A Men’s Health Q&A With Dr. Nathan Starke

Men’s Health Awareness Month offers an important opportunity to highlight the unique health challenges men face, the screenings they often delay, and the conditions that too often go untreated. In this conversation, Dr. Nathan Starke—former Medical Director of the Men’s Health Clinic at Houston Methodist—explains why men avoid care, which symptoms should never be ignored, how conditions like low testosterone and prostate disease are identified, and what men in their 20s through 50s and beyond should be doing to protect their long-term health. Read or watch the full interview below.

Q: Why is Men’s Health Awareness Month important? Why do we need this kind of dedicated time to talk about men’s health specifically?

Dr. Starke: I’m glad you asked. One of the biggest challenges in men’s health is that men tend to avoid talking about their health—and often avoid the doctor entirely. Having these conversations out in the open is important for two reasons:

1. Getting men in for standard screenings and routine care before problems develop.
   
2. Raising awareness about specific men’s health issues that affect quality of life—issues many men don’t realize can be treated.
   

Q: Are men missing important screenings by waiting until their 40s or 50s to see a doctor?

Dr. Starke: Very often, yes. In your 20s, most people feel healthy and never go to the doctor. But by your 30s—and certainly by your 40s—you should establish care with a primary care doctor for routine checks.

In urology, for example, erectile dysfunction or low testosterone evaluations often uncover underlying conditions such as heart disease. Symptoms related to urination, sexual function, or general vitality are common in men and are often treatable with lifestyle changes, medication, or surgery.

Q: People tend to think of men’s health as being focused on “the middle area,” but what else does it include?

Dr. Starke: Men’s health is absolutely about more than that. Take low testosterone, for instance—a huge buzzword today. While it’s marketed heavily (sometimes by less scrupulous actors), it’s a real and common issue.

Low testosterone can affect:

• Energy
  
• Mood
  
• Sleep
  
• Exercise ability
  
• Overall vitality
  

Men’s health is really the whole picture—physical, hormonal, and emotional.

Q: If a man in his 40s feels sluggish, weaker, or “off,” what should he ask his doctor to look at first?

Dr. Starke: Ideally, your physician or PA should know what to check. Guidelines are well-established. For example, colon cancer screening begins around age 45 or 50.

A good general evaluation for men 40 and older includes:

• Heart and lung health
  
• Endocrine and hormonal function, including testosterone
  
• Electrolytes and blood counts
  
• Blood pressure and metabolic health
  

From there, you and your provider can determine what needs further evaluation.

Q: Men often confuse symptoms—thinking something is prostate-related when it’s not. How can they sort that out?

Dr. Starke: The two most common prostate issues are:

1. Prostate enlargement (BPH) — causes urination difficulties
   
2. Prostate cancer — usually does not cause early symptoms
   

Younger men can also have urinary symptoms that mimic prostate problems. Screening is key because prostate cancer rarely causes symptoms until late stages. We look at both symptomatic issues (like urination changes) and silent risks (like cancer screening).

Q: Early testicular cancer can be painless, which scares people. How should men bring these concerns to their doctor?

Dr. Starke: Communication is everything. It may sound simple, but writing down your questions before the appointment can make sure nothing gets missed. Men often avoid going to the doctor—sometimes it’s a partner who finally pushes them to go—so coming prepared helps.

Breaking the ice can be the hardest part. Talking about personal issues like trouble urinating or sexual symptoms can feel awkward, which is why having a doctor you trust is so important.

How Will You Recognize Men’s Health Awareness Month?

Men’s Health Awareness Month serves as a powerful reminder that proactive care, honest conversations, and early screenings can significantly improve men’s long-term health. As Dr. Starke emphasizes, it’s never too late to address concerns, establish regular medical care, and take charge of overall well-being.

How to Build Specialized Knowledge Systematically: Why It Matters and How to Turn Expertise into Value

Why specialized knowledge matters — and how to build it deliberately

Specialized knowledge separates competent contributors from sought-after experts. As industries evolve faster than ever, depth of expertise becomes a durable competitive advantage: it helps professionals solve complex problems, command premium compensation, and create scalable value.

The good news is that specialized knowledge can be cultivated systematically rather than left to chance.

What specialized knowledge looks like
Specialized knowledge is more than credentials or a long résumé.

It’s a concentrated set of uncommon skills, mental models, and tacit insights applied to specific problems. Examples include expertise in machine vision for manufacturing, regulatory strategy for biotech, advanced thermal design for electric vehicles, or deep domain knowledge of an industry’s customer behaviors.

The most valuable forms combine technical depth with real-world application.

How to build specialized knowledge deliberately
– Start with a tightly defined niche. Broad expertise is useful, but hyper-specific domains reduce competition and increase signal strength. Define the customer, problem, and context you want to master.
– Map the knowledge landscape. Identify foundational concepts, common frameworks, key tools, and unanswered questions. This mapping becomes a learning roadmap and a source of content ideas.
– Blend study with practice. Deep knowledge emerges when theory meets messy real work. Pursue applied projects, case studies, or small consulting gigs that force problem-solving at the edge of current understanding.
– Capture tacit knowledge. Keep a learning journal, build templates, and document failed experiments. These artifacts transform experience into reusable assets and help accelerate future work.
– Join or form communities of practice. Specialized forums, niche conferences, and focused Slack or Discord groups expose you to edge cases, novel approaches, and peer feedback that typical courses won’t provide.
– Use mentorship and peer review. One-on-one coaching with an established practitioner or peer critique of real deliverables accelerates skill acquisition and exposes blind spots.

