Mind Movers is back after a long break, and Rhona and Payman mark the return with Doctor Jeff Foster, an NHS GP who stumbled into men's health almost by accident, after realising male patients kept assuming he'd know the answers to questions no one in medicine was really trained to handle. Two decades on, he's co-authored national guidance on testosterone deficiency and become one of the most recognisable voices in the space.
Jeff makes the case that full-body MRI scans are largely a waste of money, that blood testing from your early thirties is a far better investment, and that testosterone has been culturally hijacked into meaning something it never actually measured. Along the way, Rhona pushes him on a genuinely difficult question: the recent Cornell case and whether hormones can ever explain away a failure of consent. Jeff's answer is blunt and leaves little room for the excuse.
There's also a proper back-and-forth on looks-maxing and jaw aesthetics, the strange cultural logic that paints steroid-using bodybuilders as the testosterone ideal while they quietly wreck their own fertility and bone density, and a shared frustration about how disconnected dentistry, GP medicine and mental health care still are from one another, even when a patient's symptoms are clearly sitting across all three.
In This Episode
00:00:40 – Introduction
00:01:50 – Background in medicine
00:04:35 – Common myths about men's health
00:06:55 – The gender health gap
00:08:05 – Why men avoid healthcare
00:12:55 – Full body MRIs and over-screening
00:15:00 – Blood tests and testosterone
00:17:15 – Testosterone vs TRT
00:20:30 – Fertility and male infertility
00:27:25 – Accessing treatment
00:30:20 – Testosterone, consent and masculinity
00:39:15 – Looks maxing and jaw aesthetics
00:43:05 – What TRT involves
00:45:35 – Incel culture and role models
00:57:35 – Joined-up healthcare
About Jeff Foster
Jeff Foster is an NHS GP and one of the UK's leading voices on men's health, specialising in testosterone deficiency, hormone health and sexual health. He co-authored the UK's 2023 national guidance on testosterone deficiency in men, is medical director at Voy, a private men's health service, and hosts the Man Alive podcast.