MATT BRABNER OSTEOPATHY

MEN’S HEALTH WEEK & FATHER’S DAY

This week is both Men’s Health Week AND Father’s Day. The theme this year for Men’s Health Week is stress, so a few words follow on how pain and stress can impact fathers, sons, grandfathers, uncles and husbands. Please feel free you share if you have a dad (or any male!) with ongoing stress alongside aches, pains or a worrying niggle.

MEN & PAIN

We commonly refer to the stereotypes of ‘man-flu’ (guilty) and men not being able to cope with more than mild pain without giving everyone a running commentary about their agony. However pain is a very personal thing, linked to history, experience and environment.

From a gender perspective it is well know that men do engage differently with healthcare services and have different psychosocial and biological factors that can influence life expectancy, pain and mental health.

This is a very broad statement, but men, as a whole, are deemed to indulge in ‘riskier’ health behaviours (alcohol, smoking, diet) and if they do have concerns about pain can take longer to seek advice.

This is changing with high-profile health campaigns around male mental health, prostate and testicular cancer and initiatives such as Men’s Health Week.

Early diagnosis and treatment have much better outcomes, whatever the problem may be. And in financial terms is easier on the wallet (or NHS budget) as less treatment can often be needed.

Much more work is being done to understand gender differences in the emotional and biological processing of pain, whether acute or more persistent, and to inform ways of engaging men more effectively in pain management.

Do check-in on the men in your life though, for every man suffering from ‘man-flu’ there could be one bottling up worries where a genuine and heart-felt ‘how are you’ can be a positive trigger to open up and seek advice.

STRESS

One of the many factors in either acute or persistent pain is stress. A stressful work or family situation or an acute injury can all create stress and impact the body’s homeostasis. The way it balances all the needs placed upon it using the finely tuned, neurological (nervous), endocrine (hormones) and immune systems.

When men (or women) are operating at their body’s limits it can take only a small change for the body to reach its capacity to adapt, and the homeostatic balance is disrupted.

This is why often when someone is stressed they can get a cold, or an old injury can recur. The impact on the immune system with a cold can for example mean that it is less able to manage pain.

Stressors impact on the body can slow healing of an injury and raise the risks of an otherwise fairly inconsequential pain becoming more persistent.

Stress, like pain, is a very personal thing, with all of us having very disparate awareness and approaches to stressors, be they emotional or physical. We will all tackle stress differently, but if you have any pain that is proving quite stubborn, it is worth looking at ways to address your stress levels too.

SUMMARY

Whether you are male or female, seeing your GP, physiotherapist or osteopath with any concerns about pain is better sooner rather than later. Osteopaths take a thorough case history to understand your pain fully and will work with you to determine the best course of action. Often people have a number of factors, especially stress, influencing their symptoms, and I am always honest with what I can do to help you start the healing process, but also very happy to refer you to other practitioners if their area of expertise is more appropriate.

MEN’S HEALTH WEEK 2016

For more on Men’s Health and in particular tackling stress. https://www.menshealthforum.org.uk/mhw

FURTHER READING

A long read on how I approach your first appointment.

A ‘Guest Post’ on the benefits of breathing for stress.

The benefits of sleep (well napping) for reducing stress.

REFERENCES

Keogh, E. (2015). Men, masculinity and pain.
Pain, 156 (12), pp. 2408-2412.

Chapman, C.R., Tuckett, R. P., Chan, W. S. (2008). Pain and stress in a systems perspective.
Journal of Pain, 9 (2), pp. 122-145