Author: admin

Right from the start, boys suffer more illness, more accidents and die earlier than their female counterparts. Men take their own lives at four times the rate of women (that’s five men a day, on average). Accidents, cancer and heart disease all account for the majority of male deaths.

As part of men’s health week ManageHealth has launched it’s Men’s Health Check App PromptMate; that has been fully rebuilt from the ground up with the support of the NSW Government via a minimal viable product (MVP) grant from Jobs for NSW.

The App will be like a tap on the shoulder for men to touch base with their GP or specialist health care provider on a regular basis to maintain a healthy balance of life.

This simple app will alert and prompt men to have their annual “grease and oil” change health checkups with their GP, dentists, dietitian or get their hearing, eyes, fitness or other tests as needed.

It also has education and a checklist of the specific tests men should have for their age range and will include regular lifestyle tips to help them stay on track with their physical and mental health.

Men being men, some of us need to be reminded to get health checks done as sometimes we think we are ten foot tall and bullet proof- Until something goes wrong.

Regular health checks can pick up medical conditions early, saving our medical system costs and possible making a difference between life and death.

PromptMate’s mission is to ensure all men over the age of 18 have annual lifestyle checkups.

Here is the link to download from the IOS app store.
https://qym6f.app.goo.gl/install_prompt_mate

Good health is essential to be able to do all you want to do in the years and decades ahead. Declining health can dim and darken a man’s future. We are living longer, but are we living longer with the same quality of life we want?

The good news is that you don’t have to train for a marathon or eat an exotic diet to achieve those goals. Whether you want to reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke or boost your stamina and staying power, there are some simple steps and strategies that can make a lasting difference.

Doctors now know that factors you can control can affect your health just as much as, and sometimes more than — the factors you can’t control. You can cut your risk of serious illness, you can have greater physical, mental, and sexual energy. And you can enjoy years of active living.

Harvard Medical School has produced a straightforward report that can put you ahead of the curve and add to your quality of life in the years and decades ahead.

The report gives you advise on a small mealtime change that can help lower your chances of colon cancer by up to 30%, an exercise routine that can help cut the risk of dementia in half, and four steps that can reduce your risk of prostate cancer — and increase your survival odds.

You’ll also learn six ways to reduce your risk of heart disease, four ways to lower your blood pressure without drugs, two ways to screen for colorectal cancer without a colonoscopy, a way that by one lifestyle change can lead to better erections, as well as get tips for preventing arthritis pain.

I subscribe to the Harvard Medical School so if you would like a copy of Men’s health: Fifty and Forward drop me a line at peter@managehealth.com.au and I can send you their full straightforward guide.

Gotcha4Life is an initiative to get men to open up more about mental health with your mates and have declared 12-18th March the Man Hug Week. A sad fact is we have as many as six men taking their own lives every day.

According to Gotcha4Lifes co-founder Gareth Pike “if you can hug it out with your mates then you’re more likely to be open and honest with them. It helps reaffirm that you’ve got each others backs.”

The awareness week is also about encouraging men throughout Australia to establish a Gotcha4Life mate if they don’t already have one.

Gareth explains that ” A Gotcha4Life mate is basically one of your closest mates who you’ve determined trustworthy, loyal and someone you feel comfortable opening up to about your mental state.”

Gotcha4Life has a goal that every Australian man will have a Gotcha4Life mate by 2022. This mate will be able to look out for your mental and also physical health, and vice versa, with the aim to catch up regularly and mentally check in with one another, regardless of how high or low you are feeling.

ManageHealth is endorsing this initiative as a great way to raise awareness and to look at mental health from a preventative and proactive approach.

So to all you men out there, Who is your Gotcha4Life mate? And make an effort this week to reach out and give each other a hug.

Want more information
For more information about Gotcha4Life and Man Hug week, visit gotcha4life.org

Too much lip service is being paid to mental health with not enough action being taken, especially in the workplace. New figures released from the state government revealed the majority of businesses in the state were failing to address mental health and its impact on work, despite it costing billions of dollars annually in lost productivity.

NSW Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation Matt Kean said recently;

“The findings show nearly half of the businesses have no measures in place that specifically address mental health in the workplace. “That’s quite a staggering statistic when you consider that one third of our adult life is spent at work and that work can therefore have a significant impact on our mental health.”

Mental illness is now the leading cause of long-term sickness absences among Australian workers, overtaking back pain for the first time internationally as the most common cause of work incapacity.

A person with a severe mental health condition can have up to 42 days off work, in addition to normal sick leave, according to a 2014 PwC report. The total annual cost of mental ill health to NSW employers is an estimated $2.8 billion.

An analysis by researchers at the University of Sydney’s Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation and the Brain and Mind Centre found businesses that invested in workplace health promotions could reap a return of more than $4 for every $1 invested by cutting absenteeism and improving productivity.

I am not surprised with these statistics and I find while awareness of the mental health burden on the workplace is very high, too few workplaces are stepping up and addressing the issue.

