Natural help for healthy hair

No matter what your age, your hair reflects your state of health and particularly as we get older it is more prone to weakness and thinning. You don’t have to accept poor or lacklustre hair as a given, because there are plenty of things you can do naturally to help improve its condition. These suggestions might help:

Thinning hair: The hormone natural progesterone has been used by several trichologists to help people with thinning hair, in particular Ailsa Bosworth of Hair Tomorrow has had good success. The ‘recipe’ for healthy hair is to have a good intake of iron, zinc, vitamin C and B vitamins. All of those can be got from a good healthy diet but if you have a serious hair loss problem then it will be worth while taking them as supplements. A natural way to stimulate hair growth is to go out in the countryside and pick some nettles or get dried nettle from any good herbalist, or online from people like Neal’s Yard. This old-established method is easy to follow, because instead of using shampoo, you take a handful of loose nettle tea and boil in water. Strain the tea, let it cool and then use it to ‘wash’ your hair.

If you can’t bear not to use shampoo, then please pick one that is organic, mild, natural and PEG free. That excludes most commercial, major brand shampoos no matter how ‘herbal’ or natural they claim to be. Not sure what to look for? Avoid these:

* sodium lauryl sulphate
* sodium laureth sulphate
* diethanolamine
* isopropyl alcohol
* propylene glycol
* anything ending in ‘parabens’.

Always read the label, and if you have trouble finding such a shampoo locally, then Simply Nature have a very effective natural one and you will find it on their website at www.simply-nature.co.uk. Your scalp matters if we are not happy with your hair, it’s tempting to hide it away under a hat or scarf, but please don’t. Your scalp has to be healthy to allow new hair growth to come through, and in order to do that you need to keep your pores and hair follicles free of dead skin cells. One of the best ways to do that is to massage your scalp every night before you go to bed.

Here’s a great two fold process: first using a metal comb tap all over your head with it for about a minute. It has to be metal, not plastic, because tapping with metal will create tiny electromagnetic currents on the scalp that stimulate the cells in the hair follicles. Next, you massage your scalp gently with a few drops of jojoba oil. It will naturally and gently help cleanse your scalp and contains lots of great hair nutrients like Vitamins C and B and the hair health mineral Zinc.

Free home visit eye tests

Not everyone can get easily to the optician, but maintaining your eyesight is a major priority and now – for the over 60′s – you can get a free home visit to have your eyes checked by The Outside Clinic. Eye Health Week runs from 6th – 12th October 2008 in association with The Royal Institute of the Blind (RNIB) and The College of Optometrists. Currently NHS eye tests are only available in the home for anyone who can’t get to an optician without help or support. The Outside Clinic is the UK’s longest established home visiting optician service and is offering a free home visit to anyone over the age of 60, and who has not had an eye test in the last 12 months. It is recommended that the over 60′s should have an eye test every year so that potential problems can be averted and early signs of diseases like glaucoma can be identified.

INTERESTED? The Outside Clinic operates throughout the UK and for more information, or to book an eye test, call 0800 85 44 77 between 6th-12th October 2008 and quoting ‘Happy Eyes’.

Feeling the heat in cancer treatment and menopause

Hot flushes are the bane of many menopausal women’s existence, but they also commonly occur in breast cancer patients who have treatment-related vasomotor symptoms. This is when there is an increase or decrease in the diameter of a blood vessel, which can regulate the amount of blood travelling to a particular body part.

Hot flushes or night sweats that result from the sudden opening of the blood vessels close to the skin, usually due to hormonal fluctuation, can be very uncomfortable- whatever their cause. There are a couple of natural alternatives that can be an effective alternative to drug therapy with fewer side effects.

The first is acupuncture, as was reported at the recent meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology. The women in their study had reported a minimum of 14 hot flushes a week, and half the group had twice weekly acupuncture treatments weekly for the first four weeks, followed by weekly sessions during the final eight weeks. The other half of the group were given drugs to control the flushes and received the standard daily dose usually given to manage vasomotor symptoms.

The study found that not only was acupuncture effective in reducing or eliminating the hot flushes, but it had no adverse effects. What did surprise them was that the therapeutic effects of acupuncture persisted long after the treatment. To quote them:

“Women who took the drug therapy started to have an increase in the number and intensity of hot flushes within two weeks of discontinuing the drug therapy, whereas women who had acupuncture didn’t start to have an increase in the number or severity of hot flushes for 14 or 15 weeks after discontinuing therapy.” They also observed that the acupuncture group not only reported no treatment-related side effects, but said they had improvement in energy, clarity of thought, sexual desire, and overall sense of well-being

Herbal Remidies to Tame Flushes and Night Sweats

Herbs have long been used in many cultures to help with hormonal disturbance and one of the oldest in use is sage. An Australian study in 2005 found that it reduced severe hot flushes by 60% – that’s worth trying isn’t it?

