Aging boomers, new medicines draw men into health spotlight

Drug Store News, July 20, 1998 by James Frederick

Viagra's runaway success took many by surprise. Within the first four weeks of its Food and Drug Administration approval and market launch, pharmacists had dispensed 1.05 million prescriptions for the impotence remedy, according to research from IMS America. That works out to 262,000 scripts a week, or nearly 40,000 per day-giving Viagra a 98.1 percent share of the prescription drug market for erectile disfunction, according to IMS.

"Did Viagra surprise everybody? Absolutely," said one chain pharmacist. "But, let's consider Prozac, which was also presented as a cure-all. Physicians were under some pressure from people to prescribe them Prozac, and this is sort of the same thing.

"Do I think all these men need Viagra? No," he added. "But, 40 percent of the people who don't need it will have better results than they did before, just based on the placebo effect. So, if $15 a tablet is worth it to them, who am I to say no?" he added with a laugh.

Also fueling new activity at the pharmacy counter is another quality-of-life pharmaceutical, Merck & Co.'s newly approved hair restorative in pill form, Propecia (finasteride), which for the past 10 years has been marketed in larger dosages under the brand name Proscar to treat prostate enlargement. Studies of Propecia's ability to regrow hair showed success rates as high as 81 percent in some cases, according to reports.

Nevertheless, it will take more than the roaring success of Viagra and other products to overcome the traditional reluctance of men to see a doctor about a worrisome condition, to learn more about preventive health and nutrition, or to alter lifelong habits that lead to poor health.

Early prevention is key to good health

Indeed, when it comes to the state of men's health, Mickey Mantle may have said it best: "If I had known I was going to live this long," the great Yankees slugger and outfielder is said to have uttered, "I would have taken better care of myself."

For many men, that's the sort of rueful expression that best sums up their attitudes toward preventive care and the maintenance of health. Compared with women, we men still exhibit a generally dismal level of awareness about or even interest in our own bodies.

This general lack of understanding and acceptance of the help that healthcare practitioners are trained to provide has a high cost, medical researchers say. "No matter how smart a man is, no matter what kind of professional status he's achieved, he can still ignore things he shouldn't ignore and pay the unnecessary consequences," noted a report from The Male Health Institute in Irving, Texas.

"Those consequences can be serious," the report went on. "Before age 65, men suffer 2.5 times more heart attacks than women. By age 65, one in three men suffers from high blood pressure, a primary risk for heart attacks. Yet men are less likely than women to have their blood pressure checked.

"One in nine men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, yet few will have the easy and painless digital rectal exam and prostate-specific antigen blood test to detect it," the report added. "Men are at greater risk of stress-related illnesses than women, yet only 20 percent of the people in the typical stress-management program are men. Every year, more than 50,000 men die of emphysema, one of the most preventable diseases. It has been estimated that more than 3 million men are walking around with early type II diabetes, a disease with major complications, and don't know it. Clearly, the price of denial is high."

Just as clearly, however, pharmacists can serve as a critical focal point for needed change in the way men deal with disease and preventive health measures. Said one pharmacist interviewed by Drug Store News, "If the pharmacist is doing his or her job and really counseling the patient ... he or she can actually change the thinking of a whole population of people."

Indeed, efforts by pharmacists to get men more involved in managing their own health and wellness could have profound effects, health experts agree. "The rate of male mortality could significantly be reduced if we could encourage men to seek treatment before symptoms have reached a critical stage," noted Patrick Taylor, director of National Men's Health Week and spokesman for the National Men's Health Foundation.

Thus was born, four years ago, the idea for a national campaign to promote health education and interest in preventive care and wellness among men, Taylor said. The result was National Men's Health Week, which is held each year in mid-June during the week leading up to Father's Day. The event is funded by Men's Health, a general-interest publication whose circulation has grown to 1.5 million in the decade since its launch.

"What gave rise to the idea of Men's Health Week was this growing concern that men were not taking control of their health-particularly when it came to things such as getting regular health checks and going to the doctor," Taylor explained.

The legendary reluctance of men to seek help from medical professionals has been the subject of much study, but few specific recommendations. Noted a spokesperson for the Male Health Institute, "Women depend on their ob/gyn specialists for female problems and learn the benefits of early detection for breast cancer through self-exams. Men, on the other hand, often ignore warning signs and symptoms until the problem becomes serious. Few men know where to go when they find a lump on a testicle or have trouble achieving an erection."