Healthy Masculinity, Healthy Heart
By Ed Frauenheim
I had a heart attack three years ago. In my recovery, I’ve learned that men’s heart health involves our deep-seated ideas about what it means to be a man.
Stress, heart health and the “tough guy show”
My heart attack involved a “coronary artery spasm.” An artery feeding my heart clenched up. Doctors told me these are caused at times from methamphetamines, cocaine or smoking cigarettes. I don’t use any of those drugs. So the fourth main cause seemed to apply: stress. That stress stemmed from an unhealthy version of masculinity.
At the time, I was grinding. Working relentlessly to provide for my family and succeed professionally. I was juggling about 20 projects. I was performing what I call the “tough guy show”--a set of rules that limit how men can show up, telling us to be stoic, competitive and ruggedly individualistic. The show was a bust. My heart couldn’t handle the strain.
Healing with help
Thankfully, my heart attack was mild. Doctors squirted nitroglycerin into the clenched artery, and it popped back open. It was scary. For months, I had panic attacks that I was having another heart attack.
Eventually I regained my heart and mental health. Healing required me to widen my view of manhood and accept help in the form of counseling, medication and support from family and friends. I also needed self-compassion. Because I knew better than to fall for the tough guy show.
I co-wrote the 2020 book “Reinventing Masculinity: The Liberating Power of Compassion and Connection”. The book cited a study by the American Psychological Association concluding that a strict adherence to conventional masculinity led to poor health outcomes. Including cardiovascular problems. I’ve since learned that heart disease is the largest cause of death of men, and that men are more likely than women to experience heart disease.
Confined masculinity hinders men from connecting, and research has found that social isolation and loneliness increase risk for heart failure.
“Broken Masculinity” and heart health
I also read a 2019 study that indicated traditional masculinity hurts men in advance of a heart attack and afterwards. It found men often refuse to acknowledge they are having “a cardiac event” and purposely delay going to the hospital.
The researchers asked why men who have suffered a heart attack are at high risk of having undiagnosed mental health challenges, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Among their findings? Heart attacks and surgeries strike at the “heart” of men’s identities.
“Our study revealed ‘broken masculinity’ to be an untold and unrecognized distress following a cardiac event,” the authors wrote. In other words, a heart attack raises questions about a man’s strength, his vitality, his independence and his ability to provide for his family. The research and my own experience have taught me that a confined, “tough guy show” version of masculinity is hard on our hearts.
What we need is a more expansive, healthy view of manhood. It can help keep our hearts beating, help us recover from heart trauma, and more generally help us heal our bodies, minds and souls.
For more information on this topic, visit www.heart.org.
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