To make sage tea, take ten fresh leaves, or one and a half teaspoons of dried sage if you can’t get fresh leaves. Pour hot (not quite boiling) water over the leaves and add a spoon or two of honey to sweeten it. That way you get some B vitamins to help lift your mood as well! Let it cool slightly and drink about an hour before you go to bed.

Another popular herb for hot flushes and night sweats is black cohosh. In my experience this seems to work well for some women – but I would have to say not for all but dong quai seems more effective for the majority. A comparative study between HRT and dong quai, done in 2003, showed a huge 30% reduction in hot flushes after a month. The suggested dosage for hot flushes is 600mg a day, BUT there is however a strong contra-indication if you are taking medication such as warfarin, as dong quai is known to act as a blood thinner. Hot flushes seem to be variable from woman to woman so you may have to do a bit of experimenting to see what works, and when you are reduced to sleeping naked in a cast iron bath to cool down – and yes that is the voice of personal experience speaking – then you don’t always feel that patient! If trying individual herbs doesn’t work for you then try one of the combinations that several supplement companies make – and also watch to see if you have any triggers for your flushes. Stress can be a major one, as can certain things like coffee – might be worth keeping a food and mood diary to see if you can pin it down.

Back awareness week

If you have a bad back, you don’t need an awareness week as unfortunately it is ever present in your consciousness. However, we now seem to have special days and weeks that are celebrated that I don’t remember from my dim and distant childhood – was there ever a Grandparent’s Day? This time I am reminding you that it is Back Care Awareness Week from 4 – 10 October 2008 and its theme and focus is ‘staying positive and believing that’you can do it’.

Given that 52% of the population now gets back pain – a 5% increase on last year – a positive attitude seems to be definitely called for. You now have full permission to stow the vacuum cleaner as the most common causes of bad backs apparently are spring cleaning and housework. As Quentin Crisp famously observed ‘There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.’ You may feel that’s a bit extreme but as a principle I could get excited about it.

More worrying is the fact that a recent study found that between 13% and 50% of teenagers have already had episodes of back pain and as many as two in every class of 15-18 year olds experience back pain on a recurrent or chronic basis. It’s apparently a combination of too much time in front of a computer, not enough physical activity and the increasing ‘couch potato’ syndrome. There are many options for the management and prevention of back pain and the earlier you seek help then the better it is. Back pain as well as physically causing immobilization, can cause many people to feel trapped by back pain. Even something simple like getting in or out of a car can become an enormous and painful challenge, so much so, that some people stop doing it and become housebound. This can lead to a downward spiral of pain, depression, lack of self-belief and negative feelings about your ability to lead a normal life. It is a ‘can do’ attitude that the back awareness week wants to promote to counter this.

Personally I am a big fan of chiropractic, particularly McTimoney which is less invasive and bone cracking than the more widely known osteopathic practices. There are plenty of events going on around the country, kicking off with a major exhibition at Olympia. If you would like to now more then visit the website at www.backpain.org.uk

To jab or not to jab

That is indeed the question – particularly in relation to the flu jab which is on offer at this time of year. It’s over three years now since doubt was first cast on the effectiveness of the flu jab, particularly in protecting elderly people. Now it seems that a new study published in the US shows that the 2007-08 flu vaccine was only 44% effective, which made it the worst flu season the worst since 2003-04.

In fairness, flu vaccines are formulated based on health officials’ educated guesses about which strains of the virus are most likely to be circulating in a given year. Three of these strains are picked for inclusion in the vaccine and when they guess correctly, the vaccine is usually between 70 and 90% effective.

Sounds like a bit of a lottery to me, and again going the natural route I prefer to boost my system with a seasonal acupuncture tune up and regular doses of Echinacea and vitamin C – it seems to work for me.

Aspartame – The sweet deception

I know I have mentioned aspartame before – probably too often – but I can’t emphasise strongly enough that sweeteners do you no favour, especially if you are trying to lose weight. Your body does not recognise a sweetener as sugar, and so you unconsciously seek it out in other ways. Many experts now believe that Aspartame is one of the most dangerous substances ever added to food, not only because it has been proven to make you fatter, but because of its links to serious health problems such as cancer and neurological diseases.

Why am I mentioning it now? Because many people just don’t think it’s true, or that I am a scaremongering killjoy (only on Halloween and never when it concerns your health!) Can I just point out that Aspartame has brought more complaints to the Food and Drug Agency in the USA than any other additive-ever. It’s responsible for a staggering 75% of the complaints they receive and from 10,000 consumer complaints, the FDA compiled a list of 92 symptoms, including death.

Now I think death is a pretty serious symptom – so if you are addicted to diet drinks and sweeteners, could you at least cut down and stop me worrying about you?

Adult snorers – It starts in childhood

If you have ever dug your partner in the ribs, or tried every brand of ear plugs on the market, it may help to know that really they can’t prevent it. Actually, it may not help at all, but a new study has shown that adult snoring may be rooted in early snorers .

This is based on a study of more than 15,000 adults ages 25 to 54 in Northern Europe, specifically in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and Estonia. They were asked questions about their early life environment, childhood history and adult medical problems. The result was that they concluded that there are several factors in early childhood that are associated with adult snoring.