Signaling and monetizing expertise
Becoming an expert is only half the equation: others must recognize your value. Practical ways to signal expertise include publishing detailed case studies, creating specialized tools or templates, speaking at niche events, and contributing to recognized industry publications. Micro-credentials, focused certifications, and client testimonials can amplify credibility—especially when they demonstrate clear outcomes rather than just hours logged.

Avoiding common traps
– Over-certification without depth.

Accumulating generic credentials can create the illusion of expertise while leaving practical problem-solving skills underdeveloped.
– Being too narrow forever. Very narrow specialization can become brittle as market demand shifts. Maintain a T-shaped profile: deep expertise plus adjacent skills that enable pivoting.
– Neglecting communication. Highly technical knowledge must be translated into business impact to be valuable. Practice explaining complex ideas in concise, outcome-focused terms.

Sustaining and scaling your expertise
Invest in permanent learning systems: regular reading lists, project-based sprints, peer review cycles, and content creation that forces reflection. Automate knowledge capture with templates and project playbooks so your insights scale beyond individual projects. When demand grows, consider packaging expertise into online courses, workshops, or subscription services that amplify reach without linear time commitment.

Specialized knowledge is both an asset and a practice. By choosing a focused niche, combining rigorous study with real-world application, documenting tacit insights, and signaling outcomes clearly, professionals can create resilient careers and deliver differentiated value across changing markets.

Capture and Scale Tacit and Specialized Knowledge in Hybrid Teams: Practical Strategies

Specialized knowledge is what separates high-performing teams from the rest: deep technical know-how, institutional memory, and expert intuition that can’t be learned from manuals alone. The challenge for organizations is turning that individual expertise into shared assets without diluting value. Today’s fast-paced, hybrid work environments make intentional knowledge capture essential for resilience and growth.

Understanding tacit vs. explicit knowledge
Specialized knowledge comes in two forms. Explicit knowledge—process diagrams, manuals, code, checklists—is straightforward to document and store. Tacit knowledge—judgment calls, heuristics, pattern recognition—lives inside people’s heads and is far harder to transfer. Effective knowledge strategies focus on both: digitize what you can, and create pathways to transmit what you can’t.

Practical strategies to capture and scale expertise
– Mentoring and apprenticeship: Pair experienced staff with newcomers for focused, time-boxed mentoring. Structured shadowing accelerates real-world learning and creates opportunities for tacit transfer through observation and guided practice.
– Communities of practice: Create cross-functional groups where practitioners share case studies, troubleshooting tips, and post-mortems.

Regular, low-pressure forums encourage storytelling and surface subtle trade-offs that don’t appear in formal docs.
– Microlearning and learning pathways: Break complex skills into short, job-relevant modules—video demos, quick quizzes, and step-by-step guides.

Microcontent supports spaced repetition and improves retention for specialized topics.
– Process capture and decision logs: Complement standard operating procedures with decision logs that record the “why” behind deviations.

Capturing context turns brittle documents into living playbooks.
– Video and screen recordings: Short, indexed recordings of problem-solving sessions or system walkthroughs capture nuance—tone, timing, and thought process—that text alone misses.

Tag and transcribe recordings to make them searchable.
– Rotational programs and short-term swaps: Temporary rotations expose employees to adjacent functions, expanding organizational knowledge while building empathy and shared mental models.
– Incentives and recognition: Reward knowledge sharing with recognition, career credit, or small bonuses. Make contributing to knowledge assets part of performance conversations.

Overcoming remote and hybrid barriers
Remote work fragments informal learning that used to happen spontaneously. Replace water-cooler moments with structured, asynchronous practices: maintain searchable knowledge repositories, enforce tagging and metadata standards, and require short postmortems after critical incidents.

Encourage use of shared templates for incident reports and solutions so knowledge becomes reusable.

Measuring impact
Track metrics that connect knowledge work to business outcomes: time-to-productivity for new hires, mean time to resolution for issues, defect or error rates, and retention of critical roles. Qualitative signals—fewer repeated questions, faster onboarding feedback, and richer decision logs—also show progress toward a mature knowledge culture.

Making it sustainable
Specialized knowledge should be treated as an asset class.

Allocate recurring budget to upkeep repositories, curate content regularly, and assign ownership for key knowledge domains. Small, consistent practices—short walkthroughs, weekly tips, and quarterly knowledge audits—prevent knowledge decay.

Operationalizing expert knowledge turns individual brilliance into collective advantage. By combining human-centered practices with practical digital tools, organizations can preserve nuance, speed up learning, and reduce risk—ensuring that specialized knowledge becomes a reliable competitive edge rather than a fragile bottleneck.