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Men’s Health After 60 — A diverse older man living actively while calm health symbols suggest heart, strength, sleep, preventive care, and honest conversation.
Book 29 of the series

Men’s Health After 60

A Practical Guide to Strength, Heart Health, Prostate Questions, Sexual Health, Sleep, and Preventive Care

About six pieces of information regarding your own body, and a person to call. That is an achievable amount.

Three ways to have it

  • Paperback$13.99Not yet printable

    5.5 × 8.5 in, 120 pages, posted to you. ISBN not yet issued

  • Ebook$4.99

    EPUB, reads on any e-reader, phone or tablet. ISBN 979-8-90623-743-9

  • Audiobook$9.99

    About 2h 41m, narrated in full. ISBN 979-8-90623-744-6

Read the opening free Prices and delivery

What it is for

For men over 60 who have been putting off appointments and questions, and for the people who love them.

What it will not do

It is not a diagnosis manual, gives no screening ages, lab numbers, or treatment recommendations, and does not endorse testosterone or supplement products.

What this guide is about

He was seventy-one and had not seen a doctor in nineteen years. What finally moved him was not his wife, who had asked a hundred times, and not his brother with the new stent. It was his eleven-year-old granddaughter, who said she wanted him at her graduation. He went in braced for a scolding and got a nurse, a blood pressure cuff, some questions, and one small decision to make in his own time. He is still cross about how simple it turned out to be.

This book covers what usually gets left too long. Building a health baseline, when many men know less about their own numbers than they would guess. Heart, blood pressure, and metabolic health, where the quietest gains are. Strength and balance, because getting up off the floor is worth a great deal at eighty. Prostate and urinary changes. Sexual health. Sleep, breathing, and energy, which are more medical than most men realize. Mood, friendship, and alcohol, treated honestly. The marketing swamp around hormones and supplements. And making screening decisions with a clinician rather than from a headline.

About 25,000 words, with chapter illustrations, a 30-day plan, questions for your doctor, a symptom log, scripts for the awkward bits, a support circle worksheet, a one-page personal health dashboard, a quick-reference card, a glossary, and plain-language sources.

No screening ages or intervals. No PSA numbers, no lab values, no targets. Testosterone advertising is looked at skeptically rather than endorsed, and whether any hormone treatment suits you depends on a proper workup with a doctor. Your clinician advises. You decide.

Inside the book

Every chapter, with the sentence it opens on.

The chapters

  1. The Health BaselineThe truck was still running. Ray had been sitting in the clinic parking lot for eleven minutes with the heater on and his hand on the gearshift, doing the arithmetic men do in that situation: it's already late, they'll b
  2. Heart, Blood Pressure, and Metabolic HealthIn the drawer of the hall table, under the spare keys and a dead flashlight, there's a blood pressure cuff.
  3. Strength, Balance, and Bone HealthTwo bags of topsoil, forty pounds each, from the car to the back garden.
  4. Prostate and Urinary QuestionsHalf past two in the morning, and you're in the hallway again.
  5. Sexual HealthThere's a joke men make. You'll have heard some version of it: at my age, I'm just glad to wake up at all.
  6. Sleep, Breathing, and EnergyThey've been in separate bedrooms for six years.
  7. Mood, Friendship, and Substance UseThe calendar on the kitchen wall has a doctor's appointment on the fourteenth and nothing else in the whole month.
  8. Hormones, Supplements, and MarketingThe email arrives at eleven at night, which is not an accident.
  9. Cancer Screening and Shared DecisionsTwo brothers at a kitchen table, arguing.
  10. Build a Personal Men's Health DashboardHank kept everything in a shoebox. Discharge papers from a knee replacement in 2011, a folded lab result from a hospital that's since closed, three appointment cards for appointments long past, the leaflet from a medicat

And at the back

  • When It Feels Hard: Troubleshooting the Real Barriers
  • Common Myths, Gently Corrected
  • Your 30-Day Plan
  • Worksheets, Scripts, and Reusable Frames
  • Quick-Reference Card
  • A Small Glossary
  • Sources and Further Reading
  • A Closing Word

The thirty days

Thirty small things, one a day, none of them taking more than about fifteen minutes. This isn't a program and there's no grade at the end. Skip what doesn't apply. Repeat what helps. If you miss a fortnight, pick up where you stopped rather than starting over.

