January 7, 2010
As I alluded to in a previous post, the biggest problem with this hair loss situation is the psychological effect. I mean really, physically, hair loss isn’t harming the body. I mean maybe heat escapes you easily – no head insulation. Haha. But seriously, that isn’t very harmful. The real harm comes from your mind and the stress you feel because your hair (and therefore your appearance) is changing drastically and not being able to do anything to control it.
Needless to say, hair loss is stressful.
Men feel a little funny about losing their hair. Heck, some seem to be in some sort of denial and try to hold on to the few strands they have left. I don’t mean this harshly. I can empathize because, as I mentioned before, I know what it’s like to lose hair. But the point is, if men can feel funny, imagine how women feel!!!!!
First of all, for better or for worse a bald man is not perceived in the same way as a bald woman. It’s almost considered normal that some men will be bald. It’s just perceived as an accepted fact. Not so much with women. So the psychological effects are certainly more severe with women than they are with men. Woman have a great deal invested in their hair as it relates to their appearance. Perhaps this goes back to the biblical reference that a woman’s hair is her crowning glory.
I think people suffering from hair loss first try to hide it. Now this is probably easier for a woman to do but I have seen some men try – unsuccessfully. So, yeah, the first thing is to try to find hair styles that disguise this hair loss. I did it.
I think maybe you can fool people who didn’t know you, but people who knew you prior to hair loss probably won’t be fooled by your attempts at disguise.
The next thing we do is try to modify some other aspect of our appearance. Now, if you decide to devote more time to being in great physical shape, and start working out often, this could be great! You can look and feel great. Exercise certainly helps when dealing with stress!
Basically, if this is greatly affecting your stress levels do things to take action in order to feel more in control. As I said to you guys before, get the right diagnosis first. This will create a plan of action. Don’t attempt any treatment before you figure out what is causing this to begin with. Once you’ve consulted with someone qualified to treat and advise, follow the course you’ve decided on. Take up a hobby, focus on getting in great physical shape. Remember that reducing your stress will only help when it comes to the hormones involved in hair regrowth.
January 7, 2010
Ok guys, I’m back with another cause of hair loss that I haven’t yet mentioned. It’s trichotillomania. It’s commonly referred to as trich, and that’s also easier to type.
This type of hair loss is slightly different. It’s different because it’s self-inflicted. Trich is defined as obsessive pulling of the hair, until it breaks or until you pull it out of your head. I know a lot of people can’t understand this. It’s also not very comfortable to admit that this is the reason I know about the psychological effects of hair loss.
I started pulling my hair because the texture of hair intrigued me. I have super curly hair and curly hair seems to have a different feel. Mine had a textured feel to it. Curly hair also tends to have more split ends for some reason so I began a mission to eradicate the split ends manually with my fingers and my teeth. It may sound crazy but it is what it is.
The split end mission gradually evolved to searching out and finding the strange textured strands and then pulling them out. This was a nice feeling. It was soothing to find the strange strands and then pull them out. A lot of people ask me if pulling hair out of your scalp hurts. Maybe it hurts some people but it never bothered me.
Anyway, I would do this in the car, at work, in meetings, pretty much everywhere. It was just soothing. Well, I started to notice a problem on the right side of my head. My hair was shorter on that side than on the other. So I switched the area I pulled from. I switched to the left side. This let me keep pulling without addressing it.
Now you should know that I did feel terrible that I’d ruined the right side of my hair. It was completely ridiculous to try to style it. I didn’t stop though. It’s a shame. I’ll skip ahead to saying that I did not stop until I started to realize exactly how thin my hair was. I used to have a full head of thick hair. My hair is probably 1/3 the volume of what it used to be.
There are a lot of factors that play out with trich. There are other tendencies that also seem to be present with those who suffer with the urge to pull. It is a strong desire. I get a lot of questions about it so I’ll follow up on those soon in a future post.
January 7, 2010
Now, you know the first thing that drives people to a diagnosis of hair loss is that they are losing hair. There are other symptoms. First of all, the hair doesn’t just all fall out in a big clump. Alopecia can start small. A small round patch of your scalp is hair free – you have a small bald spot where hair used to be. That area can be feel a little funny, as in tingly, or it may not. The hair in the affected area will tend to be easier to pull out than the healthy area and the affected area may be confined more to one side of the scalp than all over.
What do you if you have alopecia? In many cases, you don’t have to do anything. The body is amazing and it can fix itself. Given proper nutrition and general good health, in time, your hair can grow back without any specific treatment. The key with that is *time*. As we discussed hair grows at a specified rate and you can’t expect to regrow hair in a month or two.
Now here’s the part that makes me a little scared of the word alopecia. In some cases, the hair does not regrow, or if it does, it is a very small amount that returns in comparison to what was there before. The reality, though, is that medical experts say this is only in 10% of cases of alopecia. So honestly, the odds are in your favor: if you have hair loss due to alopecia, do not worry your hair will return. Probably.
