Something I have learned since 7 July

On 7 July 2010, I started my diet with a dietician, a professional well known to many other health providers in Rome. She is very good and I lost a lot of weight around 12kg. I am so far 4 kg or 8 lbs short of my perfect weight. I did this to improve my health and also to get my blood pressure under control to a more normal level, it is not high, it is on the border, either over slightly or just normal.

What I learned during this process is how men can develop specific male health problems with the weight around their waist area, the fat in that area can cause with age a lot of serious health problems. Now this week I had surgery for an hernia, it was large and more serious than I thought. What I learned from speaking with the surgeon and the resident doctor was that male abdominal muscles are very important and should not be neglected, they play an important part in keeping everything in place. Unfortunately too many men do not seem to be aware of this fact and have soft abdominal muscles and thus many problems with their back and with hernias etc...   Lifestyles and drinking habits, lack of exercise and often deskjobs do not help.
I find that too often we are unaware as men of the dangers of poor habits, they are not discussed in the media and are not part of the general discussion in society. I for one was mildly aware of what I should do and also as you age needs change. The fact that the image we see is usually of young under 35 men and that programs of exercise or diet are focused on youth leaves anyone else older out in the cold, youth sells in the Marketing world, even with an aging population.

In North America it is a phenomenon of its own, you can easily find articles on women topic, from food to health, to fashion, education, work and career. Try finding anything about men, it is far more difficult and it is often very slanted. Same goes for medical or health information, information is not provided with the optic to grab the interest of a readership but is more focused on telling us about a problem without offering any solutions. If a solution is offered it is often a fad and will not last. So you need to get good advice from a professional.

So it is up to us individually to inform ourselves of what we should be aware, small things are often more important than we think.
Out of my hospital adventure I received these very nice flowers from my colleagues at the Office.