Some Frequently Asked Questions, first published in SAGA Magazine (9)
Professor George Lewith
My husband has been told that a supplement that contains fenugreek, among other things, can help stop hair loss and promote new growth. Is it safe and does it work?
Fenugreek comes from the herbal traditions of India, Egypt, China and Europe, so it is a very widely used preparation. It is often thought of as a nutritive and digestive tonic, but clinical trials suggest that it may lower blood sugar and blood fats (lipids) such as cholesterol. There is reasonable evidence that it works in diabetes and may act to help with general nutrition through helping the absorption of micronutrients, such as zinc and iron. This in turn could possibly help with hair growth. It seems to be a safe herbal remedy; the clinical trials that have been done to date don’t report any major adverse reaction, other than the occasional bowel upset with some flatulence and diarrhoea. Sometimes people complain that their urine smells a little of maple syrup if they have been taking a lot of fenugreek, but that doesn’t seem to be a major adverse reaction.
Generally, this kind of male pattern baldness is something that simply happens with age, and while there is some limited evidence that fenugreek may have valuable clinical effects, there isn’t really any hard evidence that it can help improve nutrition and stop hair loss.My 67-year-old husband has come out in spots around his mouth and chin. Foul tasting Chinese herbal tea helped, as did tablets from the GP, but only for a time and the spots are now back with a vengeance. Any ideas?
Usually spots around the mouth are considered by most complementary practitioners to be related either to nutritional deficiencies, and/or to digestive problems. Has your husband’s diet changed recently, is he eating well, does he have any flatulence, upset tummy, diarrhoea or constipation? It could be that he simply isn’t absorbing zinc and vitamin B terribly well, and sometimes adding these to the diet can be of real help. Probiotics (good gut bacteria) have been much talked about and can frequently help gut fermentation and improve micronutrient (vitamin and mineral) absorption thereby improving health. I suspect the foul tasting Chinese medicine helped to balance his liver and digestion. It worked for a while, but clearly didn’t provide a permanent solution. Look at his diet, make sure that he is having lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, and that he isn’t having any indigestion problems, try some simple supplementation with zinc and vitamin B as I have suggested, and if that doesn’t work perhaps you might like to see your GP just to make sure that there are no other underlying problems.
My wife suffers from a very dry vagina but dislikes the idea of lubricants. Is there anything natural she could take to ease the problem?
I don’t know how old your wife is, but I would suspect that she is either menopausal or postmenopausal. As you lose oestrogen and progesterone, particularly postmenopausally, you often find that the vaginal walls become rather dry and may indeed become sore during or after intercourse. This is usually called an atrophic vaginitis and is definitely caused by simple hormone withdrawal. Conventional medicine very often recommends low doses of topical oestrogen cream. These are effective, work well, and if given in low doses will not predispose to a major risk of malignancy. Alternatively, some simple lubricant such as KY Jelly may be helpful, but obviously that won’t provide a long term or permanent solution, as it won’t attack the cause of the problem. Some people have used a natural, plant based progesterone cream, many of which are available over the internet. There are claims that this works very effectively, and indeed it is likely to do so, because it is just another simple way of delivering hormones to an area of skin that is suffering because there aren’t enough circulating hormones. However I don’t know of any clinical trials that prove benefit for topical natural progesterone creams. If your wife’s vagina is very sore, sometimes simple homeopathic creams like Hypercal may also be of help, but I would suggest either simple lubricants at first, followed by hormone creams as appropriate.
What do the new government rules on homeopathic medicines mean? Are ones that have the new licences safer or more effective?
Effectively, what the government’s new rules mean is that the traditional use of a particular remedy can be made clearly apparent on the package. Almost everyone knows that Arnica is used for bumps and bruises, but until very recently it wasn’t possible to put this on the packaging. The packaging simply had to advertise the fact that the cream was Arnica, and left it to the general public, or the individual selling the cream, to work out what it could be used for. The legislation does not make homeopathic remedies better or safer, and it does not, as some imply, suggest that homeopathic remedies have suddenly been “proven”. It is just a simple formalisation of their traditional use to avoid misunderstanding and confusion, in the hope that it will help the general public know exactly how to use some of the more commonly available remedies in an appropriate and safe way.
I believe in taking lots of vitamin C if I feel I’m getting a cold, but my sister says this is an outdated theory and I’m just wasting money. Who’s right
The battle about vitamin C has been going on for about 40 years. It was, as you are probably aware, championed by Linus Pauling who won 2 Nobel prizes and who took up to 20 gm of vitamin C a day claiming that it worked wonders. It certainly doesn’t work wonders in clinical trials! There is some evidence that it may help in acute viral infections, and other evidence that it doesn’t do any good. The balance of evidence is probably that it isn’t hugely more effective than placebo, but then taking something that you believe in is certainly more effective than doing nothing. The placebo response alone, and the belief that the vitamin C might help you will very probably have a greater effect than simply doing nothing. My advice is that if you believe vitamin C might be helping you, I would recommend that you continue to take it. Don’t take so much that it gives you diarrhoea, and try to take it just for acute infections when you think you might need it. There isn’t really a right or wrong answer to this question.
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