Red meat - what's the beef? Dr Christian Jessen

Red meat is again arousing strong - and conflicting - passions in those with opinions about what's good for us. On the one hand, the Department of Health is warning Britons to cut down on our red meat consumption because it increases our risk of developing bowel cancer.

Under its new guidelines, adults are advised to eat no more than 500g a week. On the other hand, last week the British Nutrition Foundation claimed that most adults ate "healthy amounts" of red meat and the link to cancer was "inconclusive".

Finally, nutritionists have got in on the act and declared that lean red meat such as steak is healthy and one of the best sources of iron, and that women in particular are shunning it at the risk of developing anaemia.

So what should we eat? Well, I side with the nutritionists on this one. We need red meat, we evolved to eat it, and women in particular benefit from including it in their diets. The great flaw in all the above arguments is that taking a single food group in isolation and reporting on its benefits or deficiencies is nonsensical.

Foods work together, in combination, to provide their benefits. It's why we advocate a balanced diet with plenty of variety. There is a good reason why we drink a glass of orange juice with our breakfast cereal in the morning. The vitamin C in the juice helps our guts absorb the iron in the cereals.

The truth is that some foods people have traditionally believed to be iron-rich, such as spinach, are not. Despite Popeye's claims, spinach is one of the poorest sources of iron I can think of. Not only does it start with low levels in the first place but it also contains a compound called oxalic acid, which inhibits iron absorption by the gut.

If you add the fact that high-fibre foods such as fruits and vegetables contain chemicals called phytates that can slow down iron absorption, you can see how people avoiding red meat and relying on plant sources of iron are at significant risk of becoming anaemic. In fact, iron deficiency is the commonest nutritional deficiency in Britain.

Red meat isn't perfect. The problems come from two main sources. Its fat content, particularly saturated fat, does increase the risk of heart diseases and cancers, and the chemicals produced when the outside of the meat is charred during the cooking process are indeed carcinogens.

So the solution is very simple: buy lean cuts of meat, don't burn it when cooking, and eat it in moderate amounts. It's an important and nutritionally valuable part of our diets.

Hypnosis is the new way to give birth painlessly

In the middle of huge cutbacks and extensive NHS reform any newly emerging techniques that promise to save money will be welcomed with open arms.

One such proposal seems sound enough: hypnobirthing. An 18-month NHS trial study aims to teach expectant mums how to hypnotise themselves before giving birth as an alternative to painkillers. This will involve learning how to attain a trance-like state during labour in the hope that they will not need costly treatments such as epidurals. First started in the US, it uses self-hypnosis, relaxation, visualisation and breathing techniques to prepare for birth.

Currently as many as 60 per cent of mothers have epidurals and many more use other forms of pain relief, the safety of which has often been questioned. Many mothers enter the delivery suite intending to have a "natural" birth, then understandably demand drugs when the true might of their contractions kicks in.

Hypnosis is successfully used in many other areas of healthcare, including dentistry, well known for its association with pain and fear, and fear here seems to be the key. Most mums experience anxiety and fear about the impending birth, in part due to our society's highly medicocentric approach to birthing, implying that it is a dangerous, painful and scary experience.

Hypnotherapists believe that a lot of the pain of childbirth comes from fear acting on the body to cause tension and muscle constriction. If women can relax and release muscle tension, this causes less pain, more effective contractions and often a shorter labour. It certainly sounds plausible, and the feedback from women who have used it has been consistently positive.

It's even been backed up by several relatively large-scale studies, one of which found that self-hypnosis during childbirth eased some of the pain of labour, lowered the risk of medical complications and reduced the need for surgery. Another study found that hypnotherapy shortened the first and second stages of labour. For women having their first babies, the first stage was reduced from an average of 9.3 hours to 6.4 hours, and the second stage from 50 minutes to 37 minutes on average. The differences for women having their second or later children were less dramatic, and it is here the financial benefits may be seen.

I can certainly see the downsides; this technique will not work for all women. I also worry that medical staff may attend less often seemingly self-sufficient labouring women, so putting them more at risk of complications going unnoticed.

