i have a couple of questions… do you know about anyone trying eastern or natural medicine or visiting an acupuncturist or eastern healer? also, she wasn’t given a prescription for spiro or the pill… is this something we should be looking into?

i know i keep saying this, but thank you so much for everything. since my sister doesn’t want to visit the site i feel like i should be her voice just so we get all the information we can. thanks again.

I’m so sorry to hear that your sister is having such a hard time right now. I think every woman on this blog can relate to the feelings she is going through. I know she is feeling that her fate is sealed and she will end up being a bald woman. Not true. I’ve lived with my hair loss for 8 years and while it has been a struggle I’ve learned to accept a lot more than I ever thought I was capable of. I do have very thin hair now that has rapidly progressed due to what I feel was a totally separate issue causing the excess telogen effluvium these last 2 years. But still with some effort on my part I go out into the world even with the very thin hair I have now and get by. Your sister has so much more hair now than she even realizes, a diagnosis of androgenetic alopecia doesn’t mean your hair will all fall out tomorrow. It is for the most part a slow process that takes place over time. Like Dr. Price mentioned, the hair grows back after it has been shed but just grows in thinner. Hair loss treatments are aimed at slowing and even reversing this miniturization process down even further and keeping more of the hairs in an anagen phase for a long period of time. I understand where your sister is emotionally and honestly you are already doing everything you can for you.

It takes a long time to gain what I call “hair loss maturity” where it just becomes part of your daily routine and you learn to accept your current state of hair. Of course it still bothers me, and I still cry about it at times but I am able to deal with it a whole lot better than I did when I first started losing my hair, even through I have tremendously thinner hair. If you would have shown me a picture of myself today, 8 years ago and said this is what you will look like after 8 years of hair loss I would have totally freaked out and probably locked myself away. But that is only because I was use to having so much hair and wasn’t willing to give up or accept myself any other way. I didn’t realize that you can get by with thinner hair, plenty of women have naturally thin hair and have never lost a hair in their life. I had to learn to not hold on so tight and to be willing to let go… let go of the image and pictures of me with ridiculously thick hair and accept the new me with thin hair. I wrote this in a past post titled “At What Point Do We Let Go?” :

“When I first started losing my hair 8 years ago, I used to pray and pray that I would recover completely from whatever ailment or messed up hormone was causing me to lose my hair and that it would all grow back. As the years went by my attitude changed and I started pray that I could just keep what I had and have it stop falling out. More years past, and I started pray that I could be given strength to mentally deal with my hair loss and move on. That is where I am today. Oh course I want my hair back, I always keep hope that things may turn around, but ultimately I really want to learn how to accept myself as I am, today.”

I think that pretty much sums of the evolution of the way my attitude changed after living with hair loss for so many years. I want your sister to know that her diagnosis of having androgenetic alopecia, is just that a diagnosis. It doesn’t imply that she will be a bald woman, it doesn’t imply that she’ll lose all her hair this week, next month or next year. It is a condition a lot of women life with. Some women are naturally more optimistic and better at dealing than others, that wouldn’t have been me. I took it HARD and I missed out on a lot of my 20’s (I’m 29) because of it. It was needless too, looking back I had so much more hair than I ever realized even when I was in the deepest throws of shedding. I don’t want your sister to be like I was. I want her to enjoy the hair she has TODAY. Hair loss is something we have to life with and deal with, but we get a vote in our attitude and how we view our situation. We can be bitter, which I was for many years, or we can realize that all we can do is the best we can with what we have today, and when that is no longer enough we can choose to add hair to our own or wear a very natural undetectable human hair wig.

Life isn’t over. It’s only beginning. There is no doubt that having hair loss has made me a better person. I’m more understanding, more compassionate and more accepting, I work on trying to appreciate the things I am very fortunate to have today, things other people don’t. I am more patient as well, waiting for your hair get some regrowth after a shed is a slow process. I realize none of this will be of real help to your sister now because it probably all seems so sudden and definite for her. But she’ll get better, she has a wonderful sister by her side
Give your sister a big hug, hold her tight. Let her cry on your shoulder. Just be there. Unfortunately I don’t think there is anything you can really say to make her feel better. Just listen. I also understand your sister not wanting to visit the site, sometimes it just too overwhelming. The site will be here when your sister is ready and I look forward to hearing from her and having the opportunity to write to her directly.

~Y

p.s.– admin, i sent an email to the address listed in the contact form… don’t know whether it worked or not but i wanted to share my story because i recently got a huge breakthrough in my hair battle…

i was really hoping that her visit to dr. price would confirm what dr. lewis had told her. she was like her old self again last week. now she’s dealing with the reality of dr. price’s diagnosis of aga and she’s saying, “it is what is and there’s nothing i can do. i just have to deal.” i really want to believe dr. lewis’s diagnosis, but my sister said dr. price was right and that her hair has been thinning for years. she’s now been to 4 dermos who have pretty much told her a variety of things.

i was trying to encourage her to go to this website, but she’s telling me it is too hard to visit hairloss sites. i told her to let me know if and when she is ready because i think this is a great source of strength for so many women.

i really want to help her and make everything ok, but i know this is her own struggle and that i can only be there to support her or pick her up when she’s down. hopefully she’ll be ready to visit this site and find strength and support from it.

again, thank you for all your kind words and advice and for letting me participate in the forum.

i just called dr. lewis’ office and they said he doesn’t do a standard blood test. the receptionist said she couldn’t really tell me any of his procedures because it depends on what he sees/hears when he visits with my sister. she was very nice and understanding and said that dr. lewis sees men and women all the time for hair loss. i really hope this one goes well because my sister is ready to stop seeing all these doctors and i feel like she hasn’t even scratched the surface. i feel like the doctors she’s seen so far haven’t done a very thorough job, weren’t specialized in dealing with hair loss or were completely insensitive.

i will definitely direct my sister to this website. i think all of the postings are helpful and i can see the strength this community provides to each other. even for me, you have all been so helpful and i really, really appreciate all of your responses. i will definitely keep you posted on what happens and, hopefully, you’ll see a posting from my sister at some point as well.