Our business offer resilience and accountability programs, including mental health first aid courses, showing people and organisations “proactive and preventative” approaches to psychological and physical well-being. I pitch these programs to some businesses and they say ‘we’d love to, talk to me next month’, but that keeps rolling into the next month and the month after that. The lip service paid to mental health is exactly that.

Thankfully we have some forward-thinking employers we work with that are seeing the benefits of incorporating education and training for their workers. Resilience is something that can be learnt and developed, to help keep people psychologically healthy at work. Employee assistance programs are great, but they’re not nearly as effective as giving people the skills and strategies to cope themselves.

Haemorrhoids is the healthcare issue no one likes talking about: Yet according to the Harvard medical school more than 75% of people over age 45 experience haemorrhoids.

Laxatives can be used from time to time, but it is much better to have a high-fibre diet. Maintaining a good diet with lots of fibre can reduce the risk but water is also very important to make the fibre effective and bulky.

The 1st sign of Haemorrhoids is usually blood in the toilet or toilet paper. Be sure to look in the bowl and if you do see blood of any type get it checked out as soon as possible to rule out things like bowel cancer. Once you know it is Haemorrhoids you can decide it you need treatment or not.

What to do if you have Haemorrhoids!

According to Harvard lifestyle factors are thought to be very significant in the development of haemorrhoids. So if you don’t feel confident to rely on St Fiacre (The patron saint of haemorrhoids) to protect you, follow the four golden rules for good rectum maintenance;

– Go to the toilet at the 1st urge. Do not hold it in.
– Don’t sit, wonder and think too long while on the dunny.
– Eat lots of fibre and drink lots of water.
– Watch for blood (especially if over forty five).

If you have any signs of unexplained blood, get it checked out immediately.

I subscribe to the Harvard Medical School so if you would like to know more about Healing Haemorrhoids drop me a line at peter@managehealth.com.au and I can send you their full report on everything you need to know about the types, causes, and symptoms of haemorrhoids, Non-surgical, office-based haemorrhoid treatments as well as surgical procedures and 19 high-fibre foods that can help keep you regular.

So don’t be like Gomer…. Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

The magical place we went to is called Nuk Tessli and is owned by Doran Erel the 45th person ever and 1st Israeli to climb Mount Everest. To say this place is remote is an understatement. No roads, no electricity, no running water, no phones (almost) and no other people (besides us and Doran’s team of volunteers and family). A flout plane (the oldest De Havilland Beaver that breaks a world record every time its fly’s) gets you in and out of Nuk Tessli and for 7 days we walked, canoed, yarned, laughed, looked for Grizzy bears around every corner and reconnected with ourselves and the environment without the distractions that we tend to have in our everyday life.

It was fascinating to see Doran and his team of volunteers work as their own subsistence community, building new additions to their log cabins using basic equipment, making and baking their own bread, catching trout from the pristine lake to cook for our dinner. Making do with what they had, simple but very efficient and effective. I can tell you we did not go hungry and we can learn a lot from doing these types of trips.

I ran into one of my client’s colleagues after we got back and he noted how much more “Brian’s” frown lines on his forehead had disappeared during their monthly board meeting before he remembered that he had been away for some “Wilderness therapy”.

These types wild therapy set ups are starting to happen here as well with many therapists ditching the traditional couch and 4 walls approach and taking clients on walk and talk sessions, art therapy and like we just did, bush adventure therapy trips.

My ethos of using exercise as medicine for both physical and mental wellbeing is combined with this type of trip, reducing anxiety, it improves depression and is also helpful with better sleep patterns. With no TV, phones or internet it’s amazing how much clearer and de-clutted the mind can get.

Any takers for my next Wilderness therapy trip?

The 12th of January 1998 is a day etched in my memory as I did not get any of the roles applied for and was now on retrenchment. I remember coming home that afternoon and an old guy was painting our skirting boards in our home who I had the utmost respect for. He asked, ‘how my day went?’ My answer “yeah, it was pretty shit and I lost my job today’.

He, without looking up or missing a beat in painting the skirting boards , said “oh well mate Don’t let the bastards beat you”.

His comments was what I needed after a pretty ordinary day so I vowed and declared then that, yep, unlike some of my colleagues who really became bitter & twisted I was not going to allow the organisation to win as such so I remained positive and continued working for the organisation until the date approached for my retrenchment.

During this time, other positions were offered but it meant relocating with my family. We decided not to take up these options and as fate would have it my ideal job came up and fortunately I landed the role of helping young and talented athletes in regional areas to develop their sporting potential both on and off the field.

So for me the message I took away from being made redundant and that feeling of worthlessness was simply in my old painter mate words “do not let the bastards beat you”!

Stay true to yourself and realise that as hard as it is, you are just a number and business is business. Treat it that way and continue to look out for opportunities that will help you further your career.

So when you look at this, do you think the word “balance” means that everything should be completely balanced 50/50? – your work life, family life, social life, your me time, all in perfect harmony!

But as most of us know this is rarely the case so what should you look for when looking at the work/ life balance?

