Use your head: get online

THE LIFE OF RYAN: Comedian John Ryan says online health information beats a headache but if you don't know where to go you could wind up looking at Arsenal footballers or other alarming material.

John Ryan

There was a time when male communication involved sitting around camp fires and whacking each other over the heads with sticks. The first health prevention tips involved learning to duck. This information was probably passed on verbally.

With the advent of cave paintings there was a new situation, a permanent record of your thoughts and opinions. Prehistoric man loved to draw a picture of a bison or a sabre toothed tiger. Were the drawings for decoration, entertainment or education? Who knows? As far as I am aware, there are no recorded examples of health information on the walls of caves. Lets be honest, prehistoric man, like his latter day counterpart wouldn’t have looked anyway. While he was looking, there was always a chance of someone sneaking up unnoticed and whacking him around the head. Maybe that is where we get our head in the sand approach to advice from? Let’s face it your head is protected if it is in the ground.

X-rated Aaron

Here we are now thousands of years later in a situation where we have the joys of modern technologies. There are programs, apps and websites designed to cover all aspects of modern living. When a man's car is broken he is just one click away from the answer before going to the garage. However, if his body is in trouble will he be as quick to log on? If you do, be careful what you search for.

My nephew recently entered the kitchen looking ashen faced: 'we have pressed something on the computer'

I looked at the images they had found. I was wide eyed at the gymnastic abilities of the girls on display. They had wanted to see the horrendous foul inflicted on Arsenal's Aaron Ramsey but couldn’t remember his name. So like any intuitive seven year olds they typed in the words “x rated” and “tackle”. The tackle on display was certainly only acceptable for over eighteens to look at. The internet is fraught with many dangers.

There is a lot of useful information available but the basic problem is that we men are only able to understand cave paintings. Information has to be simple and accessible. 'Can’t we just go to the GP?' I hear you ask.

Well, if it were the case that we would actually go I suppose it would be all right. But men don’t go, do we? There’s always an excuse. 'I am too busy', 'they make you wait too long in reception', 'I am trying to discover time travel'.

Some things never change

But we have no excuse not to at least have a little dabble online. Come on lads, take an interest. There are tons of useful sites on the internet. They won’t replace the need for doctors but if they at least start us engaging with health service providers that has to be a good thing, doesn’t it? It may catch on.

I decided to give the new technology a try. Here’s a tip, don’t type ‘mens bodies’ into the search engine or you could have an Aaron Ramsey X rated tackle moment. More importantly you may find that if you are not too careful the missus may sneak up on you, see what you are looking at and whack you over the head. Some things never change, ah well I guess they call it progress.