Turn Your Head and Cough book event about “Man Overboard”

“Turn Your Head and Cough,” a conversation about men’s health with Craig Bowron, MD author of ”Man Overboard” with fellow author William Kreuger. This took place on Jan 22 at independent bookstore Magers & Quinn Booksellers.

A few dozen interested people, mostly men, were seated on metal folding chairs facing the ends of bookshelves opposite the chairs. Having been to a few book events as a means for writing fodder, the chairs were less jammed than usual into at the center of four pairs of bookshelves which faced one another.

The book is about men seldom and hesitantly facing with their health. Many pay meager heed to the biological, medical and psychological realities of aging.

As Dr. Bowron began the event, he suggested a talking point: Why write about men’s health? To his mind, if you look at the books about men’s health, they’re about avoiding or evading aging. Most of the books, and magazine content is about “biceps and boners”.

Marking the authors back-and-forth with humor with the readers, Kreuger and Bowron’s repartee, which Bowron said begin by meeting at church, resembled “Mutt and Jeff”. (This reference would probably lose readers who are younger than age 45.)

Many men go through life and look at aging to Kreuger’s mind like the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. [link] After his arm has been lobbed off, he declares “t’is but a scratch”!

Whereas women are proactive about health. When they notice something worrisome, they ask friends. They consult their social circles, and do credible research. To Bowron’s mind, men tend to be “conactive”. If they sense or feel something wrong or ill, they act “just straight ahead denial”. He illustrated the mindset thusly; a man’s response to knowledge or diagnosis of an illness means, in that man’s mind, “a guy can be completely healthy until the MD ‘gave me’ an illness”.

According to Bowron’s experience with patience, as long as men avoid being assessed or diagnosed with an illness, their ignorance connotes wellbeing. To signal a profound layer of health and wellbeing, Kreuger suggested he, Bowron and the readers talk expansively about balance in your life as you age. Balance among spiritual mental, creative aspects of health.

Twenty-five minutes into the gathering, Dr. Bowron addressed loneliness as an epidemic, and the wellbeing pillar of having strong social ties. Men struggle with a choice or habit of maintaining relationships above digital levels. He mentioned the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy had declared this as a crisis. This, as digital social media seems to reign above all lifestyle priorities.

Mr. Kreuger described the fact that most of the book groups he has met with are made of women. He said “they really talk” about books; they consider the detail and nuances of them. Men might only give that they “I liked it”. As though offering feelings, interest or details might reveal some weakness, they surrender no more detail, thoughts or feeling about the book.