For me, it is more of a healthy balance than being something that you need to strive for being the optimum 50/50 balance. I have always lived & worked by the philosophy of the 80/20 rule which simply means that for 80% of the time you live well, you exercise regularly, eat well, you make sure your effort and effectiveness with your work is as best it can be, You are the best partner, father, mate you can be.

But you gotta live, so that is the 20% rule where if you feel like eating that extra piece of chocolate, you feel like having one more beer or wine then don’t feel guilty about it but just have a mindset that you need to make sure you make up for that the next day or the day after. Get back on the bike as soon as you can!

From a training & exercise point of view, such a pretty simple philosophy that if we are too much either way we can, “blow a gasket” and that’s when we can feel overwhelmed or develop unhealthy habits which is not good for ourselves & our family.

Whats your Rule?

I read a book with this title a couple of years ago by a physiotherapist Vanessa Alford who was an exceptional fit endurance athlete in her youth and then went onto compete at Commonwealth and Olympic games in the running sport of marathons. While it appeared on the outside that she was fit and healthy, she was battling some internal issues and hence the name of the book, Fit But Not Healthy.

How many of us are fit but not necessarily healthy? In my case I thought I was and one of the main reasons I exercise is I do have a history of heart disease in my family with both my father & grandfather dying at a very young age from heart disease. So it was a real shock to me when I hit the wall 2km into a half marathon 3 years ago and had to embarrassingly walk the next 19k’s as my heart rate was pumping along at over 200 beats a minute.

Practicing what I preach I immediately went and got checked out by a cardiologist and found out that because of the amount of intense endurance physical activity I have been doing over the last 10-15 years this had remodelled my heart and I had developed Atrial Fibrillation (AF). This messed with my head a bit as I thought I was doing what I was doing to help my heart, not hurt it! My cardiologist advised that a lot of mostly middle aged men are now being diagnosed with AF due to the high uptake of endurance based activities we have embarked on in recent times. He joked that “you know what happened to the first person to run a marathon…. He died as he crossed the line”.

So I had to come to realisation that I too am not 10-foot tall and bullet proof and that my competitive long distance running career may be over and I was advised to take it easy and to not get my heart rate up too high for long periods of time. Fit yes. Healthy? Of course.. Just no more can I dream of that sub 3hr Marathon. I was never that fast anyway!

As health professionals our job is to help people by using exercise as medicine for both physical and mental wellbeing (to be fit and healthy). However we are also trained to realise that sometimes by being fit and pushing it a little bit too far we can put ourselves into danger from a health point of view. So Unless you are Philippedes and need to get that message from Marathon to Athens no matter what, consistency, patience, enjoying your exercise and doing what you can, not what you can’t is the key to being fit and healthy!

A hackathon is a design sprint-like event in which people come together and collaborate intensively on projects over a set time frame.

Over 80 people including high school and UNE students, UNE Health/ Business staff, industry experts, farmers, producers and a team of 20 engineers and developers from IT networking company CISCO, who travelled from Sydney all came together to look at ‘Tech solutions for socially relevant Agribusiness ‘grassroots’ challenges’. A totally new experience, but one that I was pleased to say yes to helping and being involved.

While the day was aimed at Farmers our problem statement would be relevant with any demographic, particularly the construction industry!

At the start of the day 8 people were asked to give a brief introduction about themselves, their business and why they had chosen their problem statement.

Small teams then got down to business with the help of mentors who spent time with each of the teams throughout the day helping to tease out ideas and solutions to our problems.

We identified that lack of tools and education leads to declining wellbeing and came up with a number of reasons why we wait until it is too late to ask for help. Pride, Stigma, trusted support, accessibility, education and personal responsibility were the ones that stood out especially for men.

Our solution is to have every Australian male over the age of 18 have an annual lifestyle health check-up. We need to catch people before their health conditions become chronic.

At 4pm we all reassembled in the lecture theatre at the UNE Smart Farm and in front of 5 judges in a “Shark-Tank” like environment, including the UNE Chancellor, a renowned national agricultural PR expert and 2 senior Executives from CISCO we had 3 minutes to deliver our pitch….

This was ours;

I wish technology like we have now was around when my parents were in their 30’s and 40’s and when my young mate Scotty was struggling with his health. We lost him 4 years ago with mental health issues.

Our team PromptMate today has done an amazing job to develop a simple app to alert and prompt you to have your annual “grease and oil change” health check-ups.

The app taps you on the shoulder to touch base with a GP to maintain balance of life and connects you with other health professionals skilled to catch signs that you and technology can’t.

The app will be promoted via community causes and includes space for responsible advertising from healthcare and community partners.

Out initial target market is the 30-40 age group, those guys that think they are 10 foot tall and bullet proof. But would not mind another app on their phone.

Can I ask you all to get out your phone and go to the app store and download Promptmate.

I only wish Scotty was sitting in your seat 4 years ago and had the same opportunity you have!

The Result?

We won….. Now to realise our vision!