June 16, 2010

Dude, it's Men's Health Week!

Spread the word about Men's Health Awareness! Do it for your brothers, your sons, your dads, your husbands, your uncles, and your best boy buds. June is Men's Health Month and this week is Men's Health Week. It happens every year the week before and including Father's Day. I wish I had prepared for this week, because I would have lined up some male-factor IF posts. I do plan to post about the elusive male point of view in the next month or so. Until then and in celebration of Men's Health Week, I'll list some great infertility resources for the men in our lives.

I've also posted an article about Five Myths of Male-Factor Infertility on Examiner.com. Check it out!

Male factor infertility is the sole cause of a couple's infertility issues in about 30% of cases. Female factor accounts for another 30%, and the rest are either unexplained or a combination of the two (source: RESOLVE.org). Infertility is not just a woman's problem, and even when the issue is female factor, it doesn't mean it's not affecting her partner. Here are some great resources that I've come across:

+ Men’s Health Week: A Time for Men to Step up to the Fertility Plate: Dr. Geoffrey Sher of the Sher Institute and puts a call to action for men facing infertility. Read the complete blog post at IVF Authority.

+ Men and Emotions: "Despite the fact that approximately 40% of infertility is attributed to male factors, it appears that men are not as willing or as able as their female partners to talk about their experience. Perhaps this is because we traditionally think of children as a woman's province." Read the rest of the article here at RESOLVE.org.

+ The Semen Analysis and the Men's Infertility Workup: What to expect from your doctor (via RESOLVE.org)

+ Psychological Issues in Male-Factor Infertility: "In general, the man’s reaction to infertility has been viewed by mental health professionals as taking less of an emotional toll than his partner’s... Little room is left for dealing with his own feelings of loss and sadness. This conforms to society’s gender expectations in which men are not given permission to express deep feelings of loss..." Read the rest at the American Fertility Association website.

+ Get Thee to a Urologist!: The title says it all (via AFA).

+ Fourth Anniversary of the Death of My Sweet Baby Boy: A brilliant resource out there for men coping with loss. The articles and entries shared on this site are a resource for men and women alike (via GrievingDads.com).

+ Making Sex Fun While Trying to Get Pregnant: Mandatory sex is no fun. About.com offer's some advice to spice it up!

+ Coping With Mother's Day and Father's Day: With Father's Day approaching, this can be a tough time of year for men and couples struggling with infertility. RESOLVE has some great advice to make it through the day.

+ Add your resource in the comments below! Blogs, articles, websites: all are welcome.

4 comments:

Yuko said...

I think it might be interesting, considering where you work, to do an anonymous poll of young men on their own observations of their reproductive health. It would be interesting to see if that demographic has even given it much thought beyond "I hope its not herpes". How many of them have been told (or tell their partners) they can't have kids because of some trauma to the genitals? (I once heard a guy say that he couldn't have kids b/c he'd been whacked in the nuts by a pool cue...he has three kids now.) Anyway, I'd offer to poll my seniors but yesterday was my last day. I might be able to do it next year with the Health classes. If there's a way to set the poll up online and anonymously, I might be able to get a lot of my former students to participate-- it'd be interesting because some are straight and some are gay. Anyway, it's all just a thought.

Kir said...

awesome, all of it. I will try to go about taking a poll and let you know what I find out.

thanks for posting this, very imformative and at some pts entertaining.

Conceptionally Challenged said...

Thanks so much for collecting and sharing all these resources!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for sharing this info. I am going to put a link to your post on our FB page.