So it’s not my thyroid. It’s not a particular iron or folate deficiency. It’s not another autoimmune disease.
Why my hair has been falling out remains a mystery.
That said, my doctor suspects stress, and mentioned that sometimes losing your hair is a delayed reaction to stress. An “after-the-fact” if you will. Which I suppose makes sense.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be on biotin – which it seems a few of you have tried with success, too! – and the Evening Primrose Oil (I have no idea if this helps anything other than hair or not, though I had some in my house on recommendation from my doula at the very tail end of my pregnancy to encourage labor), plus making some changes in my diet. Nothing drastic for now, but my girlfriend Mary is helping me devise a little healthier eating plan, including drinking a Shakeology shake each day.
(I’m a huge fan of Shakeology, primarily because they are chock-full of nutrients and also because they taste so damn good.)
I’ve been a little lax on getting my veggies in, so I’ll be eating a big salad every day for lunch, with a side of some grain or another (brown rice or quinoa or wheatberries or whatever). We have free fruit at work, so that covers snacks, and the last semi-big change is that I’m going to shoot for the majority of my weekly dinners be meatless. (Thanks to Ups and Downs of A Yoga Mom, I discovered Meez Meals, which is super-reasonable and convenient and I’m excited to try it out next week.)
I’m taking this week “off” of boot camp, sticking to running and yoga and, primarily, sleeping, much how I did at this time last month. I’m not entirely unconvinced this isn’t hormonal in nature. Just the same, it’s not a bad thing to every month cram in some extra R&R of a different nature (…like catching up on Breaking Bad. Oh that show is a treasure.)
Of course, I have no flipping clue if any of this will help, though yesterday when I washed my hair less hair seemed to fall out after the shower and after I ran a comb through it. (This stuff, holy Hannah, is working MIRACLES on the texture, which I suppose for that crazy-ass price it should. My hair is ridiculously soft and smooth. An absolute “Worth-The-Ridiculous-Price” product.)
I can’t imagine, though, that it’ll hurt. Sleep, extra veggies, less booze, less meat…these are all beneficial to the body, even if it doesn’t do jack squat to stop my hair from falling out. My girlfriend, Sara, mentioned in the comments that she experienced hair loss after her pregnancies and just stopped fighting it and cut her hair short. I see shorter hairstyles and covet them momentarily, but I’m a long-hair woman so I’m not ready to go that route just yet.
For the moment I’m inclined to go the dietary route, with some stress-reduction techniques thrown in for good measure. Should this not ease up, my doctor wants me to see a specialist she knows, a dermatologist who focuses on hair loss in women. The reviews on this doctor are not at all hot, and she’s in the far northern suburbs, so I’ll probably ask my dermatologist what he thinks if it comes to that.
(I really don’t want it to come to that. The insane amount of money that has been spent in this house on my sundry medical bills this year would make your head spin.)
In the pantheon of Things Wrong, this isn’t the biggest, especially if the underlying cause isn’t really anything other than a weird blip in the human body, brought on solely by me, that I just need to compassionately ride out and care for with some dry shampoo and patience. I could do without it, but then I suspect we could do without most of life’s hard lessons and then where would we be?
A head full of hair and a heart full of crazy, I suppose.
