Erin O'Hara: naturopath and wellness expert on how we can boost men's overall health

June marks Men's Health Awareness Month - leaving plenty of room to discuss how things can be improved.

Research shows men face significant health challenges and often experience poorer health outcomes and shorter life expectancies compared to women.

Naturopath and wellness expert Erin O'Hara unpacked the contributing factors and health conditions behind these stats - and revealed how things could be fixed.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks AB.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
We'll talk wellness. Erin O'Hara is with us. Good morning,
Good morning, and of course it's Men's Health Awareness Month
and Jones, we're gonna hammle these guys, get them sorted.
Tell me about the kind of health challenges that men
can often experience.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
I feel like, in just general sense, women's health has
talked about a lot more, but actually, if you look
at the research, men actually face significant health issues and
often experience poorer health outcomes and shorter life expectancy than women.
So it's interesting that we put more emphasis on women's
health than men when actually we need to put more

(00:51):
emphasis on men's south in general, and the things that
are affecting men the most are things like heart disease, cancer,
have high rates of suicide, accidents and injuries, and also
chronic diseases which sometimes in quite often can be preventable
as well.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Okay, so where do you start then, Well.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
It's about taking care of your health and looking at
like what are the risk factors, and men's sex hormones
as well, which is testoscerone as well as chromosomes. There
is some predisposed increased mortality from that, so there is
a genetic component, but also looking at other factors that
affect men's health, which can be risky behaviors, the things

(01:32):
like excess of alcohol consumption, unsafe driving, maybe hazards in
the workplace. They tend to have a higher risk in
the workplace with maybe dangerous occupations, increased risk of injury
and accidents. And also there's that factor of delayed seeking
help when something's not quite right, which seems to be

(01:53):
like the male mentality, especially in New Zealand, of she'll
be right, but actually, when it comes to your health
and wellbeing, she'll be right, it's really not good enough
and commonly can lead to an increase in more serious
illness and something that might have been preventable also then
leads into something that is not preventable if we leave
it too long.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, it's tricky, isn't it, Because when you become an adult,
you really sort of have to be responsible for yourself
and responsible for your own health and things like that.
And I'm sure that there's a lot of partners and
wives out there, kind of girlfriends, maybe your boyfriends saying
I've been trying to get my partner to go and
get this sorted or looked at and things like that,
but we often can be a little bit reluctant about it.

(02:36):
So how do we get men to be more proactive?

Speaker 3 (02:39):
I think it's about knowing that if you're busy, that's
not really a good excuse. And it's kind of been
putting your health first. If knowing without your health, you
really have nothing, So looking at even the basics of
like working on your own foundations of your health and
not letting it be somebody else telling you what to do,
but actually you taking ownership for your own health. Looking

(03:02):
at those foundations which we talk about so much, so
good balanced, moderate our cohol consumption, prioritizing your sleep, getting
an exercise aiming for a minimum of one hundred and
fifty minutes a week, managing your stress, prioritizing your mental
well being, and actually putting in the foundations. And that
can actually really do a lot of amazing things of

(03:24):
just getting the basics right and not being about having
being diet perfect or lifestyle perfect, but actually having some good,
solid foundations to work on, and then also just prioritizing
those health checkups and knowing how important they are. And
it might be that you put it in your calendar
like we've got it not forgetting other meetings. I think
if men can actually put it in their mindset of

(03:46):
like how important it is to get those regular annual
health checkups and putting it in your diary, putting alerts
on it of like booking in, get it booked in,
check the bloods and make sure you're getting those physical
exams as well as the right but blood work, checking
blood pressure regularly and cholesterols you're looking at lowering your

(04:07):
heart disease risk and actually just having those scheduled routine checkups,
particularly over the age of forty five at least fifty,
you need to be doing your annual houth checkups and
keeping on top of that and thinking about that is
being one step of ahead of knowing that something's not
quite right. You want to pick it up before it's
something serious. And then also if you do have symptoms,

(04:30):
which is one thing I do unfortunately see calmly. And
the kind of is someone has maybe stayed four bowel
cancer and they've known that they've had blood in their
stills for maybe months or even years before they go
and do something about it, and know that if something
doesn't feel right in your body, or you've got some
unusual symptoms or maybe waking up five times in the

(04:51):
night to urinate that is not normal, go and get
it checked out. And instead of waiting until there is
a big problem there actually going and getting all those tests,
knowing that you can do something about it before it's
a big problem.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
And it's such a relief to have an answer. I mean,
I mean, sometimes it's not the answer you want and
you're going to have to hear down a journey that
you don't want to have, but you'd have to face
that at some point anyway. But at least you know
you don't hit it's not on your mind anymore. Thank
you so much.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Eron for more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin.
Listen live to News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
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