Difficulty sleeping

Q. My 10-year-old daughter has two problems. Firstly, for the last six months she has been finding it difficult to get to sleep. She feels very hot, even though the window is open and she only has a sheet covering. She has eczema but this is well managed, most of the time with moisturisers and steroid creams. Often it’s midnight before she gets to sleep. Secondly, she has always had very fine hair (even the shaft is very thin) but for the last year or so it is also falling out. Routine bloods were normal (ferritin was 31, so she has taken Floradix 10mls twice a day, but this hasn’t made any difference). I would be grateful for any suggestions.

A. It is difficult to say exactly why your daughter is having issues with excess heat, without knowing a full case history. This is almost certainly linked with her sleep problems, so once you have dealt with the heat the insomnia will likely be resolved as well. I know that in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) excess heat is treated as a separate and underlying issue that may trigger other symptoms, such as the eczema that your daughter is dealing with.

A TCM practitioner typically utilises a combination of herbs and acupuncture or acupressure to rebalance the body. Ayurveda, the traditional Indian medicine system, has a fantastic cooling herb which is also very nutritious. Shatavari (asparagus racemosus) has a specific affinity with female health and helps with hormone regulation, so this nourishing and cooling herb would be a great choice to support and prepare your daughter in the years leading up to the changes she will experience with the onset of puberty. I like to take this herb as a tea, using 1 teaspoon and steeping it in boiling water for three to five minutes. It is quite mild and pleasant tasting.

Aloe vera juice works particularly well with shatavari, the two are often prescribed together in Ayurveda, as it is thought that the aloe vera helps to deliver the active constituents in the shatavari (also known as wild asparagus) more effectively. The bonus is that Aloe vera juice also has a reputation for cooling, topically and internally, and it is also a fabulous remedy for treating eczema. Your daughter will need to drink 15-30ml of aloe juice twice daily before her cup of shatavari tea.

Regarding the hair loss and thinning, there is a connection between low ferritin levels and hair loss. At 31ug/l, she is definitely on the low side of normal (the range is between 20-200ug/l — anything below 40 needs attention). A protein responsible for storing iron in the body, ferritin is an important indicator of general wellbeing.

It can take as long as six months to get ferritin levels back up to a healthy level — taking Floradix or Floravital is a great start, but your daughter may also need to up her intake of the amino acid lysine to support the body in storing ferritin, and absorbing iron and zinc from her diet. At 10 years old, supplementation is not the ideal option!, so adding pumpkin seeds to her diet might be an easier method. 100g of pumpkin seeds provide around 1500-2000mg of lysine, which is the daily dosage required to help increase ferritin.

Iron-rich foods include red meats, spinach, broccoli, prune juice, kidney beans, and chickpeas. Citrus fruits and juices, berries, capsicum/peppers, kiwifruit, tomatoes, broccoli and spinach all help to fortify iron levels due to their vitamin C content.

Your daughter should be getting about 1,000mg vitamin C daily — a 500mg tablet chewed about half an hour before she takes the Floradix each morning and night would be perfect. It is important to continue with the lysine, vitamin C and Floradix (Spatone is another good brand) for at least three months once her ferritin levels are back within the healthy range, to ensure that her iron stores are fully replenished.