Four major taboos in men’s health

The four taboos that we should be most vigilant about are staying awake despite fatigue, randomly supplementing androgens on our own, sitting for long periods of time holding in our urine without taking it seriously, and treating tobacco and alcohol as a social necessity. Don’t think it’s a cliché. I just hired a 32-year-old Internet programmer last month. He worked overtime for 14 consecutive days until 3 o’clock every day, insisting that he was young and could handle it. In the end, he suffered from urinary tract stones and sudden deafness. He lay in the hospital bed clutching the unfinished requirements document.

Really, too many people fall for the phrase "I'm fine". A while ago, a 28-year-old fitness coach came to me and said that he had been feeling flustered recently and his urine was the color of strong tea. When I asked, I found out that he only slept 3 hours a day for 10 days in a row to prepare for the competition. He said that "fatigue is a signal of muscle growth" is said in the fitness circle, so he gritted his teeth and got over it. I directly prescribed him cardiac enzyme and renal function tests. Fortunately, he was just overtired and dehydrated. If he had come a few days later, he might have developed acute renal failure. To be fair here, if you only have muscle soreness after daily exercise, resting more can relieve it. However, if you have signs of palpitations, persistent headaches, or abnormal urine color, and you still insist on not taking a rest, that is not self-discipline, but a risk of death. Different people have different tolerance levels, so don’t impose the standards of professional athletes on yourself.

Speaking of blind supplementation, I encountered a particularly typical case last week. A 27-year-old young man was married for half a year and was preparing to get pregnant. He felt that he had recently lost energy and had lost his hair, which must be due to low testosterone. So he bought the famous "testosterone boosting pill" online and took it for three months to check his semen routine. It was found that the sperm motility was only one-third of that of normal people. It would take at least half a year to have a child. Nowadays, there is a lot of controversy on the Internet about androgen supplementation. One group says "the higher the testosterone, the better the energy, and supplementing it will improve the condition." The other group says "testosterone supplementation is all about IQ tax, and the more supplementation, the more useless it becomes." In fact, both opinions are too extreme. If it is confirmed by a doctor's blood test that there is indeed a problem of insufficient testosterone secretion, it is absolutely fine to follow the doctor's advice to supplement, especially for some middle-aged and elderly men who do need hormone intervention during menopause. ； However, if you check the "low testosterone symptoms chart" on the Internet and take three-no supplements blindly, you can easily suppress your own testosterone secretion, cause testicular atrophy and decrease in sperm quality, and the gain outweighs the loss. Many people come up and ask me if I need to take supplements. In fact, if you stop staying up late first and eat three meals regularly, it will be much more effective than taking supplements worth thousands of dollars.

As easily ignored as random supplementation, there is also the old problem of holding in urine while sitting for long periods of time. I have an old patient who drives a long-distance truck. He is 41 years old. He has been running freight for 15 years. He always feels that holding in his urine is a trivial matter. It is common for him to not go to the toilet for six or seven hours during a long-distance trip. He developed chronic prostatitis a few years ago. Now he gets vaginal pain when the temperature cools down and the seasons change. It affects his ability to haul goods. The pain has caused him to stop at the service area to rest halfway. Several times. There are also some young people who play games or sit for long periods of time in meetings, holding in their urine and refusing to move. They also say, "I'm used to holding it in, and I don't feel anything." It is indeed not a big problem to hold in urine once in a while. The human body's compensatory capacity is very strong. However, if you hold in urine repeatedly for a long time, the elasticity of the bladder will become worse and worse. In severe cases, urine may reflux into the kidneys, causing pyelonephritis and even kidney function damage. As for sitting for a long time, many popular sciences now say that sitting for one hour and standing for five minutes is enough. In fact, this is not true. If you stand and use your mobile phone for half an hour, it is no different from sitting. You have to get up and take two steps, move your waist and hips, and promote blood circulation in the lower body to reduce the risk of prostate disease.

As for the issue of tobacco and alcohol that everyone is arguing about the most, I think there is no need to go to extremes. There are always people who use "my grandfather smoked and drank all his life, and lived to be over 90" to make excuses. Others say "the only health standard is to never drink alcohol and completely ban smoking." Individual differences do exist, and some people have a higher tolerance to tobacco and alcohol in their genes, but the clinical data of large samples do not deceive people: long-term smokers are more than 20 times more likely to develop lung cancer and COPD than non-smokers, and people who drink excessively for a long time are 4 to 5 times more likely to develop liver cirrhosis, gout, and peptic ulcers than non-drinkers. The longevity of individual cases really has no reference value. I have seen too many men in their 40s who drink every day to discuss business, drink until they have stomach bleeding, cirrhosis and ascites and move in. Their children are still in elementary school, and they can’t even regret it while lying in the hospital bed. When it comes to socializing, many customers now also value health. If you say that you have high uric acid and high blood pressure and you can’t drink, no one will force you. There is no need to trade your health for the rest of your life for a few business deals.

In fact, to put it bluntly, these four taboos mean don't always use "I'm young" and "I'm used to it" as shields. Last week, the young man who blindly took testosterone supplements came for a follow-up consultation. His sperm motility had improved a lot and he said he no longer dared to blindly buy online supplements. Health has always been like this. If you fool it, it will fool you sooner or later. If you wait for problems to come to you and fix them, no matter how much you spend, you may not be able to fix them.