EmpowerND Podcast
Your guide to navigating North Dakota’s community resources and discovering the support available to you. Each episode explores local programs, services, and tips to empower individuals and families, with inspiring stories and insights from community leaders. And this is just the beginning, so much more is on the way!
EmpowerND Podcast
Eps. 7 | The Doctor Can Wait...Or Can It? Blue Collar Men Talk Health
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Too many men put their health on the back burner. Work comes first. Family comes first. The doctor can wait… right?
In this episode, we sit down with real blue collar workers Josh and Warren for an honest, unfiltered conversation about men and their health. They talk about the job site culture, the mindset of “toughing it out,” and why so many guys convince themselves the doctor can wait.
This conversation is incredibly relatable for men, but it is also eye opening for women who want to better understand the way men think about their health. If you have ever wondered why the men in your life put off appointments or ignore symptoms, this episode gives you a chance to crawl inside that mindset.
You will hear real stories, plenty of laughs, and some powerful reminders about why taking care of your health matters more than most men admit.
Whether you are a man who keeps putting it off or a woman trying to understand the men in your life, this episode is one you will not want to miss.
Ready to Take Control of Your Health?
Aspire Health Clinic
Call (701) 225-3536
By Appointment: M-Th 8:00a.m.-5:00p.m., Fri 8:00a.m.-Noon
CHI St. Alexius Health Clinic- Dickinson
Call (701) 456-4200 for an appointment
Walk In Clinic Hours: M-F 7:00a.m.-6:30p.m.
Sanford Health West Clinic- Dickinson
Call (701) 456-6000 for an appointment
Walk In Clinic Hours: M-F 8:00a.m.-8:00p.m. Sat-Sun: 8:00a.m.-6:00p.m.
Not from Dickinson? Call your local clinic or visit their website to see if they offer walk in appointments or extended hours. Taking care of your health might be easier than you think.
The EmpowerND Podcast is hosted by Women Empowering Women, a membership based non-profit organization dedicated to connecting, supporting, and educating women. Through community, events, and resources, Women Empowering Women helps women grow, build confidence, and explore their potential, supporting them every step of the way as they become the best version of themselves. To learn more about Women Empowering Women’s projects or how to become a member, visit wewnetwork.org.
Welcome back to Empower Indie Podcasts. This podcast creates space for honest conversations about health, well-being, and community resources to help people in southwestern North Dakota live healthy, full lives. The Empower Indie Podcast is produced by Women Empowering Women, a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting, supporting, and educating women to help them become the best versions of themselves. To become a member or learn more, visit wewnetwork.org. Okay, so the reason that we asked you guys to be on the show was to kind of talk about the barriers to health care that men face.
SPEAKER_01Last minute care when something hurts.
SPEAKER_00What makes it hard for blue-collar workers to be able to get health care or to want to?
SPEAKER_02I mean, 95% of the time for me, it's just being a blue-collar worker and busy and thinking I'll just push through it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, busy, push through it. And uh the time and it doesn't seem like you're putting off something that's that big of a deal until it is a big deal.
SPEAKER_00That's a good answer. So would you think that there's like cultural or social factors that play into that? Or or you know, is there something to do with uh like the perception that you have of what what you're viewed as if you go in for for help?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, hell yeah. Uh be a man. Be a man, because I mean that's that's that's that's the only answer I got. It's it's uh, I mean, I'll I'll I'll die doing this, so you know, depending on what day that happens, hopefully it's not soon, but it is a cultural thing where you know you're told your whole life, like suck it up, you know, walk it off, stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01Scrub some dirt on it. Yeah, so when it comes time to prioritize it, I mean, if you're not hurt, why why go in, you know?
SPEAKER_00What are some of the things that that you feel like would get you to seek health care? So this is something that I know a lot of women, especially with you know, wives, struggle with getting their husbands in to seek care just for preventative stuff too, because they're, you know, worried about their spouses not being able to to know if they have heart issues, to know if they're at risk for anything. And so the wife will ask a lot of you know, why you won't go in.
SPEAKER_01I think education can go a long way. You know, you you don't view the body as like one whole entire system. So um you're you're not thinking about like how your cholesterol or your blood sugar or anything affects hormone production. Um we were listening to one of your lectures on the way to Fargo one time, and I heard them talking about like, oh, well, if you fix your microbiome in your gut, you can um maybe tolerate food better. So I thought, like, oh, well, yeah, that sounds like something I want to do because I'd love to be able to eat peanut butter without heartburn.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I think it's uh I I what I've noticed is that with men, it's a little bit more practical. Like if it's a practical thing in your life that's that's interrupting your schedule or interrupting um your ability to do your job, then it becomes important.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't uh I don't put my health at the forefront of anything in my life. It it just, you know, if it if it aches aches for too long or it's too painful for too long, then then you get it looked at. And by then you're two to three weeks into the problem and should have done something weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01And I think maybe viewing the problem as an isolated incident rather than a symptom of something else, you know, so you are falling apart by the time you go in there, and it's like you have arthritis because you haven't cleaned up your diet and you haven't done other kind of maintenance to your body until it's until the problem is presented.
