This is the terrifying truth about alternative cancer therapies - and what happened when I encountered the 'coaches' peddling the treatments that cost young women like Paloma their lives: LIZ O'RIORDAN
The message, from a stranger on Instagram, absolutely broke me. 'Dear Liz,' it began, 'I need to tell you about a friend with advanced breast cancer. She has spent thousands on restrictive diets and supplements, instead of having surgery and chemotherapy.'
As a former breast surgeon who has had breast cancer three times, I'm used to people telling me about personal medical matters. I now write and speak regularly about the disease, trying to share evidence-based advice and help others navigate the minefield of misinformation online.
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Daily Mail
32 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Move over Mounjaro! Now young women are using ChatGPT to shed the pounds - as one woman reveals she lost 7kg in a month by sending AI pictures of her fridge
Young women are now turning to AI websites like ChatGPT to help them lose weight - amid concerns that being ultra-slim is 'back in fashion'. Health experts have previously expressed concern about the return of 'heroin chic' fuelled by the Ozempic boom, as millions turn to 'skinny jabs' to achieve their dream figures - inspired by the models who dominated runways in the Noughties. As a result, weight loss content has swept social media over the past five years, with many women now saying they've resorted to using ChatGPT to help achieve their body goals. Cristina Gheiceanu, from Switzerland, lost 1st and 10lbs after sending a voice note to ChatGPT every morning telling the AI programme what she ate and her calorie limit. She told her 400,000 followers on Instagram how she was able to shed the weight in just five months without using 'complicated apps'. The content creator said: 'I just sent a voice message to ChatGPT each morning with what I ate, how many calories I wanted to eat that day - and it did all the work. 'In the beginning, I had to tell it the calories, protein, and fibre in the foods I use. Next time it remembered everything, so I was just telling to add my yogurt or my bread. 'It knew how many calories or protein is in that yogurt or bread. I kept using the same chat, so it became faster and easier every day.' Cristina said she would ask the programme to put her daily food into a table so she could easily see what was missing from her diet. And sometimes she would even send ChatGPT a picture of her fridge and ask for its suggestions of what she should eat. 'Honestly, it made the whole process feel easy,' Cristina added. 'No calorie counting in my head, no stress. When I hit my number I just stopped. It never felt like a diet and that's what made it work.' Cristina's clip racked up more than two million views on Instagram and hundreds of comments from users - who had a split opinion on the use of AI. One penned: ' When they say that AI will make humanity forget how to think, this is what they mean. Calorie counting and macro tracking is a very simple, if a little tedious, system you should be able to easily do without ChatGPT. 'The environmental cost to the planet in terms of energy expenditure and water usage that it takes for AI to do something you could do yourself is appalling, and honestly, shameful.' Another said: 'this is a horrific use of AI, the amount of water wasted and heating generated to answer a query that could easily be solved by following a simple meal plan... please look into it before continuing to use ChatGPT in this manner.' When Charley asked the AI website for a food plan, it told her exactly what to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day with a breakdown of the calories for each meal Cristina divided opinion on her video with some people saying that she should not be using AI and others admitting they have used it themselves to help with dieting But others said they had been using it too, with a third writing: 'ChatGPT created a cycle syncing weekly diet for me, which has been awesome. 