  1. Write down three things about your body you've noticed in the past year and told nobody. Keep the paper.
  2. Collect every pill bottle, box, and supplement in the house. Write the full list with doses. Put the date on it.
  3. Work out whether you actually have a regular clinician. If you don't, find two practices near you that take new patients.
  4. Make the phone call. Use the booking script in the next section if the words won't come.
  5. Ring a sibling, cousin, or the family archivist and ask what your parents and grandparents died of, and roughly when.
  6. Take one blood pressure reading properly: five minutes sitting still, bare arm, supported, no talking. Write it down with the date.
  7. Look at what you've gathered this week. Add your top three concerns for the appointment at the bottom of the page.
  8. Write one sentence describing the symptom you'd least like to say out loud. Just the sentence. Nobody has to see it.
  9. Put a pen and paper on the back of the toilet. Start logging the time every time you urinate.
  10. Keep logging, and add what you drank and when, including tea, coffee, and alcohol.
  11. Finish the three days of logging. Circle whatever pattern you can see yourself.
  12. Ask whoever might know whether you snore, gasp, or stop breathing at night. If you sleep alone, count how many times this week you fell asleep in a chair before nine.
  13. Put the bag of medications and supplements in the car and get five minutes with a pharmacist. Ask about interactions and duplicates.
  14. Decide tomorrow's wake time and write it down. Then get up at it, whatever the night does.
  15. Stand up from a chair without using your hands, as many times as you comfortably can. Write the number down. This is your baseline.
  16. Do a set of chair stands while the kettle boils, or during the first ad break. Attach it to something that already happens daily.
  17. Hands on the kitchen counter, feet back, chest to the counter and push. Do as many as feel like real effort.
  18. Brush your teeth standing on one leg, one finger on the sink. Swap legs halfway.
  19. Carry a full shopping bag in each hand from one end of the house to the other, twice.
  20. Walk your house looking for fall hazards, then fix exactly one: the curled rug, the cord across the hall, the dark route to the bathroom.
  21. Add real protein to one meal that currently hasn't got any. Eggs, tinned fish, beans, yoghurt, whatever you'll actually eat.
  22. Write down honestly what you drank over the past seven days. Not a typical week. This week.
  23. Message or ring one man you haven't spoken to in over six months. No agenda.
  24. Find one thing near you that meets on the same day every week. A shed, a walking group, a class, a volunteer shift. Just find it.
  25. Go to it once. Once is all that's being asked.
  26. Write one sentence about which kind of man you are on screening: the one who'd rather know everything, or the one who'd rather not go looking. There's no wrong answer.
  27. Copy the five screening questions onto a card and put it with your appointment paperwork.
  28. Ask your clinician, or write down to ask: "What specifically should make me call you, and what can wait?"
  29. Build the one-page dashboard. Essentials, medications, conditions, allergies, devices, and your standing questions.
  30. Make two copies: one for the fridge, one for a person you trust. Put a date on the calendar six months out to rewrite it, and write one line about the single thing from this book you intend to keep doing.

Pages from this book

Real pages, at the size they print. In the paperback these are black and white; the cover keeps its colour.

An older adult following a calm evening-to-bed routine with dim light, comfortable environment, and a consistent wake-time cue.
An older adult following a calm evening-to-bed routine with dim light, comfortable environment, and a consistent wake-time cue.
A calm thirty-day progression as four weekly clusters and two review days, simple shapes, no readable text.
A calm thirty-day progression as four weekly clusters and two review days, simple shapes, no readable text.
Concentric support rings — self, trusted people, community, professionals — shown through people and symbols, no words.
Concentric support rings — self, trusted people, community, professionals — shown through people and symbols, no words.
A four-stage decision path shown as visual stations with a calm older adult moving through them, no words.
A four-stage decision path shown as visual stations with a calm older adult moving through them, no words.

