From baldness fears to a car sickness – Dr Jeff answers your health questions
DR JEFF FOSTER is The Sun on Sunday’s new resident doctor and is here to help YOU.
Dr Jeff, 43, splits his time between working as a GP in Leamington Spa, Warks, and running his clinic, H3 Health, which is the first of its kind in the UK to look at hormonal issues for both men and women. See .
Q) I AM a 40-year-old man with a receding hairline. I’ve tried to embrace it and shave my head but I’m just not happy.
I don’t want to do anything as extreme as a hair transplant but I’ve seen adverts for tablets that are supposed to regenerate hair growth and also a treatment called PRP that claims to use your platelets to stimulate hair regrowth.
Have you heard of this? If so, is it safe and worth a try?
Jim Hooper, Essex
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A) Half of all men will have some degree of hair loss by the age of 50, and some can happily accept their loss, but baldness can have devastating effects on our body image.
However, there are no special vitamins that work and only a handful of treatments do anything. With reference to PRP, (platelet-rich plasma), while research is promising, it is not yet available as a mainstream therapy in the UK.
Proven and available therapies for hair loss include over-the-counter minoxidil, a drug that you rub into the scalp twice a day. It has been proven to be highly successful.
In terms of medicines, the only tablet licensed for male pattern baldness is finasteride, which blocks the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone.
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After this, the next option would be a hair transplant. These are now highly successful and performed routinely, although can be very expensive.
If hair loss worries you, don’t wait. Speak to a men’s health doctor or dermatologist to see what options suit you best.
Q) WE’RE going on a family holiday to Turkey in August but our seven-year-old daughter suffers really bad travel sickness.
The journey to our destination will involve a car, a plane then a coach, all of which make her sick.
Travel wrist bands and the usual branded travel sickness pills don’t work for her. Is there anything else I can try?
Sandra Brownlee, Hastings
A) In terms of preventing motion sickness, there are things you can do to help: have a light, carbohydrate-based meal before you travel.
Take a bottle of water, have regular breaks where possible and get some fresh air.
Avoid strong smells like food or perfume, as these can trigger nausea and don’t do things that increase the effort of your eyes, like reading or watching a screen.
In terms of medicines, wrist bands do nothing, but there are medications that help suppress the signals from your inner ear.
Examples include hyoscine, cinnarizine and prochlorperazine.
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After two years, the only way to know what damage has been done is to get an X-ray and see if there is a fracture that has failed to heal.
If this is the case, you may require an operation to pin the bits of broken bone back in place, or would at least benefit from seeing an orthopaedic surgeon (bone doctor) to look at options.