Directory of health resources for healthcare professionals.

Dressing Successfully: The Ten Commandments 7: Buy the right size (PART 2)

The worst faults are with shirt collars (too big, loose, gaping at the front), shirt waistlines (too small, buttons straining over the stomach) and perhaps worst of all, trousers that not only hang half-mast and flap around the ankles but sag baggily in the seat. Clothes that fit this badly do so either because they are the wrong size or because they are badly in need of alterations or because they are cut for a body type other than the one that is wearing them.

If you have any doubts about your own measurements ask a salesman to check. And remember that although a size 40 jacket may in theory be your correct size, it may not fit you as well as it should because the size 40 block being used does not conform to your own body type and measurements. Try another manufacturer’s size 40 and the fit may be perfect. Seek out companies that make along the lines of your shape.

Whether the clothes are up-to-the minute in fashion or not, fit matters and faults caused by ill-fit illustrate either a man who has no idea about dressing well or a wife/mother/lover who buys her man the wrong clothes. .

Any woman who sees her man’s clothes fitting him badly should do something about it and rectify the faults. And if you are the man whose clothes fit badly you have only yourself to blame. You are wearing the clothes.

*174/153/1*

Even if you are worried by a hairline that is receding or falling hair and a balding patch that could be increasing in size daily, taking care of your hair should not represent a problem. In fact the route to good hair is so simple that it seems impossible that so many men we see in public places should have such bad hair in such bad condition.

To get it right all you need is a good haircut to make the hair both manageable and flattering, and the correct shampoo. Some men may also need to use a conditioner occasionally, and for some, perming or colouring will work an additional, aesthetic wonder. Nothing beats a healthy diet for maintaining healthy hair once its condition is right.

But first the worrying problem, baldness.

Not all men go bald, nor will they. But for many men around their mid-thirties thinning hair becomes a problem with bald areas developing and after sixty, unless they are eunuchs, the majority of men will have hair that is noticeably thinner on the ground than when they were younger. (Men who are eunuchs since early boyhood never go bald, it appears, but once a man has started to lose his hair castration will not make it grow again. It may be something of a relief to many men to know that castration is not a cure.)

A considerable amount of baloney has been written about curing baldness. There is no cure. If there were no movie star would wear a toupe (Charlton Heston, Burt Reynolds and Sean Connery to name but three) and none would invest in costly, painful hair transplantation operations (Sinatra and Elton John).

*139/153/1*

On reaching his forties every man should revise his attitude to himself and his world whether he is affected by M-M or not. This is the recommendation given by a considerable number of therapists. Know yourself, they say. Know your faults (but don’t be weighed down by them). Know your good points too.

It is now, at this crucial age, that it becomes imperative to sort out who you are in terms of how you see yourself and what you want from life. Only by doing this can you move ahead successfully.

In this context revising your attitude to yourself does not mean being exclusively critical or sitting back with gloom as you compare yourself with the earlier man aged twenty-five and concluding that not only are you fatter and older but you are also tied with considerable responsibilities like mortgage, family and aging parents. Nor does it mean looking for the signs of becoming middle-aged. So you have put on an extra roll of flesh around the middle, fine. And added more wrinkles, yes. Most men have at this age. But now be honest with yourself. What should you expect from the next phase of your life? Is there any valid reason why that well-worn adage life begins at forty should not apply to you too?

*103/153/1*

Eyesight declines during the thirties and by the time they reach forty most men have difficulty identifying fine print and need a strong light to read by. Most men prefer to blame the poor lighting rather than admit a need for spectacles. They may also have difficulty with night vision and driving in the dark.

The reason for this decline is that the eye’s lenses harden with age so altering the focal vision. By the age of fifty it is inevitable that a hefty percentage of men will require reading glasses.

On the plus side, some men who have worn glasses since childhood may find their eyesight improved. Not much, but better. Hardening of the lenses sometimes partially corrects nearsight.

As for hearing, the older we get the less we actually hear or differentiate between high-pitched notes. Fortunately the deterioration is slow and deafness neither imminent nor inevitable. Few of us need to hear or identify high-pitched notes and at forty, because of changing values and interests, silence, peace and quiet, become additional valuable commodities. At forty though hearing loss makes a man aware of aging, it seems a relatively unimportant change.

*66/153/1*

Nonetheless when it comes to sex they feel they are missing out. All their men friends seem to be having a good time and having little flings on the side, so why not them too?

It is not that their sexlife at home is stale although probably it is more routine than adventurous but looking back they see and regret that in their earlier years they were not as wild or promiscuous as they could have been and certainly they never had as many sexual adventures or exploits as all their friends. An affair now will not affect their homelife; all they want is their fair share of fun. So, they look for affairs wherever they can. Mostly they are successful.

These are the men women worry about, the happily married men who manage to cheat and enjoy a secret love life and still go home to bed with their wives.

‘What she doesn’t know, doesn’t hurt her. For all I know she is having an affair while the kids are at school in the afternoons. Listen, at my age why shouldn’t I have an affair? It means nothing. An affair makes you feel good.’