SPEAKER_00Right. So what kind of health issues do you see in coworkers um or other men that could have been prevented or or managed with regular checkups?
SPEAKER_01I would say um high blood pressure would have been what I had experience with with my crew in Colorado was like a lot of us had high blood pressure and it comes from poor diet and other things that you can clean up with small incremental steps.
SPEAKER_02For me, I would say it would be uh bad backs and poor lifting techniques. Uh we lift we lift heavy things stupidly a lot of the time. I I myself do all the time.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I think just understanding too and and getting the perception or or the concept out there that if you exercise and you build core strength, that that's actually going to keep you from injuring yourself and and some of those injuries will go away and then less time away from work. But it's like there's this, you know, I just have to keep pushing through when if you took that time to take care of yourself, then you wouldn't miss work.
SPEAKER_01Going with what he kind of said, I had a supervisor one time that put it really well, and he said, You stop thinking of yourself as an athlete once you stop competing in sports. But what we're doing on the job site is athletic mobility, you know, the lifting improperly, the not stretching, and you know, treating your body like a high performance machine anymore. And part of that would be, you know, getting diagnostics on the machine.
SPEAKER_02That same supervisor told me that uh predators never stretch before they attack prey.
SPEAKER_01You don't see a lion limber up before he takes down a gazelle. I mean, none of us listened to him and stretched. Sure. But it was solid advice. Made me feel cool to be compared to an athlete.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think that the things that you do on the job site, you know, climbing buildings, things like that, is athletics. So that makes sense that you would treat your body like an athlete. And in that sense, like nutrition and regular checkups and and lab work and those things are are things that I would recommend to an athlete.
SPEAKER_01Another thing that used to kind of keep me away from um the doctor is the not necessarily the fear of finding something wrong with me, which is a fear, but the fear of having things taken away. Like I used to live on Red Bulls, two in the morning, you know, and then two big Mountain Dews at lunch, and I knew it wasn't healthy. And if you go to the doctor, then that's gonna confirm your suspicion that like, hey, you can't sustain yourself on Red Bulls and Mountain Dew, and eventually that's gonna get taken away.
SPEAKER_02So the fear of like losing those creature comforts, and I and I think of it alternatively in a way now that like not so much what you're losing out on, but what you're gonna miss on that miss out on. So, like myself, I don't take the best care of myself ever. But I've also been thinking a lot lately about how like when my kids are 15, 13, and 11, man, do I have seriously 20 years left of running with them or 10 years, you know, when their grandkids when when I have grandkids or they have children, you know, what what am I gonna miss out on making poor decisions on a daily basis? Also, I think about that a lot.
SPEAKER_00What has been success like successful to get you in the doors? What's worked for you or a trick that you can share that has been something that helped you to actually go and seek that health care honestly, education.
SPEAKER_01When when I was listening to the lecture and the lady was describing the symptoms, I was like, man, I think she's talking about me. And like knowing that, hey, I might be able to be tolerant for more foods that wouldn't give me heartburn or anything else. And uh it made me go take a GI map, so I knew exactly what was wrong, and it's it's uh it's hard to fix things if you don't have data.
SPEAKER_00So I guess let me ask you this question when it happened when it comes to, you know, you're both dads, and you talked about wanting to run around with your kids and stuff. So what would be a driving factor if it was like talking about teaching your boys because you both have all boys, on what they should be doing for their own health care and how to take care of themselves.
SPEAKER_02The uh best advice I think I've ever given my kids is even after the sports are done, like Josh was talking about early, stay healthy. Stay healthy, stay active, exercise, go to the gym, whatever it may be. Because once you stop, you're stopped and and uh atrophy happens quickly.
SPEAKER_00And I think you can always get it back, but I think it's a lot harder of a road to get it back than to maintain it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's uh it's kind of a difficult question when you don't do it for yourself. You know, how do you pass that on to somebody else where maybe it's a situation where you wish to give them something that necessarily you don't do, you know, do as I say, not as I do. So to pass that on to my kids, I would probably go with like a a data-driven, you can't fix things if you don't know what's wrong.
SPEAKER_00Right. So for like our kids, we take them, you know, to get labs and and identify deficiencies they have as athletes. So I would think that, you know, driving home that that's something that has to be done no matter what age you are, when you're trying to do athletic things, like you know, you break that cycle of stigma of by you guys doing it, then they're doing it, and they know it's okay.
SPEAKER_01They respond well to the data when they see the data and it's like, hey, I'm dehydrated, hey, um I'm eating too much sugar. They they respond in at least, you know, the annual checkups are probably something that a person needs to do because you do fall back into the old habits. So even though you know you're dehydrated, well, you're good at drinking water for a couple weeks, but then you kind of fall back into the old habits.
SPEAKER_00What kind of scheduling or or places or things that you guys have found that help to be able to get you that health care when you are busy and it's not convenient?
