This year I scaled back from my normal 5-6 new years resolutions to a mere 2: excercise more regularly; drink more water.

This is the first time that I've made resolutions which have tied directly to my health and is significant in that I'm rapidly approaching 40 (38 this year).  As you pass through adulthood it seems that each decade brings with it a change in health-related focus and I've long viewed life in the 40's as a time of potential risk with regards to health, particularly for heart attack and stroke.  This is a statistic echoed in many medical journals, which is exemplified by this snippet taken from a November 2001 article in the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia journal:

In the older age group, 45 to 65, cardiovascular disease and cancers contribute more than half the disease and injury burden. Cardiovascular disease is dominated by ischaemic heart disease and stroke and cancers by lung cancer and colorectal cancer.

Since making my resolution I've gone from drinking around 6 cups of coffee and no water per day to 1 coffee per day and roughly 2 litres of water; I've also reduced the amount of beer down from around 12 standard drinks per week to just a couple.  Additionally, I've been walking/jogging anywhere between 3 and 6 kms every other day.  Now, with my new health adjustments, I'll need to monitor my diet to ensure that it keeps up with my new activity levels.

Taken from the same article, here are some revealing statistics about men's health in Australia:

• The life expectancy of Australian men is six years shorter than that of women
• Men see their doctors around 15% less often than women
• Men are more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than women
• More than 15,000 men died from coronary heart disease in Australia in 1998
• A 40 year old man has a one-in-two risk of having coronary heart disease in the future
• Approximately 85% of men have at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease, such as smoking, physical inactivity, high blood pressure cholesterol, overweight and obesity
• Around 30% of men over 25 have high blood pressure
• More than 50% of men over 35 have high cholesterol
• Australian men are more likely to be overweight than women
• Nearly one in four Australian adults has diabetes or impaired glucose metabolism and the prevalence of diabetes increases with age
• Heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes can lead to sexual dysfunction and erectile problems
• Thirty-nine per cent of Australian men experience some degree of erectile dysfunction
• Prostate cancer, the most common form of cancer in Australian men, has no symptoms in the early stages and often goes undetected
• Men are more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs and have a higher suicide rate than women - behaviours that are linked to depression