As NHS services struggle to keep up with demand, doctors and campaigners say women are being targeted and exploited by a growing number of alternative treatments online with little evidence.
Some alternative treatments can conflict with prescription medications or mask more sinister symptoms.
Liz O’Riordan, a former breast surgeon who later developed breast cancer three times, said that before her illness she had “no idea” what her patients were looking at online.
She said: “The moment I was diagnosed with cancer, people online were telling me to use iodine, to detox and cut out sugar, to go on a keto diet, but did I try this medicine? Have you tried that drug?
- author, jenny lees
- role, BBC Wales Health Correspondent
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“I had no idea how much misinformation was out there. It could be conspiracy theories or cults. And cancer is really scary.”
She said she understood the appeal of glowing testimonials for online products that promised expensive treatments and sought to use her experience to fill that gap.
It added that some advertised herbs and supplements may interact with cancer drugs such as tamoxifen.
“I used to spend 10 minutes telling someone they had cancer and what treatment they were going to receive.
“It’s just not enough. There’s not enough time to get treatment, let alone a problem for survivors.”
She added that the internet has “exploded” with targeted advertising on social media and testimonials that “could have been written by AI.”
image source, Liz O’Riordan
Ms O’Riordan was one of the speakers at Cardiff’s Every Woman Festival, which was started by colorectal surgeon Julie Cornish and is now in its second year.
Ms Cornish said her practice had seen a small number of patients in recent years pay for alternative treatment by unqualified practitioners.
She said some people have cancer that could have been successfully treated if they had come earlier and if “red flag” symptoms had not been overlooked.
“Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is one important area,” she says.
“My concern is that patients are self-medicated, but this is a diagnosis of exclusion and we need to make sure to rule out any underlying cancer or disease first.
“Once diagnosed with IBS, some complementary therapies can be helpful for some people, but some treatments are expensive and promote ‘successful’ treatments that don’t necessarily have the evidence to support them. ”
She has seen a rise in supplements and expensive probiotics that claim “100% treatment success,” but says that “these custom-made vitamin complexes can be somewhat misleading.” Told.
She launched the Every Woman Festival, a series of lectures and workshops on a variety of health issues to educate women about what is normal and reduce the stigma associated with it.
Online health misinformation is not limited to cancer patients or certain age groups.
Molly Fenton, 21, founded Love Your Period at the age of 16 and said she saw girls as young as eight on social media being advised about supplements to “balance hormones”.
“I’m the type of person to hold up my hand and search for anything on TikTok before I search on Google, but it’s very difficult to fact-check what someone is putting in a video,” she said. Ta.
“You can get very good content, but you can also get very harmful or malicious content, and the tools that allow you to do that don’t exist, so it’s hard to decipher the two. is very difficult.
“Women’s health is the perfect marketing opportunity right now,” she says.
“This is a very vulnerable sector because there are huge gaps in the market due to lack of education and lack of knowledge.”
Fenton said she is regularly approached to endorse products on social media, but has never done so due to concerns about reliability.
“If you have a pink box, they’re basically going to try to sell you that.”
image source, jenny smith photo
Diane Danzebrink, founder of Menopause Support, said conversations about the disease are increasing, but at the same time it has become a “very competitive and commercialized landscape”.
“I’ve seen a lot of headlines in the trade press about the menopause epidemic and how much value there is in the menopause space. So it’s important that brands and marketers are very aware of this space. “It’s clear,” she says.
“Social media has expanded significantly around menopause and can have a very positive effect, giving people a lightbulb moment and making them aware of what’s happening to them.
“But it’s also really important to recognize that there can be a lot of misinformation as well.”
Danzebrink said that while the health risks to these products may be low – some may have contraindications with prescription drugs – there are other issues.
“I remember one person who came to me to talk about her experience with menopause, and she was taking 12 different supplements every month at considerable expense.
“When I asked which one would work, her answer was, ‘I don’t know, but I’m too scared to take it.'”
Through her campaign ‘Make Menopause Matter’, she has long advocated for mandatory training for healthcare workers, which would help reduce waiting times and the need to seek unproven alternatives. said.
“Right now, the NHS services that we should have are not able to meet the demand and as a result we are seeing an increase in what I would call related services. We are seeing an increase in products and a proliferation of private menopause clinics.” she said.
