Posted by headachequeen on March 13, 2004, at 14:46:07
In reply to Re: Hair loss » kka, posted by katia on March 13, 2004, at 6:32:04
> Hi,
> I was just wondering about your experience with hair loss. When do you notice it greatest?
Katia, I notice it when I check the screen thing (wow... and I have been teaching English as in vocabulary enhancement and creative writing, not to mention as a second language, for years and claim to be a writer and journalist.... "Screen thing???????") in the drain after I wash my hair...
there is always hair trapped in the screen...
of course, I no longer use a hairbrush as the 'radical style' I decided would better state my today persona, whoever or whatever that is, does not require a brush and all my life I have hated cleaning hairbrushes...
expecially when I let my hair grow extremely long and had to find a way to unravel the hair from the bristles of the brushes...
so my new question is, which came first the hair loss, or the hair loss caused by Topomax and Tegretol... and if it is caused by the meds, which med is most at fault...
I am not losing any more hair than before and actually less than when I used a brush to style and otherwise batter my hair into place...
I never really thought about it until I learned that Tegretol could cause hair loss...
Yoicks screeched I: I am losing my hair... look at it there in the brush...
then I changed to this delightfully different style and I noticed the hair in the drain screen that keeps things from plugging the drain...which used to require a plumber's attention every few months because of the hair caught in it ...
so has anything really changed?
Or am I simply reacting to the learned fear????
I am taking steps to create healthier hair now...
I have no bald patches, other than the ones where I tear out hair when the work in progress does not progress... and that I cannot blame on medications as it is strictly my own fault for not sticking to any sort of proper schedule...
I have constant compliments on my hair... even from stylists I don't know and no one tells me the sky is falling in or my hair is falling out...
so I think that I can safely say that I do not at this time feel any great fear about loss of hair because of Topomax...
the amount of hair that I have noticed to have fallen out in the past three weeks would not compare with that that came out in my brush each day if I were to do an honest comparison...
I simply allowed myself to be frightened by a possible side-effect...
it frightened me into improving my diet to include foods and supplements that would increase hair health... the ones that Dr. Bob recycled to the alternative health site <g>...
so that is good...
I do not find hair on the pillowcase or on my clothing to any greater extent than before Topomax or for that matter before Tegretol and I have been on that longer and it is also a hair destroyer...
so.... I hope that helps...btw... my hair is a deep red and my bedspread is a creamy ivory so if there were a great fall-out the hair would show up intensely...
as I wear a lot of deep purple and dark blues and olive drab, the hair would show up on my clothes too...
Now, dog hair there is in abundance, but it is longer than mine as a rule so we can tell the difference, and either black or a different shade of red, if not cinammon... so there is no confusion there...As for some of the other side effects, I have weighed aspirin and other over-the-counter pain killers vs Topomax as a choice for migraine control and found that Topomax with its constant controls (my doctors and the ongoing monitoring) to be a safer avenue to follow...
now that is MY choice and my path
There are other choices out there that might work for others to manage migraines... I have tried several...one of the famous and most-advertised over-the-counter pain meds is really hard on the liver, and as I was often prescribed two of its not-available-over-the-counter levels I have been told not to take it at all any more, regardless of reason or need because of the risk to my liver and kidneys... funny that no one told me that earlier as in before the damage could start...
I was taking it to counteract pain from injury and the orthopaedist treating me went into shock when he found out how long I had been on it... for migraine, for post-op pain in three instances that I could remember and so on... in fact in one case, while still on a morphine pump, I was given two tablets of this particular medication with another similar med, every three hours... if the morphine wouldn't do it, then what was this stuff supposed to do? says he, attack your liver faster...Over the years in the battle against migraine I have been prescribed stuff that I was to stick under my tongue when I felt a migraine coming on... great plan except by the time I feel a migraine 'coming on', it is full-blown and here... no warnings at all... besides the little green tablets made me so ill that the migraine was actually a relief...
then there were the prescription pain-killers that were supposed to knock me out within seconds... right! They didn't do anything of the sort... the label said to take one for pain, if it didn't work then to take another in four hours...
two of those things meant forty-eight to sixty h ours without sleep; my eyes wouldn't even close. The head-ache went on, the pain didn't stop and I was like a wind-up toy that was overwound... insult to injury...
the efforts to prevent and to cure and to stop the pain went on and on... the greatest success being a trip to the hospital for a shot of demerol or some such delight... sometimes for an overnight stay while nurses ran IVs to manage the pain...
I did not want it managed; I wanted it to go away and to go away NOW...
dim light - any sound - the slightest movement - agony... and they wanted to manage the pain...
Topomax has stopped all that for over a year...Along the way it has somehow boosted the efforts of the Tegretol to manage the epileptic seizures...
wonderdrug? I think so...
I still have the abdominal pain and the nausea that started with the Tegretol, so I still take the meds to control that... the Topomax is not that wonderful <sigh>
I still have the 'tingling' (oh the understatement) that came with the Tegretol... the electric shocks in my hands and feet that start and will not stop, that sometimes make it almost impossible to use my hands... but it could be worse some people have the tingling in their faces...I do not have the number of seizures though... so that is a bonus...
and I am not as often struggling to overcome the depression that I think accompanies all this...
maybe it is independent of it... I don't know...
the psychologist says I don't need him...
the doctor is tearing his hair out at that ... see Topomax does cause hair loss LOL...
the shrink says I am hypomanic and require long-term psychotherapy...
me? I don't know, I just know I do not have migraines and I have only the occasional seizure since Topomax and I have minor hair loss...all in all it is really not all that bad...
and I think I am healthier for all the water I drink....kat who does not work for the company that makes Topomax...<gg>
poster:headachequeen
thread:50878
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040313/msgs/323991.html