I´m about to finish my bachelor as a nurse. I´m writing about mens health, specifically the problems we seem to have compared to women.

One of the theories I´m using is Antonovsky´s idear on SOC, sence of coherence, wich talks about peoples abillity to cope with stressfull experiences. In his book he compares the traditional western male with a molecule in a closed system, indifferent to input/impulses in his environment. This, according to Antonovsky, leads to entropy resulting in problems dealing with health-issues.

Physics is a long way away for me, but isn´t he talking about thermo dynamics? What do you guys think of his use of such a picture? If I get his idear right, I´m not sure I agree.

Having no knowledge of "sense of coherence", I'm in no position to judge,
but even if the analogy between SoC and the third law of thermodynamics
is valid, which I doubt, it seems a rather vague analogy. The third law is
often applied inappropriately in explaining ideas in other subjects.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"The other planets?
Well, they just happen to be there, but the point of rockets is to explore them!"
-- Kai Yeves

I'm reminded of when I heard a creationist argument that evolution defied the law of increasing entropy because things supposedly became more organized rather than more random as they should... and responded that if that analogy made sense, then hot weather should always increase people's activity levels because high temperature corresponds to more particle movement. (It was oppressively hot at that place and time, to the point that nobody wants to do anything but sit still and fan the sweat, only occasionally moving to a cooler spot to sit at when the one they were at had gotten too hot.)

Even if and when such distant analogies do appear to work because of similar-seeming outcomes, the actual causes/mechanisms at work are too unrelated for the analogies to be useful anyway.

And they often appeal to lay persons because they use Very Smart Words.

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... it's so much easier to blame your car wreck of an argument on the hardness of the wall rather than upon your inability to drive -JayUtah

As one who has been through many stressful experiences, a handful which resulted in temporary disability (depression, mainly), I disagree with the entropy analogy.

Why?

Because I'm still here!!!

By all rights, having been through what I've been through, I should have given up the ghost, stopped eating, and faded away long ago.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

"Staying young requires the unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." - Heinlein

"Freedom begins when you tell Ms. Grundy to go fly a kite." - Heinlein

Mugaliens: Exactly why I don´t think Antonovsky is right in his assumption. Men just deal with illness and disease in ways mostly unknown to or uncatered for by our health systems.

I haven't read Antonovsky, but I have a suspicion that this may be a rationalization and defense for the continued outspending of US tax dollars on women's health issues compared to men, when women are already the healthiest segment of the US population.

I'm suspicious because I've seen this very discussion go on for many years by people who like to make false appeals to science..

I guess I'm about to go perilously off-topic. Sorry.

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... it's so much easier to blame your car wreck of an argument on the hardness of the wall rather than upon your inability to drive -JayUtah

Care to back that up with some figures, please? I've generally heard that men's health issues consistently get more funding.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Not having the material before me, isn't this just an analogy? It doesn't seem like an explanation, but only a description. I don't get your use of "this leads". Does the author really make that claim of mechanism, or just claim similarity?

(And, it's not a very satisfying analogy, for right away, I'd have to ask why it is that men are so like molecules and women aren't.)

Is there some space or astronomy connection I'm not seeing, so this can be answered in the context of the place it was asked? This Q&A section is for space and astronomy. If health care is to be discussed, or thermodynamics, there are better places.

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These are danish numbers: During our research we found, that women have 12 million more visits to the doctor pr. year than men. There are many reasons for this, we have been looking mostly at how hegemonic masculine identity seems to play a role (men try to protect their autonomy, they hate to be looked at as weak etc.). A result of this behavior, among others, is the fact, that many men seem to have more advanced stages of cancer, when finally diagnosed. Every time 7 women dies from cancer, 10 men dies. Maybe this could result in more money being spent on treating men, we haven´t looked into that. But if you look at the screening programs we have in Denmark, most are targeted at women. I think it´s because they demand them. Men don´t.

Sorry, no, this has actually nothing to do with astronomy. Can this thread be moved?

It's been a long time since I talked to anyone who actually believed that, so let me go back to my notes . Some of my books are loaned-out, so I'll reply to your question about funding for men's vs women's health issues as soon as I can find it.


While I'm doing that, can you please provide some evidence that men's health issues get more funding than women's? Because I never heard even the most radical feminist make that claim -just that women never get enough.

Focus: Funding for breast cancer research versus prostate cancer research. They both have approximately the same mortality rates. Which gets more funding?

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... it's so much easier to blame your car wreck of an argument on the hardness of the wall rather than upon your inability to drive -JayUtah

Do they have the same prevalence?

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

Good question. Similar, I think, but perhaps my recollection is faulty

I'll look it up when I finish watching The Maltese Falcon.

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... it's so much easier to blame your car wreck of an argument on the hardness of the wall rather than upon your inability to drive -JayUtah

Cancer Research Funding

Breast Cancer $551.6 Million (2007)
Prostate Cancer $305.6 Million (2007)

Prostate Cancer Incident Rate - 159.5/100000 (2006) Link
Breast Cancer Incident Rate - 126.1/100,000 (2006) Link

Funding by sex: These figures are from the 1990s. My most recent books are loaned out.

The figures from the NIH show that less than 20% of NIH's research budget is spent on womens' health. This is because 85% of their research budget is spent on diseases that effect men and women (and on basic science). If you look at the breakdown by sex, 10% is spent on womens' heath; 5 percent is spent on men' health.(1)





On Breast cancer/prostate cancer:

Women are 14 percent more likely to die from breast cancer than men are to die from prostate cancer(2), yet funding for breast cancer research is 660 percent of funding for prostate cancer research(3). The Death-to-Funding Ratio is 147 to 1 in favor of women.


(1)Interview by Warren Farrell, PhD July 14, 1992 with Vivian M Pinn, MD, director of the Office of Research on Women's Health, National Institutes of Health. These figures were being prepared to be sent to Congress in late 1992.)

(2)Cancer Facts and Figures: 1991 (American Cancer Society, 1991)

(3)Internal documents of the Reports Analysis EValuation Branch of the National Cancer Institute, Financial Division 1992.


All citations from The Myth of Male Power, Warren Farrell, PhD. 1993.

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... it's so much easier to blame your car wreck of an argument on the hardness of the wall rather than upon your inability to drive -JayUtah

I don't know about Denmark, but in in the US, similar conclusions have been reached by so-called Advocacy Research projects. That means they are basically politcally motivated, have a desired conclusion in mind, and go about selecting data that support their pre-conceived ideas.

"But if you look at the screening programs we have in Denmark, most are targeted at women. I think it´s because they demand them. Men don´t."

This is known as Blaming the Victim. You're basically saying that men die more often from cancer because they do it to themselves and therefore they deserve it.

If there were fewer screening programs for women, would you blame women?

Why not look at it from a different POV: Why are men alienated from the health care system?

The fact of the matter, at least in western cultures, is that men are considered the more disposable sex.

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... it's so much easier to blame your car wreck of an argument on the hardness of the wall rather than upon your inability to drive -JayUtah

I don't think that was PEN67's point at all. You should reread his posts more carefully.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

I read them as carefully as I could, and went back over them again.

Feel free to edify me. I would certainly like to be wrong about my 'blaming the victim' statement.

It's not like I haven't been wrong before.

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... it's so much easier to blame your car wreck of an argument on the hardness of the wall rather than upon your inability to drive -JayUtah