'It also gives me ideas on how to boost my nutrition, metabolism, and balance hormones based on foods. A fourth commented: 'I've been using ChatGPT for my insulin resistance diet and it has been a game changer! I already lost 10 pounds and have been able to fix my insulin issues.' But Cristina is not the only young woman who is using AI to help her reach her 'dream body' with dieting. Charley, a Brit who is currently living in Australia, said she found a 'life hack' on how to easily get the body you want with limited thinking involved. She calculated that she can eat 1,800 calories a day to lose weight, but said she struggled with understanding how to put meals together to help reach this target. Charley said on TikTok: 'I'm going to ask ChatGPT to write me a weekly meal prep plan that accounts for 1,800 calories a day and see what it comes up with.' When she asked the AI website for a food plan, it told her exactly what to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day with a breakdown of the calories for each meal. It told the travel influencer to eat a 300-calorie Greek yogurt parfait bowl for breakfast, followed by a 450-calorie chicken salad bowl for lunch and a 550-calorie dinner of grilled salmon with vegetables. It also recommended Charley to have an apple with peanut butter for a 200-calorie snack and she even asked it to give exact measurements for each element of the meal. The AI website told her to have a Greek yogurt bowl for breakfast,' which she described as 'very filling,' adding that she couldn't finish the meal 'It does also say on there that ChatGPT is not fully reliable but to me it looks alright so I might have to give this a go,' she added. 'I might've just found a life hack if you're a bit lazy like me.' Eilidh Wells, from Glasgow, also had the same idea and wanted ChatGPT to write her one-day meal plan for a diet of 1,200 calories. This is a much smaller amount to the average amount that women should be eating, which is 2,000 calories a day. On average men need 2,500 calories a day to maintain their weight, according to the NHS. 'I'm in a calorie deficit so I've asked for high protein and low carbs and it's done a pretty good job,' Eilidh said on TikTok. The AI website told her to have a Greek yogurt bowl for breakfast,' which she described as 'very filling', adding that she couldn't eat the whole meal. It then told her to eat grilled chicken lettuce wraps for dinner, but she felt as though the measurements were off and further limited her portion size. She enjoyed ChatGPT's suggestion of having cottage cheese with cucumbers and said that she would continue to eat this as it was 'super filling and a really good snack'. For dinner, it told Eilidh to make a grilled chicken salad that she described as 'samey', adding that she was 'not looking forward' to her meal. 'Everything was bland and the measurements were way off and I feel like the recipe they gave me was for two people,' she said. Tia urged her followers on TikTok to 'sit back and watch the magic' as it quickly created a full gym routine with a breakdown of each exercise, without the help of a professional personal trainer Laura reveals what ChatGPT thinks she would look like if she was 50 pounds lighter 'I don't know if it's because I've had more protein than usual or if the dish wasn't very appetising but I wasn't hungry for dinner and didn't actually finish them. I've giving ChatGPT's meal plan a five out of ten.' Some are even using the website to help them come up with workout plans for them to do in the gym. Tia Taylor, who is based between Lagos and Milan, said she was able to get 'in the best shape of her life' by using AI. She told ChatGPT that she goes to the gym three times a week, adding that her fitness goals are to maintain her current muscle mass while continuing to build muscle 'especially in the upper body and to define my waist'. The 28-year-old urged her followers on TikTok to 'sit back and watch the magic' as it quickly created a full gym routine with a breakdown of each exercise - without the help of a professional personal trainer. It recommended she spend her first day focusing on her lower body and core, before moving onto cardio and waist definition on day two. For her third day, ChatGPT said she should be doing upper body and core work including planks, push ups and dumbbell rows. TikTok users commented on Tia's video and said she was 'so smart' for coming up with the suggestion. Others have used the AI programme to help them envision what they would look like if they were slimmer. Laura, from Hampshire who has already lost 70 pounds, appeared to use the website for fitness motivation as she asked it to show her an image of what she would look like if she was '50 pounds lighter'. She said on TikTok: 'I've been down a ChatGPT rabbit hole and I've asked the bot what I'd look like if I was 50 pounds lighter. If I looked like that, I'd be pretty pleased to be fair.'
