• Cancers: Reducing your chances of getting them is simple. For colon cancer, follow diets high in fibre and have a simple fecal smear test as starting points! For skin cancers, avoid unprotected exposure to the sun! For lung cancer, stop smoking! Prostate cancer is trickier, because there do not appear to be any reliable preventative measures.
• Hypertension: High blood pressure is the starting point for a host of heart-related diseases.While there is a genetic component, being overweight, avoiding exercise, stress and too much salt in the diet are chief contributors.
• Cardiovascular disease: The things that can go wrong with the hearts and blood vessels of middle aged men fill books. Significant contributors are all the things your mother told you not to do: Smoking, unhealthy eating habits, being a couch potato, not getting enough sleep, letting stress build up.
• Diabetes: Type 2, the one that used to be called adult onset diabetes, is now reaching near epidemic proportions in Pakistan. Pancreases worn out by the demands placed on them by unhealthy lifestyles and all the fat around the middle start to shut down insulin production.
• High cholesterol: That pre-40s life of big-meat meals, little exercise and a general disregard for health can see fats in the blood shoot up. Those fats can clog arteries and restrict the flow of blood to the point where the heart rebels at the extra workload.
• Stress and depression: Men do, indeed, go through their own version of menopause, healthy diet and regular exercise is good medicine. Exercise, even a long brisk walk, releases endorphins, the body’s own feel-good chemicals.
• Erectile dysfunction: ED may be a warning sign of much worse to come, physicians now believe. Studies show that two thirds of men under 60 who report erectile dysfunction go on to have a cardiac event within three years if they do not seek medical help.