SPEAKER_02I I think that uh Teledoc has been magnificent for a lot of people, myself included. Um you know, uh, if you know anything about my family, you know that uh somebody is breaking a bone or breaking somebody else's bone constantly in our household. And uh it's not always ours, sometimes it's our friends. I was at the rink tonight talking to some family friends, and uh my youngest broke uh they were they were playing some playground gaga ball. I don't know exactly how you play it, but they're they were having recess activities, and uh my youngest broke a young lady's hand at school and she finally got her cast off and she said, I have two hands. And I said, I didn't realize my son broke ear bones too after all fall of having broken hand and broken leg children. Uh so yeah, no, I uh I think telehealth works fantastic. Um, you know, but also it's it's sometimes you just have to fit in those hours between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Sometimes you just have to go. So uh the elongated hours for some of the businesses around town have been very helpful too.
SPEAKER_01I think just making it a priority, yeah. Just actually putting a priority on knowing what needs fixed and um getting in there to get the numbers. And another like kind of fear was that it wasn't gonna be a collaborative effort, you know, like the doctor's gonna tell you like this is what you're doing or this is what you need to do, and it's a little dismissive sometimes if you go to quick care. But I found with my primary care physician that it's usually a collaborative effort and it's a working towards a goal.
SPEAKER_00So do you think that sharing your healthcare goal of what whether it's like I need to get as as much as I done it can as I can get done in this visit done right now, like if that's a goal, then you communicate that with them? Or do you think it's um like telling them like, hey, this is my fitness goal I need to get to, or this is, you know, I want to play with my grandkids, or do you think that's helpful?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like that you kind of have a healthcare why that you ask people, and I think that that's a really valuable, like why, like worn with the wanting to run around with the grandkids. That's a that's a great why, and it is a motivating factor in your life. I worked with a guy in the union who his goal was to live long enough to walk his daughter down the aisle, and he didn't live a very healthy life, smoked two packs a day, drank alcohol, but his why for making small little changes in his life was he wanted to be around long enough to walk her down the aisle.
SPEAKER_00So, what small steps have you guys taken to try and work towards those goals that you have for health care?
SPEAKER_01Mine was uh lowering um my blood sugar. I and again, education goes a long way. I didn't realize like your blood sugar affected how much cholesterol you're you maintained in your blood. So talking with my primary care physician, she's like, Oh yeah, well, that'll make your blood a little sticky. So if you can cut out some of the snacks, and it it was a more collaborative effort than like, hey, you need to quit snacks, which was like kind of comforting and motivating.
SPEAKER_02So personally, last year at this time I weighed 368 pounds, and uh I got on Zetbound and I was on it for about six months and lost 50, 68 pounds, 70, 78 pounds actually, down to 290. And uh I got off of it, you know, the the the price out the door was with all the travel and sports and everything we got going on, it just wasn't anything that I wanted to continue for a while. Um, and so uh I was on that, and then I realized while I was on it also the issues I had with breads and tomatoes and acidic foods and all those things. So I've been able to maintain the 305 to 310 range for the last four months now by not eating uh white breads and staying away from tomatoes and just the the things you learned being on that that particular medicine in and of itself uh have benefited me. So at this point, I've been a flat rate for the last several months and I'm happy with that.
SPEAKER_00So looking back, what's one thing you wish every blue-collar worker knew about taking care of their health?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that once it's a problem, then it's a real problem. It's like anything else, you know, when if you're not doing routine vehicle maintenance or routine small things like walk-arounds on your pickup, all those little things eventually lead to bigger issues.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a good point. You you gotta check underneath the hood. Uh teeth are big, heart, the heart is big. I mean, the the muscles, the knees. Um a lot of people, uh, I mean, a lot of us in the oil field have summer teeth. Some are there and some are not. And uh at the end of the day, I mean, I I find myself like that's something I wish I would have taken care of. I have I have a baker's dozen, and it's just the way of the life.
SPEAKER_00I think also as women, we talk a lot about self-care and taking care of ourselves and how to make us mentally healthy. And I don't think that men share those uh experiences as openly as women do of how they're also in the depths of parenthood and work and not taking care of themselves.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I don't uh I would agree with you. I don't think uh at least in my experience on the day-to-day, I don't ask anybody, hey, how are you doing? I mean, I I think that goes a long way just looking at somebody saying, hey, are you okay? You don't look great. What's wrong? You know, things like that. I mean, that's those are simple things you can ask anybody, how are you feeling today? What's wrong? What what what are the issues? Let's talk about it.
SPEAKER_01I think like I've never had a man ask me, like, have you have you been prioritizing your uh mental health or you know, nothing like that. It's it's always kind of been a machismo type relationship that you have with other men, especially on the job site.
SPEAKER_00So So we're charging you to fix it, right?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Warren and Josh are gonna be out there asking all of you how your mental health is.
SPEAKER_01Have you prioritize self-care today?
SPEAKER_00So if it's been a while since your last checkup, this is your reminder preventative care matters even when you feel fine. Wellness visits help catch small concerns before they become big ones and keep you on track for your overall health. You can schedule a wellness visit at Aspire Health, CHI St. Alexis Clinic, or Sanford Clinic. Thank you to our guests, Josh and Warren.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00And for just sharing your thoughts on this matter because it's definitely an important matter. Till next time, stay informed, stay empowered, and we'll see you on the next Empower In D podcast.