BBC News
42 minutes ago
- BBC News
West Hanney man's brain tumour grew 'for more than a decade'
"I woke up eventually to what looked like two green aliens."When Charlie Broadhurst went to bed early with a mild sickness bug and a tingling in his lip in January 2022 he was actually woken by paramedics in their green married father-of-two from West Hanney had experienced a seizure and was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital in was referred to an epilepsy clinic, but unbeknown to everyone he had a brain tumour, and doctors had already missed it. Previously Charlie had been experiencing headaches, but following an MRI scan in 2011 he was told it was a sinus infection, though he was advised to visit his optician."I kind of left it and when I did have a headache made sure I was wearing my glasses a little bit more," he tells the the seizure in 2022 he was booked in for another MRI."They were quite confident there was nothing to worry about, and then I got the phone call about six weeks later that there was something to worry about," he was diagnosed with a grade II astrocytoma, a brain tumour that had been visible on a CT scan in 2011, and had grown undetected for more than a decade."The hospital were very quick and honest," Charlie explains."It was very small and they admitted straight away that they missed it."But he said the doctors had since "been brilliant the whole way through". Charlie has undergone brain surgery twice, and a good amount of the tumour has been successfully also had six weeks of daily radiotherapy and six months of chemotherapy, which he describes as "really hard going."He now has scans every six months to monitor the tumour. Charlie's wife Siobhan says finding out about it was "terrifying".But she says: "We very much got on with it... I think it has taken its toll on our children because for two years through the treatment life's a bit chaotic."Siobhan has been taking part in fundraising ever since "because we need more awareness, more research, and ultimately more hope".She is about to take part in the 88 Squats a Day in July challenge for Brain Tumour Jones, head of community and digital fundraising at the charity, said: "Stories like Charlie's highlight the urgent need for more research into brain tumours, which remain the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40 in the UK." "At the moment it's all positive stuff, the tumour's stable, but the type of tumour it is, at some point it won't be great news," Charlie says."But what we're doing is making the most of everything and focussing on those six-month scans, and doing anything the doctors tell me to do, and keeping my two boys happy, and doing everything we can with them." You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X, or Instagram.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Microsoft says AI system better than doctors at diagnosing complex health conditions
Microsoft has revealed details of an artificial intelligence system that performs better than human doctors at complex health diagnoses, creating a 'path to medical superintelligence'. The company's AI unit, which is led by the British tech pioneer Mustafa Suleyman, has developed a system that imitates a panel of expert physicians tackling 'diagnostically complex and intellectually demanding' cases. Microsoft said that when paired with OpenAI's advanced o3 AI model, its approach 'solved' more than eight of 10 case studies specially chosen for the diagnostic challenge. When those case studies were tried on practising physicians – who had no access to colleagues, textbooks or chatbots – the accuracy rate was two out of 10. Microsoft said it was also a cheaper option than using human doctors because it was more efficient at ordering tests. Despite highlighting the potential cost savings from its research, Microsoft played down the job implications, saying it believed AI would complement doctors' roles rather than replace them. 'Their clinical roles are much broader than simply making a diagnosis. They need to navigate ambiguity and build trust with patients and their families in a way that AI isn't set up to do,' the company wrote in a blogpost announcing the research, which is being submitted for peer review. However, using the slogan 'path to medical superintelligence' raises the prospect of radical change in the healthcare market. While artificial general intelligence (AGI) refers to systems that match human cognitive abilities at any given task, superintelligence is an equally theoretical term referring to a system that exceeds human intellectual performance across the board. Explaining the rationale behind the research, Microsoft raised doubt over AI's ability to score exceptionally well in the United States Medical Licensing Examination, a key test for obtaining a medical licence in the US. It said the multiple-choice tests favoured memorising answers over deep understanding of a subject, which could help 'overstate' the competence of an AI model. Microsoft said it was developing a system that, like a real-world clinician, takes step-by-step measures – such as asking specific questions and requesting diagnostic tests – to arrive at a final diagnosis. For instance, a patient with symptoms of a cough and fever may require blood tests and a chest X-ray before the doctor arrives at a diagnosis of pneumonia. The new Microsoft approach uses complex case studies from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Suleyman's team transformed more than 300 of these studies into 'interactive case challenges' that it used to test its approach. Microsoft's approach used existing AI models, including those produced by ChatGPT's developer, OpenAI, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, Anthropic, Elon Musk's Grok and Google's Gemini. Microsoft then used a bespoke, agent-like AI system called a 'diagnostic orchestrator' to work with a given model on what tests to order and what the diagnosis might be. The orchestrator in effect imitates a panel of physicians, which then comes up with the diagnosis. Microsoft said that when paired with OpenAI's advanced o3 model, it 'solved' more than eight of 10 NEJM case studies – compared with a two out of 10 success rate for human doctors. Microsoft said its approach was able to wield a 'breadth and depth of expertise' that went beyond individual physicians because it could span multiple medical disciplines. It added: 'Scaling this level of reasoning – and beyond – has the potential to reshape healthcare. AI could empower patients to self-manage routine aspects of care and equip clinicians with advanced decision support for complex cases.' Microsoft acknowledged its work is not ready for clinical use. Further testing is needed on its 'orchestrator' to assess its performance on more common symptoms, for instance.