Words this book makes plain

Baseline
A record of where your health stands now, so that later changes mean something.
BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia)
Age-related enlargement of the prostate. Not cancer and doesn't become cancer. The most common cause of urinary changes in older men.
Digital rectal exam
A brief physical examination in which a clinician feels the prostate through the rectal wall. Uncomfortable, quick, and one of several ways of assessing the gland.
Erectile dysfunction
Persistent difficulty getting or keeping an erection. Often related to blood vessels, and sometimes an early sign of wider circulation problems.
Metabolic health
A shorthand for how your body handles blood sugar, fats, and blood pressure, and how weight around the middle affects all three.
Nocturia
Waking at night to urinate.
Overdiagnosis
Finding a disease that would never have caused symptoms or shortened life. The main reason screening decisions are genuinely two-sided.
Prostate
A gland below the bladder, roughly walnut-sized, with the urinary tube running through it.
PSA (prostate-specific antigen)
A substance made by the prostate and measurable in blood. Levels can rise for many reasons, cancer being one of several.
Screening
Testing someone with no symptoms, on the chance of finding disease early. Different from investigating a symptom, which is always warranted.
Shared decision-making
A conversation in which your clinician supplies the medical facts and trade-offs, you supply what matters to you, and the two of you decide together.
Sleep apnea
Repeated pauses in breathing during sleep caused by the airway closing. Common, treatable, and frequently missed for years.
Resistance training
Any exercise that makes muscles work against a load, including your own body weight. Effective at any age.

The words to use

Copy these out, print them, or keep them in a note on your phone. They are yours to use.

The Booking Script

"Hello. I'd like to make an appointment as a new patient. It's been a long time since I've been seen, and I want to start properly rather than just have a quick look at one thing. Could you tell me how long a visit like that usually is, and whether anyone has a shorter wait than others?"
"I'd like an appointment about something I've been putting off. It's to do with [urination / my mood / sex / my drinking / tiredness]. I'd rather book enough time to do it properly."

For the phone call you've been putting off. Say it plainly; the receptionist has heard worse.

If you already have a clinician and it's a specific issue:

Naming the topic when you book is the part men skip, and it's what gets you a longer slot instead of a rushed one.

If they offer you something months out: "Is there a cancellation list I could go on?" Say yes to it.

The Awkward Symptom Script

"Before we start on anything else, there's something I find embarrassing and I want to get it said."
"I'm up three or four times a night to urinate, and it's been getting worse for a couple of years."
"My stream's weak and I never feel like I've finished."
"I've seen blood in my urine."
"Erections have changed in the last six months and I want to know if it's a health thing."
"I've completely lost interest in sex and that's not like me."
"My drinking has gone up and I don't like the direction."
"I've been low for months, and I've had thoughts I don't want to be having. I need help with that today."

Use whichever fits. Say it in the first two minutes, not on your way out the door.

Then one of:

If speaking is too much: write the sentence on a piece of paper and hand it over. It works exactly as well.

If you get brushed off: "I'd like this looked into properly rather than left. What's the next step?" Repeat once. Then ask for a referral or a second opinion.

Your One-Page Health Summary

Name / date of birth:
> In an emergency call: (name, relationship, phone)
> My doctor / practice: (name, phone)
> Specialists: (name, what for)
> Medications and supplements (name, dose, how often, who prescribed) — updated on: __________
> Conditions: (plain words, roughly since when)
> Allergies and bad reactions:
> Devices, implants, replacements:
> Recent numbers: (blood pressure with dates, weight, anything my doctor told me to watch)
> Advance directive / health care proxy: (do I have one, where is it, who does it name)
> Questions for next visit: 1. _______ 2. _______ 3. _______

Rewrite this by hand twice a year. Keep it in your wallet, on the fridge, and with one other person.

The Three-Day Log

Date | Time | What happened | What I'd had to drink | Anything unusual

Works for the bladder, for sleep, or for drinking. Same shape each time.

Three days is plenty. Bring the sheet to the appointment. It converts a vague complaint into something a clinician can act on, and almost nobody does it.

The Five Screening Questions

Copy onto a card. Works for any test anyone offers you.

  1. What is this looking for, and what happens next if it's abnormal?
  2. How often does it find something that turns out to be nothing, and what would sorting that out involve?
  3. If it finds a cancer, would that definitely need treating, or might it be one that never troubled me?
  4. What are the risks and side effects of the treatment I'd likely be offered?
  5. Given everything you know about me, what would you suggest, and why?

The "What Should Make Me Call You" Frame

Ambulance, immediately: chest pressure or pain, stroke signs, unable to urinate at all, sudden severe testicular pain, sudden severe headache, fainting, an erection lasting hours.
> Call the doctor within a day or two: ______________________________
> Raise at the next appointment: ______________________________
> Specific to me, from my doctor: ______________________________

Fill this in with your own clinician, in your own handwriting. Their answers, not ours.

