DR JEFF FOSTER is The Sun on Sunday’s new resident doctor and is here to help YOU.
Dr Jeff, 43, splits his time between working as a GP in Leamington Spa, Warks, and running his clinic, H3 Health, which is the first of its kind in the UK to look at hormonal issues for both men and women.
Dr Jeff Foster is The Sun on Sunday’s new resident doctor and is here to help you
See h3health.co.uk and email at [email protected].
Q) I AM an 81-year-old lady. Recently my feet and ankles have swollen so much. The left one is worse than the right. Need I worry?
I mentioned this to my doctor but he just said it is down to my age.
Anna Jones, Stratford upon Avon
A) Age in itself is not really a diagnosis but may help explain why we get some symptoms.
For example, I cannot run like my 11-year-old son nor swim like my nine-year-old daughter.
This is due to the metabolic and hormonal changes that stop me healing as quickly as they do, and this is due to ageing.
At 80, you may not be as mobile as you were, so fluid may pool at your ankles, but age is still not a diagnosis.
Other important medical conditions to consider would be kidney problems, low protein levels or liver issues, impaired heart function, or varicose veins and eczema.
Leg swelling is just a symptom of an underlying medical problem.
If it is just movement and age, then we still want you to mobilise as much as possible because prolonged leg swelling causes damage to skin and there is a risk of ulcers, but the key is to understand why the condition has occurred in the first place, so it is worth speaking in more detail to your doctor.
Q) MY dad has had Covid once and was barely ill with it, yet every time he has a booster he is extremely unwell for around 48 hours.
He is 82 and has no underlying health issues.
Does he need to keep having the jabs?
Julie Prower, Basingstoke
A) The short answer is yes. There is a lot of debate about the risk/benefit profile of Covid vaccines and vaccines in general, but the overwhelming evidence is they haved saved millions of lives.
Those who rally against vaccines may have loud voices, but that doesn’t mean they are correct.
We have seen a steady increase in the number of cases of children with mumps and measles in the last few years.
This has been due to a decline in the uptake of the MMR vaccine, even though all the links between it and autism and other illnesses were disproved.
In terms of the Covid vaccine, there will always be a risk that a small number of people will develop a complication.
But for most, especially those who are elderly or immunocompromised, it could save their life.