Health: Misleading online ads a risk to women, medics fear

Ms O’Riordan is one of those speaking at the Everywoman Festival in Cardiff, now in its second year, started by colorectal surgeon Julie Cornish.

Ms Cornish said she had seen a small number of patients in her clinics in recent years who had paid for alternative treatments with unqualified practitioners.

She said some had cancers that could have been successfully treated had they come sooner and some “red flag” symptoms not being overlooked.

“Irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS, is one of the key areas,” she said.

“The concern I have is that patients are self-medicating, but it’s a diagnosis of exclusion and you have to make sure you’ve ruled out an underlying cancer or condition first.

“Once you’ve got an IBS diagnosis, some of the complementary therapies can be useful for some people, but some advertise ‘successful’ regimes that are expensive and don’t necessarily have the evidence to back it up.”

She said she had seen a rise in expensive probiotics with supplements and claims of “100% treatment success”, but “these bespoke vitamin complexes can be somewhat misleading”.