You worry your favorite team will crap the bed on Sunday, or that you’ll never meet your dream girl. But if you think about it, those are pretty silly things to stress about: Only one team ends up on top every year, and if divorce rates are any indication, your "dream girl" may very well turn into a nightmare.
That’s not to say your life should be worry-free. But for a lot of men, fear is misplaced. Here are eight things that should actually have you concerned:
1. Losing Touch With Your Buddies
A single good friend extends your life by 10 years, and may offer more health benefits than quitting smoking, found one report on the power of social connections. But as marriage and parenthood settle in, most men abandon their old friendships without forming close new ones, shows research from Harvard University. You need at least three close buddies you can talk with and rely on in times of trouble, concludes an Oxford study.
2. Your Overdeveloped Sweet Tooth
Sugar screws with your metabolism, causes weight gain, and is likely contributing to the country’s skyrocketing diabetes rates. The sweet stuff has also been linked to cancer and heart disease. It even messes with your mood. But despite all those risks, men eat loads of it packed into soda, “sports” drinks, and processed foods and snacks.
3. Your Worst Driving Habit
Texting while driving is about six times more dangerous than driving drunk, according to stats from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Still, you and most of the people you know probably do it from time to time—or every time you’re behind the wheel. Stop.
4. “Bad” Stress
We report all the time about stress and its ties to heart disease, depression, inflammation, cancer, and a dozen other awful ailments. But feeling your heart race before a big presentation at work isn’t the type of stress that's deadly. The stress that will kill you is chronic stress, which doesn’t let up for months—or even years—and keeps you up at night. If your job, your relationship, or some aspect of your life is constantly gnawing at you and bringing you down, you need to make some changes.
5. Prostate Cancer
You’ll see a lot of pink this month in honor of breast cancer awareness. But for men, prostate cancer is just as common—and nearly as deadly—as breast cancer is for women. Fortunately, you can help defend yourself from the disease with coffee, frequent sex, and tomatoes.
6. Information Overload
If you’re not showering or sleeping, you’re probably flipping through emails, surfing the web, or doing both while you watch television. But that constant influx of information can slowly choke the parts of your brain that help focus your attention and manage your emotions. It may also supercharge your body’s stress responses to mild, shouldn’t-be-a-big-deal triggers, suggests research from the U.K.
7. Crappy Sleep
Sleeping fewer than 7 hours a night raises your risk of death from all causes by 12 percent, shows a study from the University of Warwick in the U.K. But nearly 40 percent of men don’t get that much. While the exact amount of sleep every man needs can vary a lot, the big test is whether you feel alert or groggy an hour or two after getting up. If you’re already dozing before lunchtime, you’re not sleeping well enough or long enough, suggests research from the University of Pennsylvania. Alcohol could be to blame. The ethanol in your beer, wine, or liquor disrupts your sleep patterns and can keep you from getting the restful ZZZs your body needs.
8. Your Faulty Smoke Alarms
There are roughly 1.4 million house fires every year in America, and the majority of people killed by those fires die from inhaling smoke or toxic fumes, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. So ask yourself: When was the last time you checked your smoke detector? Spending a few bucks on a good photoelectric and ionization option can keep you safe from smoke and fumes, experts say.
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