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In this episode, I’m talking about the mind-body connection —  the relationship between psychological health and physical health that most men treat as two separate concerns managed by two separate departments with different managers and different filing systems.

Alcohol,  in the right context,  is one of life's genuine pleasures, and the research seems to support this.  In the wrong context, at the wrong frequency, performing the wrong function is something rather different. And the middle-aged male body is considerably less tolerant of that version than it used to be.

In this episode, I’ll be addressing something that sits at the intersection of psychology and public health. The topic is why so many men ignore physical symptoms, the mechanism behind it, and its costs.

Most men,  when they lose someone,  don't grieve in the way they perhaps expected to. They don't fall apart. They don't sob at the funeral. They often just go back to work. But it doesn’t mean they aren’t grieving.
In this episode, I'm exploring grief. Not the textbook version that neatly progresses toward acceptance —  but what grief looks like when it happens to a man.

There will come a time, somewhere between your 40s and 60s, that a creeping suspicion sets in. You’ll notice it in strange ways. You start making noises in chairs. You develop strong opinions about lawn feed. You wake up feeling injured with no known cause. And somewhere a thought arrives - Is this it, then?

At the end of the last episode, I said that if you've been tired for longer than seems reasonable, this episode is for you.
Most men who are sleeping badly think they have a sleep problem.
What many of them actually have is a health problem that is expressing itself through sleep.  And the difference matters considerably.

At the end of the last episode, I said the numbers on male loneliness were not comfortable, and I meant it.
Loneliness increases the risk of premature death by 26 per cent.  Cardiovascular disease by 29 per cent and dementia by 50 per cent. Time to take a look at what’s going on.

At the end of the last episode, I described depression in men as looking like irritability and withdrawal, working too hard and a glass too many in the evening.
If that description landed somewhere  — if something in it felt familiar —  this episode is for you.

Most men put more research into buying a car than into understanding what makes a relationship last. This is probably not unrelated to the divorce statistics. But the research on what actually works turns out to be considerably more useful than anything in a car brochure.

At some point in your 40s or 50s, you walk into a room and can't remember why you're there. You assume the worst. / But what if the story your brain is telling you about getting older / is wrong in almost every direction that matters?

Your brain is producing emotions right now. Fear, loneliness, shame, tenderness — the full range. The question isn't whether men feel them. The question is what happens next. And that's where things get interesting.