Why am I losing my hair so quickly?

[Steve_H]

Hi,

 

Hope someone can advise me if my situation is typical of male pattern baldness, or if I may be experiencing symptoms of another underlying condition causing rapid hair loss.

 

Until recently I've never had short hair, even into my 40s, but I've finally had to cut it short after losing around 60% of the hair density across the entire crown in diffuse balding. This has happened in only 16 months from the moment I began shedding lots of hair when shampooing.

 

I've been tackling seborrheoic dermatitis on the scalp and face for 12 years, using Nizoral shampoo and cream. Even though this has largely kept it under control I wonder if the condition may have permanently damaged my hair roots?

 

According to what I've read Nizoral is supposed to strengthen hair roots, and I can vividly recall a day around 2 years ago when I thought of this when I couldn't find a single hair in my comb after washing my hair, and almost none was ever in the sink, and thinking it wasn't bad for a (then) 44-year-old with near shoulder-length, otherwise healthy dark hair.

 

Now I've gone from that to the other extreme - the sink has a hundred hairs floating on the surface, I dread washing my hair but must do so to combat seb. dermatitis, but also to 'fluff' the otherwise flattened appearance of a thinning crown. I cannot comb my hair until it is dry, and daredn't even towel the top. I have to stop myself combing open fingers through my dry hair as I can withdraw 3 or 4 hairs without any pulling.

 

Psychologically, at 46, I could almost accept this as an inevitable part of ageing, but the speed of change has left me with little time to adjust to it. I'd figured that when I started losing my hair it would be across years, perhaps 5, and both me and those who know me, especially those people I might only see once a year, would have time to get used to my 'new look'. I have never personally known a man lose hair this fast and I'm worried I will transform from having a full head of hair into a 'monk' within 2 - 2.5 years from when it began.

 

Because I'd also been feeling exhausted and had experienced an ache on the right-side of my abdomen, possibly the liver or gallbladder, I went to the doctor. I've also had this strange thing where I can no longer raise my voice without starting to cough and I instantly lose my voice, and I've had numerous embarrassing coughing do's when I try to speak to someone I might meet where it's as if I've swallowed something that's gone down the wrong way. It takes me several minutes in these situations to get my breath back and my voice. This made me wonder about the thyroid. I also need to pee a lot, and my sex drive isn't what it used to be. All these symptoms have developed in the same timescale of rapid hairloss.

 

My doctor was obviously sceptical from the outset and kept suggesting "male pattern baldness", even though my 2 elder brothers (12 and 14 years my senior) do not have it, and nor did the maternal grandfather the doctor said may provide a genetic factor, who lived to 86 with his grey hair. All I had done was a standard blood test to look at thyroid, possible diabetes and liver functions, but the results were apparently normal.

 

Another hair oddity is I've lost hair off the outside of my lower legs, looking like I've shaved them.

[mmhce]

Steve_H,

 

Welcome to this forum!

 

Please post some pics as a picture is worth a thousand words.

[Uk_lad]

I dont believe my hair loss has anything now to do with my thyroid, however developing a thyroid problem during pubity is a factor in my hair loss i believe, because I am literally the only person in my family with hairloss, my grandad is 94 with full head of thick hair!

 

Well anyway, at first i was told i had no thyroid problem about a year later I had another test and that showed i did, i went back and looked at the one i had a year earlier and that also showed a problem. If i was you i would ask the exact thyroid levels th levels etc and then research on the internet what the normal levels are, because sometimes idiots can say you are ok, when you are 0.1% from the freshold! Just a thought!

 

Other symptons are weightloss/gain, tiredness, hair loss, cold feet and hands etc

[Hairy Godmother]

Steve_H:

Hello and welcome!

Have you seen a derm? I realize you have several things going on and have addressed them with a doctor, I assume your family doctor.

However, I believe you should take your notes to a dermatologist and see what he/she comes up with. You may be surprised.

I wish you the best of luck and I hope you will keep us posted with any updates.

Take Care

[Steve_H]

Thank you for the replies, and sorry for the delay in replying, I thought the topic had been deleted but it'd been shifted to a different section (I may have posted in the wrong one).

 

I have wondered if the thyroid results were accurate. The (NHS) doctor quickly scrolled up and down his computer screen and said everything was okay, that's about as much detail as I got. I will try 'phoning the surgery and see if I can find out the actual levels.

 

The thing which struck me when I researched an underactive thyroid was how I ticked every symptom on a list of 20 bar any obvious goitre, and that's never happened to me before when looking up any medical thing, so with that and my bizarre instant laryngitis/coughing I was convinced the thyroid was causing my rapid hair loss. There's been some days I've been so tired I was physically unable to get up in the mornings, it had reached a stage where I considered whatever it was as debilitating.

 

It's quite common in Britain's NHS for things to go no further if nothing shows up on a preliminary blood test, the inference is you're imagining things or it isn't serious enough, so my doctor will be unlikely to refer me to a dermatologist on the NHS, and I may not be able to afford to go private.

 

From what I've read of 'male pattern baldness' it usually starts at the temples with a receding hairline, with a patch at the back and the two eventually meet, and additionally the hair follicles gradually shrink so that new growth becomes finer until it's eventually so wispy it's invisible/stops. Neither feature has applied with me. I didn't recede at the temples before the rapid hair loss began, and it's been diffuse over the entire crown, even quite low down on the sides. I have no visible finer hairs to speak of growing through, which is easy to observe now that I have around 50% hair density and my scalp showing.

 

The visible/shedded hair is all the same thickness of strand I've always had, but when it's shed there appears to be nothing taking its place at all, even months later. This is why I personally doubt the male pattern baldness diagnosis and wonder about 4 things I've been reading about: alopecia, tellogen effluvium, permanent damage due to seborrhoeic dermatitis, and autoimmune hepatatis (ache in my liver area - my immune system might also be attacking my hair roots because of the seborrhoeic dermatitis because it thinks a source of 'infection' is there).

 

Another symptom is my scalp often feels sore, yet there isn't necessarily any visible inflammation (from seborrhoeic dermatitis). A breeze blowing my hair would feel like someone pulling it, and the weight of my head on the pillow at night will produce discomfort on the sides to the degree I have to keep turning over. Again this is something I cannot match with male pattern baldness, and was reported to my doctor.

 

I will try and take a photo, though I'm not sure what I'd be able to image up close and stay in focus. My camera wouldn't be able to do that.