Support Circle Worksheet

Nobody does this alone, and the men who do worst are the ones with a single name in every ring. Fill in at least one name per line, and if a line is blank, that blank is the most useful thing on this page.

  • The person who'd notice if I went quiet for a week: ______________________
  • The one I'd tell something difficult to: ______________________
  • Someone I see on the same day most weeks: ______________________
  • The practical helper (lift to an appointment, second set of ears in the room): ______________________
  • My pharmacist, by name: ______________________
  • My clinician, and who to ring out of hours: ______________________
  • If it's the middle of the night and I'm in a bad way: (crisis line, emergency number, one person) ______________________

Questions worth asking before you buy

Who is Men’s Health After 60 for?
For men over 60 who have been putting off appointments and questions, and for the people who love them.
What does it not do?
It is not a diagnosis manual, gives no screening ages, lab numbers, or treatment recommendations, and does not endorse testosterone or supplement products.
How long is it?
About 25,400 words across 10 chapters, with 13 full-page illustrations. In paperback that is about 120 pages. The audiobook runs about 2h 41m.
Can I read some of it first?
Yes. The foreword and the whole introduction are on this site, free, with nothing to sign up for.
What languages is it in?
The books exist in five: English, German, Spanish, French and Dutch, each localised properly — its own illustrations with the labels drawn in that language, and its own country's institutions named in the text. This shop can sell you the English and the Spanish today; the other three are finished books waiting on their paperwork.
What does the complete set include?
All thirty guides in print, in one box, and the ebook and the audiobook of every one of them at no extra charge.

Free to read

What is in it, chapter by chapter

All 10 chapters: what each one opens on, the questions it answers, and the one small thing to do when you have finished it. About 25,400 words in the book itself.

Every chapter

Where it sends you next

The book’s own sources, printed here in full.

We haven't quoted statistics in this book, and that's deliberate. Figures on screening ages, intervals, thresholds, and risk change as evidence accumulates and differ between countries and guideline bodies. Any number printed here would be out of date for somebody, somewhere, and possibly wrong for you specifically. What we've written instead is the durable part: what the decisions are and how to have them.

For current specifics, these are reputable places to start, and all of them publish in plain language for the public:

  • Your own clinician and pharmacist. The only sources that know your history, your medications, and your risk.
  • National public health services such as the NHS in the United Kingdom or your country's equivalent, which publish accessible summaries of conditions, symptoms, and when to seek care.
  • Major national health institutes and cancer organizations, which publish current screening guidance and decision aids written for patients rather than clinicians. Ask specifically for a "decision aid" on prostate screening; several good ones exist and they're designed for exactly the conversation in Chapter 9.
  • Urology and cardiology professional bodies, which publish patient-facing information on prostate, bladder, sexual health, and heart conditions.
  • Sleep medicine organizations, for information about sleep apnea, testing, and treatment options.
  • Mental health charities and crisis services in your country, many of which run telephone and text lines staffed around the clock.
  • Consumer protection and medicines regulators, for warnings about unapproved supplements, counterfeit medications, and online sellers.

A word on searching the internet about your own symptoms: it will find you the worst possibility every time, because the worst possibility is the most written about. If you do look, look at sites run by national health services, universities, or major medical organizations, and take anything with a payment button attached with considerable suspicion.

A Note on Review

This book is written for review by a primary-care clinician, with urology-informed input on the prostate, urinary, and sexual health chapters, before publication. Guidance on cancer screening and any statement touching hormone therapy is flagged for verification against current sources near the publication date, because both areas are actively studied and both have changed within recent memory.

Nothing here is medical advice, and nothing here can replace an examination. Where this book and a clinician who knows you disagree, the clinician wins.

This book in other languages

En español

The particulars

SeriesPractical Guides for Life After 60, book 29 of the series
ImprintThe Greenlight Guides Editorial Team
Length25,400 words, 10 chapters
Extentabout 120 pages (estimated from the manuscript, not a proof)
Size5.5 × 8.5 in (140 × 216 mm)
Illustrations13, full-page illustrations
Listening time2h 41m
ISBN, ebook979-8-90623-743-9
ISBN, audiobook979-8-90623-744-6
ISBN, paperbacknot yet issued
LanguageEnglish (en-US)

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