Please keep us updated with how your visit with Dr. Alexander Lewis goes. It may be worth it when you plan on seeing another doctor, to ask on the phone if he does blood work and if he is able to to tell whether or not the hair follicle is miniturizing, and also if he/she treats a lot of patients with women’s hair loss. If you want to push the envelope a little further you could even ask what his usual treatment is for women with hair loss. Hopefully they’ll tell you that they can’t tell you that because he hasn’t seen your sister yet. The reception staff could get a little annoyed with the 20 question drill but you could explain to them in advance that your sister already had a bad experience and you are really trying to help her. They should understand that.

I’m glad my words were of some help to you. When you think your sister is ready you can point her toward this site, a lot of find it helpful to read the stories of other women. Often women with hair loss feel very alone, but they are just the opposite. There are so many women experiencing the same feelings as your sister. But you know your sister best, and know when she’ll be ready.

I understand you wanting your sister to be social once in a while. It is a good thing for everyone. Don’t push her though, encourage her while being understanding. You mentioned your sister is about a month into losing her hair. With the general overall shedding women usually experience, I feel pretty confident that I can state that only being one month in, no one other than her and perhaps you can even tell she’s losing her hair. If I’m right tell her that you understand she’s losing hair but to everyone else on the street she meets no one will know. After all it is the truth is it not? She can still go out and have a good time, I know it’s hard for her to realize how much hair she actually still has today, and part of the depression comes from not knowing when it will stop, but she should enjoy the hair she has today.

One year after, Two years after I began losing me hair I thought I was destroyed it was so thin in comparison to what I had “before.” But you know what, it was still A LOT of hair, a lot thicker than a lot of women. This past couple years its taken a drastic turn for the worst, but for all the years prior, while I still suffered, I felt fairly confident that when I did my “hair routine” which took about an 1 hour - 1 1/2 hours (well worth it) that no one was “on” to me. My hair routine involves a thickening shampoo and conditioner, then the use of a defrizzer once I combed through the wet hair, then a thickening agent and then I’d use a giant roll brush and blowdryer to make my hair look fuller. After all of that I used a flat iron to smooth it out. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve actually gotten compliments on my hair from doing that trick for all those years. No one knew my suffering and pain. No one knew that not that long ago my hair was 10x thicker. I still had all sadness because it was hard for me to enjoy what I had when I kept losing it on a daily basis.

I just want to tell you all this so that you know that while I hope your sister’s hair loss journey is quite short and is rectified quickly, that even if it isn’t and continues to be something she has to treat and live with, that she can find ways to live with her hair loss and still feel good about herself. From personal experience the process for a women’s hair thinning is generally pretty slow and over time. We feel the pain of it because we know what we had before, and anything but that seems to pale in comparison. It took many years but I’ve learned to move on from that former image. I know I’ll never have that hair I once had before my hair loss, unless of course I buy it, which I may very well do. I am now okay with looking like I have naturally thin hair. My recent extreme upset was because even that is being taken away from me now since I’ve had non stop shedding for the last two years, without that 4 month break I’d usually get where my hair would regrow. But I think that is being exacerbated from something else entirely, and I’m working on correcting it…. and I’m still hopeful.

I hope your sister has better luck with Dr. Lewis, and finds the help she is looking for. There is life after hair loss, there are ways to make hair look fuller and even add hair if desired. I doubt anyone looks at Beyonce and says “gosh look at her purchased lace front wig” heck no, they think “look at the gorgeous girl and the gorgeous hair.”

Keep us updated. You are a good sister.

~Y

Direct your sister to this website. For starters it lets her know that she is not alone and that so many women are afflicted. Because she is not alone, information can be shared and maybe a solution is not too far off. Once a solution is found, I have absolutely no doubt that it will be posted on this very site.

Good luck. I hope you figure out what is causing your sister’s hair loss. I never thought I would still have hair two months ago but I do…it is thinner but I still have some. I am just at the beginning of my hair loss battle.

We live in the Bay Area and I am trying to get her an appointment with Dr. Vera Price at UCSF, but she doesn’t have an available appointment until January. I keep reading about Dr. Price and that she is a great doctor on this subject. When I called her office the staff was beyond nice and supportive. In the meantime, I contacted Dr. Alexander Lewis who is based in Walnut Creek and she will be seeing him soon. Unfortunately, she just went to see an extremely insensitive doctor, Dr. Peter Panagotacos. He saw her for less than 5 mins and then sent her out the door with some topical medication. He told her it was hereditary without running any tests or asking her any questions. This really, really upset her more than anything so far. If anyone from the Bay Area is reading this, avoid this doctor. I read other reviews on him that said he did the same thing to other patients.

Anyway, thank you so much for responding and giving me advice on how to help her out. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me. I haven’t referred her to this website yet because I’m not sure if she is ready to connect with others yet. I think this is the best informational/support website I have found so far and I will definitely show it to her soon. Again, thank you so much.