Personal trainer Crystal Norman helps Marcus Langford lift weights at the Results Gym on Capitol Hill. Melissa Tussing/MNS
WASHINGTON – Mark and Denise Looper run a physical therapy clinic in Seattle, Wash.
But the only way Mark Looper goes to the doctor is if Denise schedules an appointment for him.
“If I make the appointment, then he goes,” Denise Looper said. “I’m in control of his schedule.”
Mark Looper said his experience playing sports taught him his body could heal without the help of a doctor.
“We would get banged up and it would just heal,” Looper said. “So we thought, ‘Just give me a place I can lie down for a little bit and I can get better.'”
Mark and Denise Looper aren’t the only ones experiencing a struggle en route to the doctor’s office. Women are twice as likely than men to seek preventative health care, according to a 2001 CDC study.
Scott Williams, vice president of Men’s Health Network, said it’s a conditioned response.
“When a boy is 5 years old, falls down and skins his knee, he’s taught that big boys don’t cry,” Williams said. “His mom and dad have kind of socialized him early on that pain, emotional, mental things are not something that you should be talking about.”
The most at-risk age group is 22 to 50, he said.
“What we’re noticing is there’s this gap of when boys leave home and they’re out on their own,” Williams said. “In the twenty to thirty years before they hit the age of 50, they might have seen their health care provider maybe once, maybe twice, maybe never in that span.”
Crystal Norman, a personal trainer at Results Gym on Capitol Hill, said women just talk about their health issues more and encourage each other to go to the doctor.
“If you have a friend who tells you maybe you should go get that checked out, you’re more likely to go,” Norman said.
Williams said there is hope in getting men to see a doctor. To accomplish that aim, Men’s Health Network uses incentives to get health screenings for men.
“We’re a partner with the Washington Red Skins,” Williams said. “If I think of where a guy would like to go and talk about health, I think, ‘I’m a guy. I want to go into a player’s locker room of an NFL team.'”
The network also encourages women to motivate the men in their lives. “Women are head of the health household,” Williams said. “Our most popular information is what women need to know about men’s health.”
Men’s Health Week starts Monday, June 14 and continues until Father’s Day on Sunday, June 20.