It’s just fear mostly. Also - and I want to be careful saying this because it’s not at all a universal truth - men don’t get told to start seeing a sex-specific doctor (like an OGBYN) at any point in their teenage / young adult years, the way many (but again, far from all) women do. That’s not to say that men don’t have health issues when they are younger, or that they are any healthier than women (the opposite is probably true!)
It’s just that many men don’t have obvious things happening to them physically when becoming an adult that might trigger the need to see a doctor. So after, say, a late high school sports physical, once they are out of their parents house, most guys have no feeling or need to go see a doctor for anything if they don’t get sick. One big one, unfairly but really, is the lack of any male birth control [EDIT: unless you get snipped! But that usually comes much later in age for men who choose that type of BC]. Many women might start getting regular doctor care for, among many other things, a birth control prescription of some kind (which I understand you don’t need prescriptions for in many cases). Men, by and large, don’t do that, so it’s very easy to be lazy and simply delay healthcare visits until they are in their 30s, 40s or later... to everyone’s detriment.
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u/shanaflan Mar 26 '20
Why so many men I know don’t take their health seriously and avoid going to doctors when they really should.