DA Jeff Foster is The Sun on Sunday’s resident doctor and is here to help you.
Dr Jeff, 43 years old, divides his time between working as a GP in Leamington Spa, Warks, and running his practice, H3 Healthwhich is the first of its kind in the UK to look at hormonal issues for both men and women.
To see h3health.co.uk and email drjeff@the-sun.co.uk.
Q) ARE weight loss injections safe?
I am a 36 year old woman and I would like to lose 3rd place.
A friend recently lost that amount and discovered she had been taking injections for months.
They seem like a quick fix.
There was no way to lose that much weight during that period with diet and exercise alone.
I’m tempted, but also scared of the side effects.
Shelley Tree, Cumbria
A) Weight loss injections are literally a quick fix.
They often work by changing the hormone that makes us hungry, so over time we simply want to eat less.
There are some crazy theories on social media that food and calories are not responsible for what makes us fat, but unfortunately we know that the more you eat, the more weight you will gain.
The only difference is that we are all different and what one person needs to maintain a stable weight may be more or less than another person.
However, if you reduce your appetite through an injection, you will eat less and your weight will decrease.
These medications are not without risks.
In patients who do not have diabetes (which is what the medicine was originally designed for), side effects include belching, liver and bile problems, constipation, diarrhea, fatigue and, more seriously, there is also a rare risk of pancreatitis, which can be fatal.
The biggest problem, however, is that as soon as you stop taking the drug, your body will go back to what it was used to before.
Unless you’ve made major permanent lifestyle changes, you’ll simply put the weight back on.
So one has to ask, unless you really need the medicine, is it worth it?
Q) I RECENTLY had HoLEP surgery and radiation therapy for prostate cancer, but I’m still in pain and my stomach and thighs are very swollen.
I had surgery in February 2023 and radiotherapy from March to May – 40 sessions in total.
I also still have problems with incontinence.
Can you give me some advice about my bloating and incontinence?
Jim O’Sullivan, Manchester
Prostate cancer is common.
Every year, 52,000 men in the UK are diagnosed and it affects one in eight men in the UK at some point in their lives.
The problem we have with prostate cancer is that not all cases require treatment, not all are detected through a PSA blood test, and we are still bad at detecting the aggressive cancers which are the most serious.
Some surgical and radiotherapy treatments can lead to urinary and sexual dysfunction.
Therefore, having a good relationship with your urologist is very important, as they can help you control the long-term consequences of treatment.
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