But in general it's harmless, proven in studies, and empowers women to have more control over the birthing process, unlike other ill-thought-out proposals the NHS comes up with.

Marathons can hurt you in the long run

Every year around this time several of my habitually unfit patients march in to my clinic and proudly announce that they have decided to do the London Marathon to get fit. My heart sinks. Running the marathon will not make them healthy, it will probably do quite the opposite.

People forget that the marathon is an extreme event. Even running intensely for an hour a day puts your body under so much stress that it will begin to break down. There is a very good reason why so many committed marathon runners look like they are suffering from fatal diseases.

The intensity of some training regimes, and the lack of efficiency of others, mean that the body will either be seriously damaged during training or totally annihilated by the main event. Here's an analogy: drinking water is a generally healthy thing to do, drink too much and it can kill you.

Some people are built for long-distance running and others aren't, but this is never taken into account. They may be able to push themselves by training and just about manage to finish the course, but will do their bodies no good at all in the long term.

Researchers from the Heart and Stroke Foundation will back me up. By MRI scanning hearts of runners they found that without proper long-term training marathons damaged the hearts of less fit runners. The exercise-induced injury is reversible over time, but could take up to three months.

Poorly prepared runners were also found to become more dehydrated and show greater loss of function of important areas of their hearts.

I fully expect to be bombarded with criticism for writing this, so let me just make what I'm saying absolutely clear: if you want to run a marathon, then do so, especially if you can raise some money for good causes along the way. But make sure that your training regime is suitable or you will almost certainly do yourself more harm than good.

Simon Cowell lacks the pecs factor

Recent photos of Simon Cowell on the beach have been less than flattering, mainly down to the emergence of a bust many women would be proud of.

Surprisingly, given his alleged vanity, his man boobs, or moobs, don't appear to bother him but, according to new research, he is in a minority.

The latest figures show that men are queuing up to get rid of their moobs - in fact, the operation to remove them was the second most popular cosmetic procedure last year, showing a 28 per cent increase on 2009.

Only nose operations had a greater appeal among men.

Men get a drubbing in the media - not to mention down the pub - if they undergo cosmetic procedures but the fear of mockery seemingly isn't putting them off.

Clinics reported a seven per cent increase in men signing up for cosmetic operations last year, compared with five per cent in women.

And moob removals are among the most popular treatments - so what exactly are they?

There are two sorts of moobs. One sort is caused by a condition called gynaecomastia, commonly seen in teenage boys. Firm, tender glandular breast tissue grows under the nipples, under the influence of hormones, and is usually caused by rising oestrogen levels that occur during puberty.

These moobs disappear without treatment within a couple of years. In adults, however, their occurrence is not normal. They are often caused by the conversion of testosterone into oestrogen via the enzyme aromatase.

Affected men may also notice a reduction in muscle mass, a more feminine fat distribution, tiredness and loss of libido. Taking anabolic steroids, certain medicines or using cannabis can also upset hormone levels, causing gynaecomastia, and occasionally it may be due to a tumour or hormonal disease of the pituitary gland, liver or testes.

The more common type of moob is something entirely different, most frequently observed in the middle-aged male.

They are, to be blunt, just fat, caused by poor diet, lifestyle and lack of exercise. This "false gynaecomastia" does not involve any real breast gland growth, and none can be felt. The breast tissue simply feels as it looks: loose and flabby.

Moobs are the stigmata of modern working life, ushered forth by the all-too-commonly encountered combination of stress, booze, lack of exercise and poor diet, and can be tackled by a good overhaul of lifestyle.

But there is a certain degree of crossover between the two types of moobs because testosterone is converted to oestrogen primarily in the fat cells, so the fatter you are the more likely you are to
develop them.

It can all seem very amusing and if you want some alarming examples of man boobs, look at the top 10 page at manboobs.co.uk. If yours look anything like these, it really is time to do something about them.

Moobs can actually signal the impending onset of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and diabetes. So it's not that funny at all really.