Greater Milwaukee Men

I know right. Ice cream for a man's product review? I counter with: whiskey. Milwaukee's own Purple Door Ice Cream  is not only an amazing product, but they do everything right in making their ice cream to be truly considered a Great Men's business. Ice cream may not be up there with the typical man food like steak & potatoes and beer, but many brands have flavors that are still appealing to the manliest of men like salted caramel or coffee. Purple Door takes the cake though with their whiskey-flavored ice cream made with another Milwaukee product - Great Lakes Distillery's  Kinnickinnic Whiskey. That's double-Milwaukee which means double the goodness.

This year, in addition to the players, MLB  and People Magazine are recognizing people who are true heroes, military men and women, via their Tribute For Heroes program. From thousands of nominees three people were selected for each team. One winning candidate from each team will win a chance to attend and be recognized at the 2013 MLB® All-Star Game® in New York, and one will be featured in PEOPLE magazine. So head on over and vote, you can do as many times as you want. The three outstanding representatives for the Brewers are here .

Y Men? Is it our very genetics that make us live shorter lives than women? For Men's Health Month and Week , we highlighted the top 7 health risks for men. I hope it helped to read about them and learn how to avoid them. But in the end, our very maleness  could be the single biggest factor for health risks and premature death in men. That is both genetically and characteristically. Robert Krulwich just wrote an article on NPR's website about Why Men Die Younger Than Women   and in it he describes various reasons from a paper called " Why Men Die Younger ," by Seattle actuary Barbara Blatt Kalben. Anything from size (note that small dogs usually live far longer than big dogs) to testosterone are possible but the last item to me is the most intriguing - that data from the Mayo Clinic mined by an essayist in 1934 showed that "mere maleness" is a predictor of greater mortality, that something about being male "influences unfavorably the resistance ...

It is almost  too  appropriate that on Father's day and the last day of Men's Health Week, the #1 concern is the Heart. On a day when we recognize our own - and other - fathers, learning about the heart - the strongest muscle, the source of life, and the proverbial source of emotion and love. They give us their hearts as we grow up, nurturing us with the strength of their heart. So as we and they get older, we need to make sure their heart is healthy so they can stay with us as long as possible. If you yourself are a father, it is all so important to your children that you make sure you are with them as long as possible.

Yep, we've got our own ribbon - now where is my Pabst? Cancer is one of the most prominent health issues for both men and women, and rightly so - here we know that it is the number two health concern for men. It has one of the best networks for awareness and care, organizations we all are aware of that can give you any information or resource you could want on cancer. And still it seems that in the area of health men are behind women, mainly due to the  pink  campaign. Great for women, not so great for men. For Men's Health Week, I am going to focus on the male-specific cancer: prostate cancer. Per the Prostate Cancer Resource Center , symptoms of prostate cancer may include: difficulty starting urination, reduced force of stream of urine, urinating small amounts frequently, urinating more frequently during the night, painful urination and bone pain.

Wow, there are a lot of Russian safety posters for some reason -  Google it. The American Association of Accidents... OK who am I kidding. There is no group, organization, or what have you that I can quote or steal from on this one. Actually there is: the  Safety Institute of America . Men are known for having a Devil-may-care attitude about work, recreation, and general safety so today I am just going to list a bunch of things we should do but often don't:

Long name for number 4, but really its just the diseases that affect the lungs, the worst of which is  COPD  - chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. There is lots of medical mumbo jumbo on what these are and do, such as the image to the right, but basically you cannot breath. Breathing, pretty important, no? You want to know the best way to not get COPD? Don't smoke. Don't start, and if you smoke now please stop. That's it. That second hand smoke stuff doesn't help either.

Though stroke is in the top 7 for men, it is a higher risk for women. The reason is that women live longer and stroke risk gets higher with age. Women live longer. We know that, but reviewing the health risks for men and our standard operating procedure of health care, it makes sense. We should change that. But as far as stroke, we need to know how to prevent it and know when it occurs and how to react. A stroke, sometimes called a "brain attack," occurs when blood flow to an area in the brain is cut off. The brain cells, deprived of the oxygen and glucose needed to survive, die. If not caught early, permanent brain damage and death can result.

Per the Mayo Clinic the  6th biggest threat  to men’s health is Diabetes, specifically Type 2. If you have been reading along, you will note one of the men's interests and issues repeated here is nutrition and diet. It is partly due to the environmental impact of our food supply but also because of the health and wellness aspects of eating well. Eating well can tie into most of the 7 threats, in regards to prevention, but it is integral to the issue of Diabetes.

Per the Mayo Clinic  the  7th biggest threat to men’s health is suicide. This will be the hardest issue or concern to cover, but I hope in the end it may be the most important, profound, and inspiring information all week. Here is the thing with suicide - unlike the remaining 6 health concerns above it, suicide is the hardest to manage yourself. When looking at suicide as a concern, we need to look at it as men as a concern for our male family and friends. We need to watch over them and recognize the signs versus paying attention to our own signs as we should with the others. When looking a men's health versus women's health there are interesting correlations between the concerns whether similarities or differences, but suicide has a very interesting comparison between men and women. Women are more likely to attempt suicide, but men's attempts are more 'extreme' as  this article  at medicine.net details, as well as an article about  young men and suicide  by Men

Every June, during  Men's Health Month , the week leading up to Fathers' Day is  Men's Health Week . This being a resource for men's wellness this of course is a very important week and one that we all need to take time to focus on the matter. There are of course the big health issues, and throughout the week  I will cover most of them in individual pieces, but as an introduction I wanted to just take a look at the basic physical and mental health of men and the phenomenon of men ignoring their own issues. We all know that men are far worse than women at addressing health issues - perhaps we think it makes us look less manly if we don't take care of an injury, get medicated for an illness, or have a general problem checked out. We often tend to think of ourselves as if in a vacuum, that this is our life and our body so why can't we live how we want - eating what we want, smoking and drinking recklessly, not being careful when we work - but we should all rem

Seeing a hero like Spider-Man outside your window can really make your day when you are sick. To me the definition of a hero is no only one who helps, but inspires, and this is especially true of superheroes. In the world of comics, there are superpowered characters - ones that can do things we normal people can't , and heroes - the 'good-guys' who give an example of how to act even in the middle of conflict whether from an enemy or just regular life. It seems rarer these days for the two to intersect with antiheroes, vigilantes, being more popular it seems. I get it, the tales of  Dudley Do-Right type can never be as interesting  as those of darker characters, but there is always a place for them, especially when it comes to children. That is why I am so happy to see the involvement of characters we traditionally see as straight up superheroes in making the lives of sick children a little brighter. Just today I saw two stories of superheroes being used to cheer up ch

Don't be this person. If you can't afford to buy something, your time is valuable. Father's Day (I always think it should be Fathers' day - isn't it the day for all fathers, not just one?) is coming up on June 16th, and since we are all adults here I don't think I need to get into the whole 'what not to buy' spiel. Instead I will get right onto what to  buy for the paternal figures in our lives. There are two parts of shopping the Man-Way, the Well-Met Way: the man part and the well part. The goal is to find things that a man will like but also have the socially-responsible or conscious aspect to it. That can come from things that help a cause, those that are locally produced ( American-made  or even more locally like right here in Wisconsin or Milwaukee), or things that reduce impact on or even help the environment. I have been keeping my eye out on various sources and listed here are my selections of things to buy or places to shop.