If you have cancer and you’re losing weight, one of the important things to do is to really understand why, and that’s an important sign that you need to talk to your treating team, in particular, your oncologist and your dietician to understand whether the problem is one of intake, in other words, are you not having enough calories going in to maintain your weight? Or is there something else going on and you need to modify your diet to try and make up for the way the cancer is behaving.

Professor Michael Boyer is Medical Oncologist at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse