With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/383533
BCBusiness.Ca oCtoBer 2014 BCBusiness 85 businesses—usually proud to parade their employee support and benefi t pro- grams—to duck like they were behind enemy lines. But can you blame them? Businesses set up gyms for employees, include stress counselling in their well- ness and benefi ts packages and encour- age biking to work. Is it time to impose incentives such as some American busi- nesses have done, making weight loss and/or quitting smoking conditional to receiving company benefi ts? n the Department of Urologic Sciences on the sixth fl oor of Vancouver General Hospital ( VGH), Dr. Larry Goldenberg, with silver-grey hair, a black suit and a black- and-white check shirt, leans back in his offi ce chair, surrounded by the hall- marks of an illustrious medical career. This includes a large photograph of him with Jimmy Pattison, who donated $20 million in 1998 to VGH's Vancouver Prostate Centre, a National Centre of Excellence that Goldenberg founded. In general, says Goldenberg, men are oblivious to the lifestyle habits that cause them to seek his help. Decades of "work hard, play hard" take a toll on the corporate soldier. For many men, the fi rst signal that something is wrong begins down south, says Gold- enberg. "A guy who is losing his erec- tions—that's his big complaint—and I say, 'You've been drinking and smok- ing and you're overweight—guess what, the result is sexual dysfunction.'" That dysfunction can also be symptomatic of two encroaching and more life-alter- ing conditions, he adds: Type 2 diabe- tes and cardiovascular disease. Goldenberg is the founder of a new national initiative called the Cana- dian Men's Health Foundation ( CMHF), which was offi cially announced this past June and is launching a national campaign, You Check, this month via an advertising campaign. The mandate of the CMHF is to encourage men aged 30 to 50 to become proactive about their health, helping them identify habits that are detrimental in the long term to their quality of life. The 10-min- ute online survey You Check, funded in part by Sun Life Financial, helps men identify habits that lead to conditions like Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It is anonymous and not only identifi es an individual's lifestyle hab- its that act as precursors to ill health but gives men a simple action plan to follow that facilitates risk reduction through specifi c lifestyle changes. The survey was designed and created by Goldenberg's specially selected team of experts in men's health from UBC, including urologists, population health and public health professionals, and epidemiologists. (Goldenberg, a global leader in prostate cancer, oversaw development of the survey.) By making a few small lifestyle changes, the payoff for men is huge, says Goldenberg, help- ing men achieve 10 additional years of good health in their lifespan and help- ing delay the average onset of lifestyle- related disease to 72 from 62. "It will add an additional 10 years of good health to men in mid-life." And all it takes is for "men to prioritize them- selves a little bit." Standing in the way of change is the male sense of invincibility, Goldenberg says. "Testosterone is the culprit. It is the most potent hormone in biology. It makes men lovers and fi ghters and somewhat crazy and stubborn." Still, Goldenberg believes that You Check, which is just one small part of the CMHF initiative, will encourage men to become more cognizant of their health and act in ways that will support long- term health goals. (The CMHF website and its complementary site "Don't Change Much" provide numerous tips and initiatives related to diet, exercise and disease prevention.) In addition to the testosterone fac- tor, the workplace still drives men hard, although it has gotten better in the 13 years since his heart attack, says Labou, who is now TD Insurance's Pacifi c region sales manager. Corpora- tions are increasingly acknowledging the need for work/life balance. The real- ity is, however, that the balance must always be "skewed towards work," says Labou. "It doesn't matter how many hours you have to work, goals have to be met because the company asked for it and the company demands it." The rungs on the ladder to success begin and end well outside the nine- I