So what are the risk factors so you can identify if your child is going to disturb someone’s sleep in later life? First clue was that adult snorers were more likely to have been hospitalized for a respiratory infection before they were two, had recurrent ear infections such as glue ear or inflammation or have large tonsils that can compromise the upper airways. On the environment front, the child was more likely to have grown up in a large family, or to have been brought up as a baby in a household with a dog.

Karl Franklin, M.D., Ph.D., who carried out the research, speculated that these factors may enhance inflammatory processes and thereby alter upper airway anatomy early in life, causing an increased susceptibility for adult snoring.

Typically the habitual snorers in the study (defined as more than 3 times a week) were more likely to be male, overweight and had a higher prevalence of asthma and chronic bronchitis and were smokers. You may not be able to do anything about their childhood, but those other factors also contribute so tackling the weight, smoking and asthma certainly couldn’t hurt and might help to reduce the frequency and volume. Sadly there is no real cure for snoring, but a good website for general information on what causes it, and what can help, can be found at www.britishsnoring.co.uk

Another good reason for women to be happy

As I cast a damper on women’s consumption of orange juice recently, I thought I would redress the balance by promoting the real health benefits of optimism for women who want to avoid breast cancer.

A study at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel has found that women who are happy and optimistic appear to be less likely to get breast cancer than their gloomier counterparts. Also, women who had experienced more than one major tragedy in their lives, such as the death of a close family member or a serious illness, were significantly more likely to have the disease.

The researchers were able to conclude that experiencing more than one meaningful life event (severe and/or mild to moderate) is a risk factor for breast cancer among young women and that general feelings of happiness and optimism can play a protective role against the disease.

This points up yet again the importance of the relationship between happiness and health for all of us. Indeed, some previous studies have suggested a link between stressful life events, psychological distress, and cancer. It is believed by many therapists that psychological stress may contribute to an increase in cancer by modifying cell responses to environmental factors, but it is still unproven.

We already know that an optimistic outlook can actually increase your lifespan, and now it seems it can protect you against one of our most feared diseases.

OJ – Not for women?

This is OJ as in juice, not as in Simpson, because starting the day with a glass of orange juice is seen as healthy habit, high in vitamin C and good for you. However, there are some reasons you might want to switch to another juice in the mornings – particularly if you are a woman. Recent research suggests that drinking orange juice frequently may put women at an increased risk of developing type two diabetes – a serious and debilitating disease that becomes progressively more common with age and obesity.

This is yet another study from the US, the home of OJ as they refer to their juice, and was done at Tulane University School of Public Health, in New Orleans. Over 70,000 women enrolled in the study, and dietary and medical records were analysed with these results:

Diabetes risk is LOWERED by 18% if the subjects added three daily servings of whole fruit because this slows down the rapid absorption of the natural sugars found in fruit as the fibres take longer for the stomach to digest. If you add in just one additional serving of leafy green vegetables then the risk was LOWERED AGAIN by 9%

Diabetes risk is INCREASED by 18% if one additional daily serving of orange juice is taken. This is because the natural sugars in juice are absorbed too rapidly in the stomach, causing a surge in blood sugar levels. Since the research was carried out only on women, it is not yet known whether men are at the same risk of getting diabetes if they drink orange juice. BUT, drinking large quantities of neat juice is not something to recommend as you are getting a large sugar load in one hit comes and because it comes in a liquid form it is absorbed rapidly into the body. People are not always aware either, that many types of fruit juices like orange, grapefruit and grape, contain as much sugar per serving as many fizzy drinks. That amount of sugar will help you put on weight, and that is another factor in promoting diabetes.

A couple of suggestions are either to cut your juice with water about 50/50 or switch to apple juice and cranberry juices – real juice, with bits and no added sugar because they have a much better sugar/nutrients ratio than citrus and grape- based juices.

The fertile gender difference

When it comes to planning a family, looking at the couple’s diet is often a first step but this usually comes down to having a balanced, healthy diet of lots of fruit and vegetables and with minimum potential risks such as additives, fats, alcohol and smoking. However, some preliminary research from Australia seems to indicate that there may be a different factor to consider when looking at fertility and reproductive success.

This research is based on long-term studies on Australian black field crickets, so no tests on humans yet, but its finding could be highly relevant. Lead researcher Rob Brooks and his team have discovered that the lifespan of both male and female crickets is maximized on high-carbohydrate, low-protein diets, and reported this finding in the latest issue of Current Biology. But the interesting fact to emerge is that reproductive success differs dramatically between the sexes when the carbohydrate-protein balance is changed. Males have the greatest reproductive success with a diet that favours carbohydrates to protein by eight-to-one. Females have greatest success when the protein/carbohydrate ratio is just one-to-one.

More research is clearly needed, but to maximise fertility in the meantime, the best course is to follow the anti-inflammatory or wellness diet. This is based on principles that have been shown to promote longevity and reproductive health in both men and women throughout their lives, and if you would like a copy of it please contact us.

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