So why are there so many prescription medicines for hair loss? It seems to be because in some cases, where the alopecia is not severe, some steroidal treatments appear to work. The products that are readily available in the stores though are pretty worthless. Don’t waste your money on them. They may seem to work because your hair loss will stop while you are taking them, but as soon as you stop, the hair loss will continue. What is the point of that? Don’t throw away that money on corticosteroids. Put the money you saved towards or wig! Not that wigs aren’t expensive. Wigs are a whole other subject. We’ll come back to that one later. But really, use it as an excuse to change your style up a bit.
January 7, 2010
I was going to start this off with some melodramatic line like “I was 25 when I started losing my hair….” but decided against it. I’ll just put it simply. For women, hair loss is no joke. Even *thinking* about losing your hair is no joke. I am sure it’s not exactly a picnic for men either but somehow it seems more acceptable in our current society for a man to shave off his thinning hair in favor of just going bald. Baldness, whether it is by choice or not, is definitely more preferable for a man than it is for woman. So basically, when a woman realizes her hair might be thinning gradually or even completely falling out there is a sense of panic.
First of all you should know that it’s normal for some hair to fall out. Not all the hair on your head grows at the same rate. A percentage of your hair is in the resting stage and thus will fall out as new hair grows in it’s place. Hair has a cycle and grows for a certain period of time. The medical field tells us that hair basically grows one half inch per month. So in a year’s time hair will grow 6 inches. Now, we know that there are exceptions to pretty much everything so some people may be genetically disposed to a faster rate of hair growth but generally speaking, you should expect six inches in a year’s time.
There are a variety of reasons hair starts to fall out. I mean first of all there are so many chronic illnesses that have hair loss listed as a possible side effect. For example, both diabetes and lupus are known to cause hair loss. But it’s not just chronic illness, fungal infections can cause hair loss.
To top it off, it’s not just the illnesses themselves, it’s also the medicine! So many of the medicines we take can interrupt our hair’s growth cycle and eventually just cause it to fall out. Blood thinners, birth control pills, and anti-depressants have been known to cause hair loss. If you have gout or high blood pressure, the medicines you take for your condition can also cause hair loss. The good news is, that if your hair loss is caused by medicine, when you stop taking the medicine, you should stop losing your hair.
We blame a lot of things on hormones and we can add hair loss to the list. Hormones regulate so many bodily functions. If you have any sort of problems with your thyroid and are also experiencing hair loss, your thyroid problems could be contributing to the problem. Like the thyroid, the balance of male and female hormones, androgens and estrogens, can also be linked to hair loss. Correct your thyroid/hormonal imbalance and voila!, the hair loss problem should resolve as well.
So first things first, before you freak out over what to try, do, eat, take, etc to fix your hair loss, stop in and see your doctor to make sure the usual medical suspects are eliminated.
January 7, 2010
Alright, so you’ve checked with the doctor and it doesn’t seem like your hair loss is caused by any of things mentioned in the last post: medicines, chronic illness, hormones. Unfortunately, your hair loss could be a new medical condition for you. That condition’s main symptom IS hair loss and that condition is named alopecia. To me this is a scaaarrry word. Who wants to even say this word – alopecia? It sounds like bad news. I’m not trying to scare you, maybe it’s just me that thinks this word is so unfortunate. So what is alopecia?
Our friendly online encyclopedia tells us there are a couple of different kinds of alopecia:
The most common type of alopecia areata involves hair loss in one or more round spots on the scalp.[2][5]
- Hair may also be lost more diffusely over the whole scalp, in which case the condition is called diffuse alopecia areata.[2]
- Alopecia areata monolocularis describes baldness in only one spot. It may occur anywhere on the head.
- Alopecia areata multilocularis refers to multiple areas of hair loss.
- The disease may be limited only to the beard, in which case it is called Alopecia areata barbae.[2]
- If the patient loses all the hair on his/her scalp, the disease is then called Alopecia areata totalis.
- If all body hair, including pubic hair, is lost, the diagnosis then becomes Alopecia areata universalis.[6]
Alopecia areata totalis and universalis are rare.[6]
Alopecia areata (AA) is a condition affecting humans, in which hair is lost from some or all areas of the body, usually from the scalp.[1][2]. Because it causes bald spots on the scalp, especially in the first stages, it is sometimes called spot baldness. In 1%–2% of cases, the condition can spread to the entire scalp (Alopecia totalis) or to the entire epidermis (Alopecia universalis). Conditions resembling AA, and having a similar cause, occur also in other species.[3]
Alopecia seems to be hereditary because you are more likely to have it if you have family members who have it as well. Doctors think that it is an autoimmune disorder where the body attacks itself, in this case it’s hair follicles. However, I’ve seen cases myself, among friends, where emotional stress, or scalp damage has caused a form of alopecia.
The good news is there can be hope if your hair loss is caused by alopecia. We’ll discuss that next.
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