ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the challenges facing men, from an exploration of the data highlighting the risks men face, to an analysis of men's health beliefs and behaviour. It explains strike a chord with so many men and with those who provide health care to them. Each year both men and women's life expectancy is increasing, with the current figures suggesting that a male child born today should live for 76 years and a female for 82 years. The life expectancy figures given are averages for each social class and in some affluent communities people are finding men living on average into their 80s, whilst in poorer areas the average is down in the 60s. With every cell having either an XX or an XY genetic base, the biological variations between men and women appear from conception and have fundamental implications for the way people develop and how our bodies work.
