Golf and poker night: Cures for heart disease? Despite the romantic prevalence of so many real or fictional man-as-solitary-loner archetypes in literature and pop culture (Henry David Thoreau, the Old Man and the Sea, the Lone Ranger, etc.), what men truly need in order to be as healthy as they can be is social interaction — yes, even rugged, individualist men like the Marlboro man. And now, there's credible research that shows just how important frequent and fulfilling bonding among males really is. A group of researchers from Sweden conducted a 15-year health study on a pool of nearly 750 men of varying backgrounds and determined that those with the greatest amount of social interaction — contact with many friends they saw on a regular basis — were less than half as likely to have heart disease, all other factors being equal (smoking, weight, job-related stress, etc.). Furthermore, the men in the study who showed the most evidence of a deep emotional attachment to their friends (not simply frequency of contact) proved only 58% as likely to DEVELOP heart disease as their more loner-esque counterparts. These findings amount to an astonishing reduction in risk — far greater, I'll wager, than any prescription drug can credibly boast. What does all of this mean? It means that your monthly poker night or round of golf with the boys (or whatever the bunch of you do for fun) is not only good for your soul — it's crucial for your heart and every other aspect of your health, too. Yes, even if you down a few belts of good scotch or smoke a cigar or two (especially so, if you ask me) in the course of having fun. The research offered up no hypothesis as to WHY social interaction made such a difference in the heart disease risk of the study's men, but do we really even need to guess at the reasons? Isn't the answer obvious? Of course it is. Common sense should tell us that the personal happiness and a sense of belonging we derive from spending quality time with people of like mind and sensibilities (friends, in other words) is vital to life — and to REALLY LIVING — no matter what our sex. And it takes no high-falutin' study from Sweden to prove it, but it was Swede of them to do it. You've heard me talking about a healthy man's need to maintain adequate testosterone levels — especially as we creep ever upward in age. Not only does this "male hormone" (women need it too, though) keep us sexually vigorous and potent, it also helps to keep our bodies strong, straight, and energetic — and it even helps us to stay mentally sharp… But now there's evidence that testosterone also helps to keep us men from getting the blues, too. A two-year trial of more than 250 men showed a statistically significant correlation between testosterone levels and the incidence of clinically diagnosed depression in males over age 55. Published in a recent issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, the study found that men with testosterone deficiencies were nearly THREE TIMES AS LIKELY to be depressed as those with healthy testosterone levels. These findings point to the possibility of testosterone therapy as a possible treatment alternative to the mainstream's over-prescribed (and risky) antidepressant drugs. Whether or not the mainstream will embrace it is another story… But as far as I'm concerned, anything that keeps antidepressants out of people's medicine cabinets is viable indeed. | 
