'You cannot be serious' - Farmer who ran Boston Marathon in his 70s on cancer diagnosis

Across England there was a 26 per cent increase in diagnoses that year.

Those involved in agriculture are believed to be at a significantly greater risk of contracting the disease.

Analysis published in the American Journal of Men’s Health concluded while farming is a risk factor for prostate cancer, the increased risk may not be due to exposure to pesticides, as has often been claimed.

Researchers examined the results of 12 academic studies conducted to investigate the association between prostate cancer and farming found prostate cancer cases were almost four times more likely to be farmers compared with controls with benign prostate hyperplasia, a non-cancerous condition.

In a special column for Country Post, Stewart Houston, former chair of the National Pig Association and AHDB's British Pig Executive, has told how he had no symptoms and only discovered he had an advanced case of the most common cancer in men because his wife, Janet, had insisted on him getting checked.

The retired Ripon pig farmer said following the diagnosis he had received excellent support from Park Street GP practice and he was “on a bit of a mission to encourage farmers, their staff, vets and the ancillary trade” to get tested for prostate cancer.

He said: “It's a simple blood test, but you know what farmers are like. It's difficult to get them to think about their own wellbeing. The trick is to catch it early. The survival rate then is almost 100 per cent.

"The longer it’s there, the more it sneaks about in the body causing longer term bother, so if you are around the age of 50 get tested regularly.”

Farmer Denys Fell farms 250, mainly arable, acres near Hornsea in East Yorkshire has told how he was diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier this year, aged 73, after the disease was discovered following a routine blood test which showed an elevated prostate-specific antigen level.

Mr Fell said he had been feeling “healthy and well” and just 12 months earlier had run the Boston Marathon.

“I got one of the biggest shocks of my life. It blew my world apart. I thought ‘you cannot be serious’.”

Mr Fell had surgery in September, was declared cancer free last month and said he was now thinking about running his next marathon. “It’s important to get seen within good time,” he said. “Please, please get yourself checked.”

Last month, The Farming Community Network launched the #NipItInTheBud campaign with Macmillan Cancer Support to encourage early detection of cancers. The network’s chief executive, Dr Jude McCann, said there was a ‘tough as old boots’ mindset in farming and farmers often prioritised their families, their livestock, their business, their machinery and their crops above themselves.

“We have heard examples of a farmer whose cancer had been growing for years and was mistaken for ‘farmer’s lung’; someone who discovered they had cancer only when they dislocated their shoulder in a farm accident; and even a farmer whose approach to suspected skin cancer on their arm was to produce a pen-knife.”