Nadine Dorries: I stopped my hair falling out by eating steak and putting hot water bottles on my head!
The MP and I’m A Celebrity star reveals the trauma of alopecia reduced her to tears – and how she beat it with a very surprising solution
TORY rebel Nadine Dorries is known for her outspoken views. So when she discovered that her hair was falling out, the former I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! contestant spoke out with typical frankness to draw attention to the trauma women go through when they suffer alopecia.
But while she was widely applauded by many women, including breast cancer sufferers, for drawing attention to the issue, some commentators found her likening her ‘confidencedraining’ experience to undergoing a mastectomy controversial.
Today, Nadine is as forthright as ever, but her blonde tresses are almost back to normal. She says: ‘I’m thrilled that my hair feels pretty much back to how it was before it started falling out. I’ll never have long, thick hair – it will always be fine – but I’m very happy with its improved condition. I feel like a completely different person from the woman I was two years ago, and much happier in myself.’
So what’s the secret to Nadine’s transformation? When alopecia struck in January 2013, the 58-yearold backbench MP threw herself with typical energy into finding a remedy to the condition, which regularly reduced her to tears.
She finally hit on a treatment regime of a cocktail of vitamin injections to her scalp, wearing a hot water bottle on her head, eating a diet so heavy in red meat that it would make a cowboy proud, and switching to organic hair dyes.
Nadine is now convinced that her routine of bacon for breakfast, a ham sandwich for lunch and mince or lean steak for dinner has helped restore lustre to her locks.
She says: ‘My partner is a pescatarian, so I was used to eating more fish and chicken and more vegetarian foods.
‘But I had read that levels of ferritin [a protein that stores iron] in a woman are crucial for hair maintenance, and as I was eating red meat only occasionally, I started eating it more often.’
Nadine puts her hair loss down to factors including female pattern baldness, in which hair on the head starts to thin at the front and back. Patches of bald scalp as large as a 50p piece also start showing through.
Female pattern hair loss often occurs around the time of the menopause and can run in families, although Nadine says there is no history of alopecia in hers.
Forty per cent of women suffer from this condition, which can be treated but not cured.
Nadine says that in her case, stress was also a major factor. In the space of a few weeks in November 2012, she was the centre of a widespread media storm after being suspended by the Conservative Party for appearing on the hit ITV show I’m A Celebrity.
‘Looking back, it was probably that massively stressful few weeks that started my hair loss,’ she says. ‘I continued my job, working in my constituency, attending Parliament, but all that stress had affected me. All hell broke loose over what I thought was a good choice for me [I’m A Celebrity] personally. My constituents were supportive of my adventure, but the press had a field day with the story.’
Nadine says that as a politician she is used to facing tough situations, but losing her hair meant that she was ‘brought to my knees with despair’.
It was while taking a shower one day that she first suspected something was wrong. She noticed a fine film on her body and realised it was hair from her head.
The alopecia was to blame for her hair thinning around her fringe parting and at her temples, and had also left her with a bald patch at the back of her head.
A low point was appearing on ITV’s News At Ten in 2013 and later discovering that her bald patch had been seen by millions of viewers.
She says: ‘I happened to be in the room when News At Ten came on and I saw myself. It was devastating. My three daughters, and especially Andrea, my PA, had all noticed what was going on but decided not to tell me as they thought I’d be upset. I cried in the mornings when more hair fell out. It felt like nothing would ever stop it.’
Nadine turned to the internet and started researching every cure she could find. ‘I emptied health-food stores in my quest to buy various supplements that said they could help hair loss,’ she says.
‘I tried caffeine shampoos, anything that vaguely had a chance of
I emptied healthh shops in my quest to find a cure
helping to correct the problem. I spoke to friends, colleagues – everyone had an opinion. Some had gone to trichologists and found them helpful, others not.’
Then journalist Andrew Pierce, a parliamentary acquaintance who suffered from male pattern baldness, suggested that she make an appointment with Lee Garrett in Harley Street, who had helped him regain his hair. It was Garrett who advised nanopeptide mesotherapy, a new treatment in which the scalp is injected with a cocktail of vitamins, minerals and peptides through a fine needle.
Bizarre as it sounds, Nadine had to put a hot water bottle on her head for 15 minutes on the night of the injections to encourage blood flow to the area.
For the first month, she had weekly sessions, each costing £300. She then had two sessions at fortnightly intervals before the treatments reduced to monthly, three-monthly and then six-monthly intervals. The total cost came to £2,400.
‘Lee explained to me that most vitamin supplements taken orally don’t work for hair as they aren’t easily absorbed by the body, and don’t reach the hair that is under stress, so his technique gets nutrients into the hair follicles very easily,’ Nadine explains. ‘The injections are focused on the areas of the head that need the most help, but then fan out to cover the rest of the scalp.’ She believes this proved a turning point. Within a month of starting the treatment, her hair stopped falling out. ‘That was a huge relief. And then, gradually, what felt like new growth started – when I ran my hand through my hair, it felt stubbly, which was very encouraging.’
Trips to her hairdresser, Tabitha James Kraan, also helped, says Nadine, who looked relaxed when we met at the St Ermin’s Hotel in London. She believes that using organic hair dyes meant her recovering hair was not subjected to unnecessary chemicals.
By early 2014, she had finished the course of scalp injections and her hair was ‘well on the road to recovery’. By then she had written her first novel, but she avoided having pictures taken that showed her scalp. ‘I would refuse to be photographed from certain angles as my hair loss was still quite obvious,’ she says. ‘At the launch party in April for my first novel, The Four Streets, my hair didn’t look great. It was a challenge to be out there being visible when I still felt so unhappy about my appearance.’
She found a release in writing her novels and has vowed to stick to her regime, fearing that if she lets it slip, the hair loss might return. She doesn’t regret going public about her problem, particularly as other women have felt compelled to share their experiences with her.
‘I’ve had many letters over the past couple of years from women who have been suffering what I have been going through. It is a very common problem, but I would never have realised how devastating it was until it happened to me.’