AA experience and regrowth

dv919

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My hair is beginning to regrow and I always told myself I would post on a forum to tell everyone what exactly I did to get some regrowth.

So a bit of background on my AA story. I am a 20 year old college male and I first noticed a quarter sized bald spot on the back right of my head in March of 2014. I had long hair at the time so it was pretty easy to cover up and I didn't think much of it other than cracking jokes about it with my buddies. Soon the spot began to grow and after 2 months 90% of the hair on the back of my head was gone and I was beginning to see spots on the top of my head and the sides. I visited the health center at school and was given a topical steroid which did nothing. I then went to a dermatologist and began doing steroid injections. Around this time I also began to take 10,000 mcg of biotin, 1,000 mg of green tea extract, a sea kelp supplement, and fish oil once a day. I also did my best to adopt agluten free diet, which I think did tremendous things for my hair. I am not fully gluten free as I am a college kid and was not ready to sacrifice drinking beer with my buddies on the weekend, but I do my best to stay away from bread and pasta and things like that. I am also pretty into working out so around that time I began taking a BCAA supplement (branch chain amino acids). BCAA's are supposed to help protein synthesis and muscle growth and since protein is essential to hair growth I figured it wouldn't hurt.

After my first round of steroid shots in early May I began to see hair growth. The steroid shots hurt. Badly. But it is well worth it for I think they helped big time. The hair continued to fall out in new spots though so I have since had 5 rounds of steroid injections in the other various spots on my head. I also shaved my hair down to 2 blade in August and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND doing this if you are a male. I hated waking up with hair all over me and constantly picking hairs off my shirt during the day. The short hair allows you to see growth more easily and isn't as big of a pain. I would just wear a hat to cover up the spots.

It is now early October and the back of my head is now fully covered in hair. It is a shade lighter than the rest of my hair, but I am told that will turn back to normal in due time. The tops and sides of my heads have hair growth and the spots are small enough for me to not care if anyone sees them for they are nothing compared to what happened to the back of my head.

I can't say if any of the supplements I took had a tremendous effect on my hair re growth but I will say they did NOT hurt the process. I have now regrown about 95% of the hair I lost in about 6 and a half months.

Please feel free to ask any questions. I just wanted to share with you all and offer any help I can as I know it can be a pretty frustrating thing to deal with.
 

fbidwell

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Sleep loss and Alopecia Areata

I've had Alopecia Areata for about ten years. I believe it was initially triggered by intense stress when my mother died a month before my wedding. My entire beard fell out, eyelashes, eyebrows, and spots in my hair and body. Over the past two years I've discovered a direct connection between AA and mild sleep loss. I need at least 7 hours to feel right. If I consistently get less (i.e. for two weeks or more), I start to feel a stress reaction in my body. Sure enough, my eyebrows, eyelashes, and beard start to fall out.

My theory is that sleep loss leads to a stress reaction in the body that initiates the autoimmune response. I've observed this pattern for over two years now and am sure this is the cause in my case, so I wanted to share.
 
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