You play a major role in keeping the men in your life healthy. Encouraging and preparing the right foods, suggesting regular exercise, and reminding of the importance of routine physical check-ups and screenings, it’s often up to you.

Many women often have concerns that the men in their lives – their partners, husbands, brothers, dads, sons, and friends – sometimes are dismissive or reluctant to take charge of their health and wellness and put off getting regular checkups or taking care of developing medical conditions or injuries quickly. Most of the time, women must deal with the reality that a man important in their lives may die due to preventable diseases leaving women with emotional and financial implications.

Know when to call in the professionals.

Ideally, the men and boys in your life are already attending regular checkups as tracking the changes over time are key in assessing health. Due to skipping routine medical appointments, many men never learn that they have a deadly disease until it’s too late. Often times men and women don’t know the signs to look for. Checkout out more resources here. Persistent backaches, changes in the color of urine or stool, impotence, obvious changes to warts or moles, recurrent headaches or chest pains, bleeding that won’t stop, nagging cough, unexplained weight loss and extreme fatigue – any of these may signal a serious health problem. If you detect a serious health problem, get your guy to the doctor immediately. Do not take no for an answer.

Check each other out.

Yes, you can help him with his testicular exam and he can help you with your breast exam. While you’re at it, do a head-to-toe skin cancer check on one another. Pay particular attention to moles or skin abnormalities on his back where skin cancer most often occurs in men. For women, it’s on hands, face, and legs.

Prevention, Prevention, Prevention

Unsurprisingly, the three most important things you can encourage the men in your life to do (and yourself, for that matter) are to eat a low fat diet, exercise regularly, and don’t smoke. These steps drastically reduce the chances of succumbing to heart and pulmonary diseases, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. Again, attending regular checkups as tracking the changes over time are key in assessing health. Hopefully

Be Patient

Your goal is to get the men in your life to take better care of themselves and get the next generation of men to start building good habits. These things take time. Small changes make a big difference, you’ll improve the quality and increase the length of life you’ll have with the men you love.