Q: My mom, who died at 88, had osteoporosis and was once relatively frail. I’m 69 and a up to date bone scan confirmed I’ve gentle osteopenia and my GP desires to prescribe drugs for it. However I’m nervous about side-effects. Would recreation (I’m a willing tennis participant) and diet D and calcium dietary supplements be sufficient in the interim?Amanda Thomas, CornwallA: Osteopenia is the clinical time period for low bone-mineral density. For your case, the lack of bone mineral isn’t but regarded as critical and maximum medical doctors would agree you don’t require medicine at this degree.(Like several medication, the ones for bone loss too can doubtlessly motive side-effects – critical heartburn because of stomach-acid reflux and, a lot more hardly ever, cells within the jaw bone loss of life off.)What issues is the velocity of decline, so that you must be re-scanned in two years.Osteoporosis can run in households, so the truth that your mom had it does put you at higher chance. However in actual fact that during all post-menopausal girls, a decline in bone density is inevitable owing to the lack of the hormone oestrogen.Oestrogen is helping bones by way of inhibiting the impact of cells referred to as osteoclasts, which destroy down outdated bone, whilst additionally selling the task of osteoblasts that construct new bone.If you are not likely so that you could opposite osteopenia at this age, you’ll sluggish it down. 
‘If you are not likely so that you could opposite osteopenia at this age, you’ll sluggish it down’Weight-bearing and muscle-strengthening workout routines are an important for keeping up bone density, so your common tennis enjoying will move a protracted method to give a boost to this and I like to recommend enjoying at least one time per week.Different preventative steps come with quitting smoking and proscribing alcohol consumption – each can have an effect on bone mass: the previous by way of decreasing oestrogen ranges additional, and successfully reducing calcium absorptionin the intestine, whilst alcohol will increase osteoclast task and suppresses osteoblasts, a double whammy.And sure, calcium (1,200mg) and diet D (800IU) are essential.Q: I used to be recognized with non-Hodgkin lymphoma 17 years in the past and considered one of my sisters was once recognized a couple of years later. We’re the one ones in our circle of relatives (of eleven) who need to put on listening to aids and I wonder whether this is hooked up to the lymphoma?Irene O’Hara, EdinburghA: It is excellent news to listen to that your illness was once now some years previous – and also you ask an enchanting query.From what I perceive there’s no direct dating between lymphoma and the onset of deafness, however a connection would possibly exist for lots of causes.First, lymphoma can incessantly happen in, or close to, the pinnacle and neck, or the bottom of the cranium. If the tumour grows close to the auditory nerve or the internal ear, it would have an effect on listening to.Some other chance is that some forms of chemotherapy or radiation treatment – if the most cancers is within the head or neck – can harm the internal ear.One at a time, lymphoma can sometimes motive what are referred to as paraneoplastic syndromes – necessarily the immune gadget assaults wholesome tissues within the frame, which would possibly have an effect on the internal ear or auditory nerve.Extra hardly ever, lymphomas is also connected to autoimmune problems – and there’s a sort that is affecting the internal ear and that may be a possible reason for listening to loss, which would possibly have affected you and your sister.It’s additionally value noting that listening to loss is commonplace with age – and in 11 siblings, it does no longer wonder me that two of you have got it and it’s conceivable that the lymphoma analysis in every of you is just a accident.IN MY VIEW… New drug hope for girls’s disorderI’m satisfied to file some just right information for sufferers with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS): the situation, which impacts round 10 in keeping with cent of girls, is characterized by way of abnormally prime ranges of testosterone – a results of an excessive amount of being produced within the ovaries and by means of frame fats.This triggers a variety of signs, together with abnormal classes, weight achieve, extra hair expansion and fertility issues.The present remedy is oral contraceptives however, whilst it will keep watch over classes, testosterone ranges can stay prime.Now analysis has printed that artemisinins, medication derived from the candy wormwood plant and used to regard malaria, can block the manufacturing of male hormones by way of interfering with a specific enzyme.It is a dramatic discovery and preliminary research the use of ‘malaria’ medication in girls with PCOS display nice promise. Greater research are below means.Those medication have a protracted historical past of use in other people so, must those trials achieve success, they might be rolled out briefly. Synthetic intelligence is busy operating on discovering extra medication that can be ‘repurposed’ like this. One robust argument in its favour!Write to Dr Scurr at Just right Well being, Day-to-day Mail, 9 Derry Side road, London, W8 5HY or e mail drmartin@ dailymail.co.united kingdom – come with your touch main points. Dr Scurr can not input into private correspondence. All the time seek the advice of your personal GP with any well being considerations
