I don’t hate shots because I don’t hate anything except maybe the word ‘hate’ cause it’s often misused these days. But I do intensely with almost a passion dislike shots. Not the whiskey type – the needle type. When faced with injections at the doctor’s office I automatically ask if there’s a pill version – when told yes but it takes longer I don’t care, gimme the pills. When informed no pill exists and I must have the injection I ask for a return appointment so I can have a day or two to prepare myself mentally, emotionally and physically. I would make a terrible diabetes patient which is why I do all I can to avoid that disease, even exercising periodically if my weight approaches the red danger zone on the scale. (I do actually hate exercising by the way)

Then, once the shot is over – and particularly (most often) when I don’t even feel a thing I’m disgusted with myself over having feared and delayed the inevitable.

The anxiety is worse than the actual event. But isn’t that true in most cases of anxiety in life? We freak-out over a coming event and when it actually occurs and passes harmlessly through our existence like a feather riding a puff of air and we see we were all worked up over nothing.

Men suffer from anxiety worse than women according to a recent Daily Mail article. Also, men who suffer from anxiety are twice as likely to die from cancer...wait, aren’t we tense enough already? Anxious women do not face the same risk.

Basically this is because anxious men are more prone to self-medicate by drinking, smoking and other unhealthy things more than women. Plus women typically are quicker to see a doctor which means any issues resulting from anxiety will be more quickly noticed and dealt with, so anxious women are less prone to suffer a cancer from it.

There’s even a new term: “Manxiety” and sufferers report symptoms such as muscle tension, insomnia, inability to concentrate and restlessness. The University of Cambridge’s fifteen year study found that men with generalized anxiety disorder are over twice as likely to die from cancer as women.

Detractors from the study say the excess of left brain thinking fires up the adrenal glands which arguably can be a cause of the ‘Big C” in men.

As of now there’s no conclusive smoking-gun evidence of the linkage between anxiety and cancer in men, it’s all studies, research and theory’s based on observation.

Other than medical injections, nothing much worries me (except any kind of snake) so I’m a pretty chill, even keeled middle-of-the-road emotionally kind of guy that likes to laugh, smile and have fun.

I do like the new word though – Manxiety.

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