Accountant, forty-four, London.

*30/153/1*

In calculating the efficiency of the contraceptive method chosen, the couple have to take several factors into account.

Most sexually active people use contraceptive measures to enable them to enjoy the mutual pleasuring of sexual intercourse, without the fear of a pregnancy occurring at an inappropriate time.

In her reproductive years, a woman may spend periods of time using one form of contraceptive; periods when she uses no contraceptives; periods when she is pregnant; and periods when she returns to contraceptive use. At some times the couple may have sexual intercourse frequently and, at other times, not so often.

The couple will want to know which of the contraceptive measures available is the most efficient in preventing a pregnancy for their particular pattern of sexuality. It may be that the woman will choose one of the most reliable methods (such as the hormonal contraceptives or the I.U.D.) despite the side-effects. It may be that she will choose a slightly less efficient method (such as the vaginal diaphragm) which has few or no side-effects. This choice may be made as a woman grows older, when her fertility is reduced, secure in the knowledge that should an unwanted pregnancy occur she can obtain an abortion with safety.

*152/16/1*

The problem which arises is what should be considered a high blood pressure. We know from studies in many Western nations that a person’s blood pressure rises as he or she grows older. We also know that rises in blood pressure with increasing age are more frequent among people in developed countries and only occur rarely in the developing countries, except among those who have adopted a ‘Western’ way of life.

This suggests that high blood pressure may be due to our way of life, or to our diet, rather than because we have inherited a tendency to hypertension. Some investigators suggest that the stress of modern life is a factor, others suggest that we eat too much salt, or too many refined carbohydrates.

What is a high blood pressure? Different authorities give different levels, which means that any decision is arbitrary. By observing the frequency of stroke, heart attacks, and other cardio-vascular
accidents and relating these to the level of the person’s blood pressure, an expert committee of the WHO has recommended that if your systolic blood pressure exceeds 160, or if your diastolic blood pressure exceeds 95 (especially if both are above those levels), and if these results are found at three examinations at least two weeks apart, you have high blood pressure.

*339/16/1*

Christopher Isherwood perceptively wrote: ‘You first know you are a homosexual when you discover you can fall in love with another man’; and this neatly brings an abstract definition into a human context.

There is some evidence that human beings are essentially bisexual, but that conditioning in childhood and role models of parents turn them into unisexual, usually heterosexual, beings. This suggests that there is a continuum between exclusive heterosexuality at one end and exclusive homosexuality at the other end. Most people are exclusively heterosexual, some are bisexual, some are exclusively homosexual.

In such a continuum, how many people in society are exclusively homosexual? Is the number small or large? Most reported investigations are of little value because they are based on selected groups, or are anecdotal.

One investigation stands out as likely to provide a reasonable estimate of the prevalence of homosexuality in a community. This is Alfred Kinsey’s very carefully organized and meticulously conducted survey of over 4000 American men carried out in the late 1940s. The men represented as far as was possible a true sample of American society. Kinsey took great care to check his information in many ways, so that he could avoid the charge (which, as he had anticipated, occurred) that his findings were biased, because of his evasions or exaggerations. What he found surprised, horrified, and was denied by most Americans, but despite the attacks, his findings have not been disproved. In fact, they have been validated by subsequent surveys in the U.S.A. and in Britain.

*293/16/1*

Learn to relax by deep breathing and muscle relaxation. Go limp, don’t think.

Stop worrying about your partner’s reaction to your ‘performance’. Ask her. She’ll tell you she wants to help you, not to criticize you.

Stop worrying about your own erection. Let it happen: don’t wonder if you’ll get an erection, or if you do, if it will be a poor, limp effort.

Dive into fantasy! Imagine a sexual situation in which you are the hero. Have fun with your imagination – forget your penis!

*246/16/1*

In Australia, one sexual therapist has devised a two-week sexual therapy programme of daily ‘sexual experiences and exercises’ which has helped many couples who have sexual dysfunctions. The couple have to agree to set aside at least 30 minutes each day to carry out the exercises. They have to agree to follow the instructions exactly, even if this may make one or other shy and perhaps uncomfortable. If that occurs, the person who is uncomfortable has to agree to tell his or her partner and to talk it over the next day with the therapist. The couple have to agree to be honest with each other and neither to cheat nor to take short cuts. If one or other gets irritated about an apparent lack of progress, he or she has to agree to talk about it, rather than to ‘bottle it up inside’. The exercises are done at home and, before they are started, the atmosphere must be right. The room should be warm, the lights soft, and, if the couple like background music, they should start the cassette- or record-player. A bottle of perfumed skin oil will also help as many of the exercises involve touch.

The exercises are in two parts. For the first three days neither partner is allowed to touch the other’s especially erotic zones – the genitals, breasts, and nipples. Only on the fourth day does the genital area become the focus of attention. Then either partner can fondle, play with, and pleasure the other’s genitals, but sexual intercourse is prohibited until the second week.