Health rankings

Our first ranking of The World’s Best Countries For Men turned out a lot like the 2006 Soccer World Cup.

Though there were no headbutting incidents and all our scoring was done with stats instead of soccer balls, a few countries dominated the field while our country didn’t feature - just like in the World Cup. The upside? We don’t have to wait four years to turn our team around.

In order to arrive at our rankings, we began by conducting a worldwide survey of more than 20 000 men. Then we delved deep into data from such sources as the World Health Organization, Euromonitor International, the United Nation’s International Labour Organization and the Durex Global Sex Survey.

After days of mindnumbing number crunching, we had our winners in five categories.

Start transforming yourself today with the secrets we’ve gleaned from the countries where men have the most muscle, the least stress, the best sex, the healthiest bodies and the smartest diets. And yep, you can use your hands.

Where men are the healthiest

1. Australia
2. Netherlands
3. Spain
4. Canada
5. United States

Unhealthiest
20. Ukraine

What went into the scores
We considered death rates for heart disease, cancer and stroke; the prevalence of diabetes and smoking; and data on life expectancy, cholesterol, blood pressure, sleep and alcohol.

United States

Extinguish your addiction
Only 19% of American men smoke, as opposed to more than half the men in South Africa, China and Ukraine. And 70% of US workers are covered by smoke-free rules.

What you can learn from America
Still one of the 50 percent puffing? Set a quit date and rally support. A study published in Tobacco Control reports that people who received daily text messages encouraging them to quit were twice as likely to stop smoking six weeks later, compared with those who went textless.

Australia

Put a steak through hypertension
Go Down Under if you want to duck heart disease, cancer and stroke. “Men here strive to be stereotypical muscular Aussies - playing volleyball in Speedos, and their health improves as a result,” says Dr Christopher Semsarian, a professor of medicine at the University of Sydney.

What you can learn from Australia
Hypertension rates are low among Aussies. Exercise will do that for you - as will eating more steak. In an Australian study, people who traded a daily serving of starch for red meat reduced systolic blood pressure by four points in eight weeks.

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