Monkey In My Shower

Good Morning Bleeps.

I wonder how much hair you can lose (and for how long) before you go bald?

I have faced this before. A few years back I was going through a stressful time in my life and I was literally waking up every day to handfuls of hair on my pillow. One Sunday I woke up and it looked like a woolly mammoth had slept in the bed with me so I freaked out and Googled "same day blood tests". I was thinking that something really serious must be wrong with me to be losing this much hair every day (drama queen? moi?). The bald look works fine for Bruce Willis but I was thinking that I probably couldn't pull it off.

I found a walk-in Doctor in London that was open on a Sunday and would do a full blood count to try to see what was going on. Everything came back fine, even my liver function test (I know, I know, shocking since I pickle it every day in wine) so he referred me to a Trichologist just off Oxford Street. I met a wonderful man, top in his field, who ran more blood tests (relevant to hair follicle health) and he advised me that my iron store levels (ferritin) were low and started me on iron supplements as well as protein tablets.

He also said that stress can be a huge factor in hair loss as well as diet and exercise. I told him what I was going through (a nasty divorce) and then we discussed what I was eating (not much) and that I was doing a lot of running. He told me that the first things to show stress in the body were hair and nails as the body doesn't "need" them to stay alive. Um, yeah but I need my hair to feel good about myself thank-you-very-much.

My life started to settle down and eventually I noticed that my hair loss was slowing down and it started to grow back (I was seriously tufty for a while). The whole hair loss part of my life became a distant memory (actually a lot of my memories are distant lately but let's not pull at THAT thread), until now. The bloody long-haired monkey is back in the shower with me every day. My hair is literally coming out by the handful again because, gosh, it's not like I have enough to think about already with everything else. Ugh!

I won't be freaking out this time as I know that last time it did all settled down after a while. I suppose I should start taking iron again just to be safe but I also recognise that I have been under a LOT of stress recently and maybe this is my body letting me know it is time to relax a bit (or maybe a luxury spa vacation?).

I have done a lot of research on this lately to see if my hair loss is somehow linked to MS and although I am not seeing anything obvious, there seems to be a strong link between B12 deficiency and hair loss. In fact, on one of my "go to" places for MS information, the MSRC website, I found a really interesting article about B12 deficiency, which can also be an MS mimic. If any of you are still in limbo land it should be one of the things that your Doctor rules out as part of the diagnostic process, my levels have been checked and have come back fine so I know this is not the cause of my hair loss.

I have also read that some of the MS meds can have this as a side effect but I am not on any yet so again, I know this isn't the reason. I hope my hair loss doesn't last long this time because even though the last time it happened Phil said he would shave his head if I went bald, I don't think either one of us could really pull off that look!

Anyway enough about me, how are YOU?