On the air: How you can man up this Men’s Health Month

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Monday, June 28, 2021

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On the air: How you can man up this Men’s Health Month

STHS Communication Department, commdept@stph.org

‘The best thing to do is ... become preventative in your care. We are not invincible. Engaging with the providers is important on a regular basis,’ according to Nurse Practitioner Max Martell of the St. Tammany Physician’s Network Covington office. (Photo by Tim San Fillippo / STHS)

June is Men’s Health Month, and STHS Nurse Practitioner Max Martell’s advice to men is simple: Go see your doctor.

Traditionally, Martell said, men are reluctant to schedule routine medical care, but that decision could cost them dearly from a health standpoint.

Martell recently visited The Lake 94.7-FM studios to discuss men’s health and things you can do to man up this Men’s Health Month.

Listen to Max’s conversation with Charles Dowdy of The Lake in the embedded audio player below or at The Lake website. You can also scroll down to read an edited transcript of their conversation.

Charles Dowdy: Our friends from St. Tammany Health System are here. Your full name is Max Martell, and you are a …?

Max Martell: Nurse practitioner in the St Tammany Physicians’ Network Covington clinic.

Charles: OK, and your background -- because it is an interesting one – is what?

Max: Well, I retired from the Army active duty eight years ago. Spent 22 years and a day. All of my medical training actually occurred in the military. I had a couple of tours across the world. (It was a ) great 22 years.

Charles: Couple of places you were include?

Max: Middle East, Korea, Europe.

Charles: Sounds very low key.

Max: Beach-front property.

Charles: Well, good for you – and good for us that we have got folks like you serving. So, let’s talk a little bit about what you want to talk about today, which is what?

Max: Men’s health. June is actually promoted as Men’s Health Month, but men’s health should be promoted year round. One of the things we do as men is that we fail to take care of ourselves. Women take care of themselves greater than men. Usually, you find that the person who brings the male to the clinic is the spouse or daughter who actually finds something with that male person. I think one of the reasons we find the delay in care of men is that we are so focused on our careers and we identify with what we do not what we are. That can increase some stressors in our life.

So, mental health is a big issue. We are talking (two-thirds) of suicides are actually male, which is about four times greater than actually female.

Prostate cancer (screenings are) something that need to be done. Early in our lives, as men, we need to start teaching our young men to do testicle self-exams.

So, there is a lot of education that needs to be done – not only discussing cancers but also heart disease, early diagnosis and management. Thirty-something percent of males actually go undiagnosed with hypertensive issues that can lead to kidney issues. That can lead to uncontrolled diabetes, sudden heart attacks.

So there is a multitude of things that we fail to look at as men because, like I said, we feel like we are invincible. It is important to engage with your providers on a regular basis.

Charles: Alright, I am going to stop you right there because I believe the biggest problem with men is providers – not that there aren’t providers but the fact that they don’t even have a doctor. I think there are a lot of guys just wandering around out there, just bumping around from place to place, but who don’t really have a relationship with a medical professional.

Max: That is exactly correct. Over 30% of our male population does not have an active provider. We tend to use an urgent care clinic, which is great, but we need to follow on with our maintenances. There are different levels of maintenance. It is important to establish with a primary care provider so that we can actually meet those milestones – that when we hit 20 years old, we are actually getting those specific exams, when we hit our 30s and our 40s and our 50s there are specific tests that we do for screening that is important. In order to have that done it is important to establish with a primary care provider.

 

Thirty-something percent of males actually go undiagnosed with hypertensive issues that can lead to kidney issues. That can lead to uncontrolled diabetes, sudden heart attacks."

-- St. Tammany Health System Nurse Practitioner Max Martell

 

 

Charles: So if there’s somebody in this room, maybe around 50, that hasn’t done exactly what they were supposed to do, it’s not too late, right?

Max: Call our hospital number (985-898-4001) and get scheduled. You can go online. You can sign up for open appointments to establish the primary care at St. Tammany Health System. We have a great My Chart app you can download to your smart phone and log on, set up an appointment to establish the primary care. That’s important, so don’t hesitate. Do it now. Everyone has a smartphone now. It is easy to download and app that you can search for a primary care provider. Log on and sign up for one.

Charles: So let’s check the box of the issues you see the most, or at least the couple you see the most, that are things that guys just should be doing that they just simply aren’t. So, what would that be?

Max: There is a range of different exams. It is based on age groups but what we usually see, say for example in your 20s: As we are young men, we usually think we are invincible, but you should at least be getting your tetanus booster, getting your blood pressure checked, getting a yearly physical to make sure that aren’t any abnormal findings. Get regular blood tests, urine tests, even STD screenings.

When you are in your 30s, we are talking about getting maybe a baseline EKG. There could be some underlying cardiac issue that is undisclosed, especially if you have a high family history -- being proactive, not reactive. Let’s be preventative.

In your 40s we are talking about a yearly exam where there is blood tests. That is where you start checking your prostate-specific antigen, which is a PSA, which tests and screens for the possibility of prostate cancer, which has a high occurrence and is one of the leading causes of death for males.

In your 50s, we are talking about getting Hemoccult tested, getting a colonoscopy screening to rule out colon cancer. Then it goes on into your 60s and stuff.

So the best thing to do is start now and don’t delay. Become preventative in your care. We are not invincible. Engaging with the providers is important on a regular basis. If you start thinking “Oh, I have a headache,” and you don’t think anything great of it, it could be some symptom that could mean you have an undiagnosed high blood pressure. So it is important. Your blood pressure could be variable. You may go to an appointment or get some health screening at your employer’s office and your blood pressure is fine but there could be a variability through out the day. It is important that you actually check on it. It is important to just overall get in. Get scheduled with any of our providers and start taking care of yourself.

 

 

Establishing a primary care provider is as easy as calling the STHS appointment line at (985) 898-4001 or by using the MyChart app.

Charles: I don’t want to put words in your mouth. I know you were in the military for quite some time. You worked under duress is kind of what we inferred.

Max: Yes.

Charles: So, you were in combat situations and zones?

Max: Yes.

Charles: So, you saw men and women who put their lives at risk. You saw lives at some instances that were at grave risk and you were there to help them.

Max: Correct.

Charles: Now you are in a situation where you got knuckleheads like me, who won’t go get their blood pressure checked. That has got to be frustrating for you.

Max: No, I just really try to approach it systematically. The important thing for me is to explain the reason why to the patient. That actually puts them at comfort, and they know the importance of maintaining it. It is how you approach it and just be open. Just remember everyone has different life experiences, so that is the key part. Someone may have had a traumatic event when they were younger in a physician’s clinic. That may deter them. Or their family member may have had it. So, you have to be open to that and know that and reassure the patient that hey we are not here to harm you, we are here to help you and take care of you.

You see a variety of different things. One of the things I see, and it is important to understand that sometimes it may be the spouse or the wife or even the daughter who actually sees something different with the father or their husband or their brother. So it is important to be open to that. Not just take care of yourself physically but also mentally. I mean, you talk about stressors. I have seen stressors throughout my life. The mental health is very important for us men. There are a lot of stressors in our life, especially in our environment now. We are talking about some folks have lost jobs, lost health insurance from the COVID. So, this is important that we actually address our mental health, because that is a high number of suicides. Men are committing suicide just about one every minute. That is about one in four adults actually commit suicide and four out of five are men. So, that is a big, big stressor. When we talk about stressors, it is taking care of not only physical but mental health. That is important also.

Charles: All right, well this had been very informative. I hope you won’t wait four more years before you come back.

Max: No, thanks for having me and I will come back any other time that you like.

 

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