Posted by Racer on July 4, 2004, at 14:24:22
In reply to Re: HAIR LOSS AND MEDS, posted by Tony C. on July 4, 2004, at 12:45:20
Stress can also do it. I can't remember the name of it, but there's a stress reaction that can cause the hairs on your head to fall out diffusely. Your hair has three stages of 'life': active growth, resting, and falling out. The "resting" stage usually lasts about three months, I think it was, but with this kind of hair loss, all the hair in the resting stage just falls right out. Usually, since your hairs aren't on the same schedule in terms of their stage, you lose a fair number of hairs daily, but not a significant percentage of your total hairs. When this stress hair loss happens, though, you can lose about a third of you hair in a very short period of time.
Now, how do I know about this? Ask me why I got my waist-length hair chopped to ear level? For me, it started about a month after attempting suicide with an overdose of Lexapro. (And the articles I found all said about a month after the stressor event was when the hair loss usually showed up.) My doctor said, when I asked about it, that it's just the stress, not the drug. I don't know if I believe him or not, but I didn't see anything about Lexapro causing any sort of hair loss when I was researching my own hair loss.
I did see a lot saying that this kind of stress-related hair loss is temporary, reversible, and totally benign. Except, of course, to self-image, self-confidence, and self-esteem. On the other hand, the woman who sheared my locks did say last time I saw her that she was seeing a pretty significant amount of new growth. (Unfortunately, I went through a second round of it, too, which is understandable considering what I've been going through trying to deal with County health services. Without that additional stressor, I probably wouldn't have lost the second wave of hair.)
As for fixing it, before trying Rogaine, I got a bottle of Nioxin shampoo. I can't tell you that it's miraculously fixed the whole problem -- even if it had, hair only grows so fast, you know? -- but I can tell you that some other problems I'd been having are better (we have lousy water, and this is the first shampoo I've tried that actually makes my head feel *clean*, and that's certainly improved the health of my scalp), and there is new growth.
No matter what caused it in the first place, hair loss is awful for everyong, and especially distressing to women and even more so when we're also dealing with mood disorders.
poster:Racer
thread:363028
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040704/msgs/363056.html