that's that's what prompted this whole conversation because what is it going to take I mean Charlie you had r uh related that story to me earlier on and especially in your case Charlie having had a brother that passed away prematurely you would think you would think that that would be enough of a signal to him to say you know what maybe I can get on top of this well we as a result I think as a result of um my brother passing away both of us started taking going to the doctor a little more serious okay okay my brother died of a well a blood clot that moved up to his I guess his heart or whatever yeah right and so he had you know died of cardiac arrest because he decided he wanted to wait well first of all he was on blood thinner he had a uh a doctor friend who told him he could get off the blood thinner but he got to exercise his hips were shot he couldn't even walk up steps anymore so how much exercise can he do and and his hips because he needed a hip shrimp he needed a hip replacement but he he didn't want to do it and then COVID came along and then all of a sudden he couldn't do it. So he came back didn't drive his his vehicle for over two and a half years which I found out because he didn't share anything with us otherwise I definitely would have been in this case because you know I'm eight years older and I'm going through all the doctors and everything like that. Wouldn't even deal with that so he got the blood card twice moved up gone. He called my younger brother and says hey I think I got the same thing I had the last time I'll go to the hospital in the morning and like I said earlier morning never came I died in the ambulance so we both took this here thing next thing I know I'm getting uh the I'm I'm getting the uh the checks in my legs to see if I got any black blocks and you know but once again I you had to react because of somebody else's problem and somebody who was close to you. It's it's just sad that we have to experience it first before we we start taking it serious. And you know and then some people don't even believe it's gonna still go away. And those are the people I really am concerned about is the ones who think they're gonna wake up tomorrow and the cancer's gonna disappear or I'm gonna feel better. You know my bones going to heal overnight you know or something like that. I'm just worried about those people You know I had a doctor who told me um I might be on dialysis in uh six years. I said well what kind of doctor tell you that I might be on the transplant list in six years.
SPEAKER_03They don't give 80 year old people transplants you're a billionaire well wow it's a lot yeah it's a lot it's a lot and um as you said earlier um it's a it's a struggle certainly a struggle uh I'm not suggesting that one podcast is going to convince everyone that okay now I'm gonna take charge of my health but uh and keeping with uh I do what I can I'm doing what I can and I'm certain that when you do interact with young people young men you probably tell them or if they ask you and I know Ron if they ask Ron he's gonna I mean Ron has been pretty quiet today you know but I do but but I know Ron has gone through some health a couple of uh health issues through his life and I'm certain that a young person interacting with Ron would walk away they may not want to listen but they're gonna hear it anyway.
SPEAKER_02Charlie so last year I had open heart surgery and I and I keep going to back to my doctor that I had been saying since 2004 hey Dr. G, I'm not feeling right you're okay. It's 9-11 related this and I said no it's not it's not I advocated for myself and I said this is not going to work and so I found another doctor but you know a brother at church he says hey go check out my doctor and sure enough two days later I was having open heart surgery had I not spoken up so sometimes you know we get comfortable with a doctor we get comfortable with this and this and that we don't want to offend them but I'd rather offend them and not have six feet of dirt on top of me.
SPEAKER_03And I was always afraid to talk to a doctor now I get in the doctor's office and we're gonna have a conversation right I first thing I ask where'd you go to school what did you do here that this and there and that and this and that so how do we how do we get our young people to understand you know Harold doing something get a bunch of young people on your podcast we have plans to do just that good we want to have sort of an intergenerational conversation with young people about a lot of things so yes we plan to do that also we will hope that you know you and Charlie and people like you guys will be advocates for preventative health proactive health control or health whatever you want to call it I think we probably could um to start to wrap this up I don't know you guys have any last words before we uh you know any messages that you would have if you if somebody was young listening to you guys hopefully somebody younger you know what it doesn't have to be somebody young it could it could be somebody old yeah I I you know just to piggyback on what Ron was saying about being your own advocate it's you you really got to ask your doctors uh the question I didn't realize until quite a few years ago that if you don't expect people say well why didn't my doctor tell me I had this wrong with me well blood work is only going to tell you so much because the doctor is just going to prescribe a certain thing but if you need to have your A1C tested or your PSA or your creactin or what any of these here particular things, sometimes you just have to say hey could you give me a full worker otherwise they're just checking basic stuff.
SPEAKER_01You know we know they're going to ask you put that little thing on your chest and you know tell you to breathe and you know and inhale but if you you almost have to become a doctor yourself when you go to the doctor. And everybody should go as early as possible. I mean the the beauty about being young is you don't have to go as often you know you can go once a year maybe every 18 months because again they'll tell you well I don't think I need to see you for another year because you look fine. But with us you know after you start getting past a certain age that Medicare age I'm gonna call you know you're going to some doctor every three months every four months three months every month you're going to subdoctor well yeah well well subdoctor if you got to a doctor like Ron says he got to go once a month for a doctor anybody who's like 40 or 50 once a year might be all that's required at least you'll know what's going on it says oh well nothing's changed. The only advice I could give to anybody who's going to any you know who should be going to the doctor don't wait don't wait till you like oh like you're miserable and you have to go to the emergency room.
SPEAKER_02Yeah yeah yeah Ron keep doing what you're doing because you you're you're saying uh it's small but you know it grows and it grows it grows I think we're gonna leave it there because this is obviously a conversation that we're gonna continue to have I'd like to thank Ron and Charlie for sharing their stories with us and I'd like to thank you I hope you got something of value out of this conversation about men's health.
SPEAKER_03If you have any questions you can email us at you still have time podcast at gmail.com you can send us a text message you will see the link in the show notes you can leave us a voicemail message on speed type which is also in the show notes follow us wherever you listen to podcasts and remember to have time thank you see you soon
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