Men should follow Sir Chris’s example on prostate cancer checks - Steve Cardownie

The charity said that there had been 5600 new users visiting its website in the past month which was a rise of 69 per cent.

It also stated that it had seen “record spikes” in visits to its web pages including a 255 per cent rise in the number of visits to a prostate cancer information page and a 209 per cent increase in visits to its online symptom checker.

As someone who was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years ago I am delighted that so many more men have woken up and taken steps to check what a prostate cancer is and what treatments are on offer.

As I have said before, I had no symptoms whatsoever and, as my father and grandfather died at an early age of heart attacks, it was not known if they had developed the disease themselves.

In Sir Chris Hoy’s case both his father and grandfather had prostate cancer, which is a clear warning sign that something could be amiss.

Since my diagnosis I have taken every opportunity to alert men to the dangers this disease poses and I was glad to see that Alison Wright, Chief Executive of Prostate Scotland expressed the same view when she said the following:

“We know men don’t always seek out mainstream health support and can ignore symptoms, and with no national screening programme for prostate cancer currently in place it’s crucial we get the message out to more men: Go to your GP and request a prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test from the age of 50, whether you have symptoms or not.”

Some GPs might be reluctant to agree to the “request” for a blood test to determine your PSA level, so I would go a step further than Alison and urge men that, if they face such a reluctant GP, they should insist on a test which, according to the GP’s guidelines, they cannot ignore.

In Scotland around 3800 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year-enough said!