39 Fun Facts About Men's Health

Which pair of glands, sitting behind the bladder, produces most of the fluid in the ejaculate?

The seminal vesicles supply the bulk of semen, dwarfing the testicles' own contribution, and the fructose in their secretion fuels the sperm.

Melanoma most often appears on which part of a man's body, whereas in women it favours the legs?

The back is the most common melanoma site in men, a spot few people can inspect for themselves, and American men are diagnosed with the cancer more often than women.

About 27% of men but only 3% of women develop which hernia, passing through the canal the testicles descend along?

The inguinal hernia favours men because the canal that let the testicles descend leaves a wider weak spot in the abdominal wall, and repairing it is among the most common operations in the world.

Movember's founding event, 30 men growing a moustache for 30 days, was organised in which Australian city?

Melbourne hosted the 30-man moustache challenge that grew into a global charity; its founders wanted to make the moustache fashionable again, and the name joins 'mo', the Australian short form, to November.

Gout, which mostly strikes older men and hits the big toe in half of cases, is caused by crystals of which substance?

Needle-shaped crystals of uric acid, a waste product of digesting purines, lodge in the joint and trigger the attack. Its link to rich food and drink earned gout the nickname 'the disease of kings'.

Unlike most cancers, testicular cancer is most often diagnosed at which stage of life?

Young adulthood is its peak, with most cases found between 20 and 34, and it is among the most curable cancers: about 95% of American patients are alive five years later.

To gauge fat carried around the middle, the NHS advises keeping a man's waist below half of which other measurement?

His height is the yardstick because BMI cannot tell muscle from fat, while a waist more than half as long signals fat round the middle, which raises the risk of serious health problems.

Which disease typically shows its first symptoms about a decade later in women than in men?

Coronary artery disease reaches women roughly ten years later than men, yet the delay does not spare them: it is the leading cause of death in both sexes.

In the Western world, men die by suicide how much more often than women, who attempt it more often?

Men die by suicide three to four times more often than women in the West, even though women make two to four times as many attempts. Researchers call this the gender paradox and tie much of it to men choosing more lethal methods.

The NHS advises men, exactly like women, to keep regular drinking under what weekly alcohol limit?

The limit is 14 units a week for both sexes, about six pints of average-strength beer, and the advice is to spread it over three or more days rather than save it for one session.

What does the Movember charity call the men who sign up to grow a moustache for it every year?

Mo Bros numbered just 30 in the first year, and the movement they started has since signed up millions of people around the world.

Benign prostate growth, found at autopsy in most men over 80, causes symptoms by squeezing which tube?

The urethra runs through the middle of the prostate, so as the gland grows it pinches the channel, which explains the weak stream and the night-time trips to the toilet.

PSA, the protein measured in prostate blood tests, does what job in the ejaculate?

PSA liquefies semen after ejaculation so sperm can swim free of the initial gel. Only a trace normally leaks into the blood, which is why a rising level draws attention.

Women make testosterone too, in far smaller amounts than men: apart from the adrenal glands, which organs produce it?

The ovaries make much of a woman's testosterone, while in men nearly all of it comes from the testicles, whose daily output is some twenty times greater.

Sildenafil, sold since 1998 as the erection drug Viagra, was originally developed by Pfizer to treat which condition?

Angina was the target when Pfizer developed the drug, but its effect on erections proved the bigger prize, and it later found a third use against high pressure in the arteries of the lungs.

What is usually the first physical sign of puberty in boys, who start about a year later than girls?

Testicular enlargement comes first, typically around age 11 to 12; the voice breaks later, dropping about an octave as the vocal folds lengthen and thicken.

After a vasectomy, what happens to the sperm that the testicles carry on producing?

The body absorbs them: sperm are still made but are broken down and reabsorbed, and the testicles keep releasing testosterone into the blood exactly as before.

The epididymis, the coiled tube on each testicle where sperm mature, would stretch roughly how far if uncoiled?

Uncoiled, the epididymis runs about 6 metres, though coiled it is only a few centimetres long, and sperm gain the ability to swim only during their passage through it.

From the first cell division to a mature cell, making a single human sperm takes roughly how long?

Over two months is the usual estimate, about 74 days by the classic count, yet the testicles still turn out 200 to 300 million sperm every day.

Which muscle hoists the testicles toward the body in the cold, helping to keep them at the cooler temperature sperm need?

The cremaster raises and lowers the testicles to hold them a few degrees below body temperature, and stroking the inner thigh makes it lift the testicle on that side.

An undescended testicle is roughly ten times as common at birth among which group of boys?

Premature babies show it in about 30% of cases against 3% at full term, because the testicles only begin moving down into the scrotum around the seventh month of pregnancy.

Testosterone is made by the testicles' Leydig cells when a chemical signal arrives from which gland?

The pituitary, at the base of the brain, releases luteinising hormone, which tells the Leydig cells to make testosterone, while the Sertoli cells next door nurse the developing sperm.

Which two-surname scale grades male pattern baldness by severity, from a receding hairline to a bare crown?

The Hamilton–Norwood scale is for men: women's hair loss rarely moves the hairline, thinning across the top of the head instead, so doctors grade it on a separate scale.

Which hormone, made from testosterone by the enzyme 5-alpha-reductase, is the main driver of male pattern hair loss?

DHT, dihydrotestosterone, is a far more potent trigger of the androgen receptor than testosterone itself, which is how small amounts of it can shrink scalp follicles.

Minoxidil, approved for baldness as Rogaine in 1988, had first reached the market in 1979 as an oral tablet for what?

Minoxidil was a high blood pressure tablet called Loniten until patients kept sprouting unexpected hair, and rubbing a solution on the scalp turned the side effect into the product.

Finasteride, licensed for hair loss as Propecia in 1997, had first been approved five years earlier to treat what?

An enlarged prostate, benign prostatic hyperplasia, was the original target: Merck sold it as Proscar from 1992. The hair-loss version is the same molecule under a different name.

National Prostate Health Month, designated for September in 1999, is symbolised by a ribbon of which colour?

A light blue ribbon marks prostate awareness each September in North America, two months before the moustaches of Movember. The American Foundation for Urological Disease chose the month.

Men's Health Week, created by the US Congress in 1994, is the week ending on which day each June?

Father's Day closes the week, which Congress created to raise awareness of preventable health problems and to encourage early detection and treatment of disease among men and boys.

International Men's Day, held each 19 November, was revived in its present form in 1999 in which Caribbean country?

Trinidad and Tobago's Jerome Teelucksingh relaunched the day and chose 19 November to honour his father's birthday and the date in 1989 when the national football team united the country.

Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard's 1889 claim that injections of animal testicle extract had rejuvenated him helped launch which medical field?

Endocrinology, the study of hormones, was set running by the craze he started, even though his extracts held far too little testosterone to work and the vigour he felt was a placebo effect.

Charles Huggins won a 1966 Nobel Prize for showing that advanced prostate cancer could be held back by which drastic operation?

Castration cut off the male sex hormones the tumours depended on, showing that a cancer could be controlled through hormones, and hormone treatment for prostate cancer caught on quickly.

Richard Ablin, credited with discovering PSA in 1970, has long argued that the test should not be used for what?

Routine screening of healthy men is what its own discoverer opposes, because PSA rises with a harmless swollen gland as readily as with cancer. He has accused the FDA of approving it for screening despite its advisers' warnings.

Klinefelter syndrome, the most common sex-chromosome condition in males and one that often goes undiagnosed, involves which chromosome pattern?

XXY men carry 47 chromosomes instead of 46, and researchers believe most never learn it; many cases surface only when a man is tested for infertility.

Which gene on the Y chromosome acts as the switch that turns an embryo's gonads into testes?

SRY, the sex-determining region of the Y, switches on a cascade of other genes; in rare cases it is copied onto another chromosome, and an XX embryo that inherits it develops testes.

Worldwide, for every hundred girls born, about how many extra boys are born?

About 5 extra, so around 105 boys are born for every 100 girls, but males die at higher rates from infancy on, so women come to outnumber men in old age.

The WHO recommended voluntary male circumcision in 2007 after trials showed it cut men's risk of catching which infection by about 60%?

HIV passes less readily from women to circumcised men, and prevention programmes have since carried out tens of millions of the operations in 15 priority countries of eastern and southern Africa.

A varicocele, swollen veins in the scrotum found in around 15% of men, is the most common correctable cause of what?

Male infertility is linked to varicoceles, which nearly always form on the left because the left testicular vein joins the renal vein at a right angle, so blood backs up there.

A 2017 meta-analysis found sperm counts among Western men fell by roughly what share between 1973 and 2011?

Counts dropped 50–60% over those four decades, about 1.4% a year, and nobody has settled on why: chemical and pesticide exposure, maternal smoking in pregnancy and adult lifestyle are the suspects.

Most boys develop some breast swelling during puberty, from an imbalance between testosterone and which hormone?

Oestrogen briefly gains the upper hand over testosterone during puberty, and the swelling, called gynecomastia, usually fades by itself without treatment.