After suffering paralysis as a result of an SCI my hair began to fall out in fistfuls. The shower was like a horror scene, especially as my hair had always been a very important and cherished part of myappearance. My beautiful long red hair began to thin and disappear.
I made the decision to cut it all very short to get the best from it.
Cutting my hair shorter than it had been since I was 3 was an incredibly painful process at first. I didn’t want to let go of who I was, and my hair partly defined that. It seemed to emphasize to me how long it would take to ‘get back’ to who I was.
It turned out to be an incredibly liberating experience. It helped reveal the truth to me that you can never go back to who you were and how life was. We are only ever moving forward towards better things and holding on to the past and trying to get back what once was is not only impossible, but also harmful to us in the long run.
Accepting what was happening and what I needed in that moment was one of the reasons I think that cutting my hair short helped. At first my hair still fell out, but not as drastically. The radical cut did seem to give my body a chance to heal as my hair soon stopped thinning, and of course, I learnt to love my new short hair.
I grew my hair back out to its full length eventually and would you believe for the last 3 years I have had it cut short and very short, and now I prefer it. Everything happens for a reason. When i turned 25, i went all out and did this…..
Just a little different!
Tricologists have told me in the past that alopecia treatments are either steroids or nothing at all, but in both cases it tends to be watch and hope. There seems to be nothing tried and tested in medical terms. There were a couple of things that helped me.
- Giving my hair a chance by cutting it short
- Accepting the situation as something that wasn’t ‘bad’
- The B.E.S.T technique
I found an American holistic treatment called B.E.S.T that helps bring your body back into state where it can heal itself effectively, like it was designed to do. This helped dramatically. The other upside to the treatment was that it helped me heal in other ways, emotionally and physically. I am the UK’s only registered B.E.S.T practitioner. It was so life changing I knew I needed to be able to help others so I trained in it!
Now having benefitted from the experience of others alongside my own experience and research I can offer up the following solutions for hair loss.
- Get rid of any amalgams like mercury fillings.
- Destox’s your liver, so absolutely no smoking, no sugar, lower carbs and alcohol intake.
- Eat only whole foods to increase your nutrition.
- Take relevant vitamins, enzymes and minerals
Alongside myself, Kinesiologists and Nutritionists should be able to advise you which supplements are necessary for you personally. Supplements are not generally advisable to everyone always; they need to be tailored to your bodies needs.
The absolute best thing we can do when faced with hair loss is not let it emotionally impact us in a terrible and scarring way. Our greatest chance for healing our situation is to love ourselves regardless.
To read more about Female hairloss where this blog was published go to the Living with Disability Blog at http://livingwithdisability.info/female-hair-loss/
“It turned out to be an incredibly liberating experience. It helped reveal the truth to me that you can never go back to who you were and how life was. We are only ever moving forward towards better things and holding on to the past and trying to get back what once was is not only impossible, but also harmful to us in the long run.” So helpful! I am an alopecia sufferer. That really hit home for me. Because I’m a girly-girl and love beauty-related stuff, my heart lept when I learned that there was a place that made beautiful customized wigs that look realistic. It’s not for everybody I know, but I have been so happy with my custom wig! It’s long and gorgeous and I feel like me in a way. But not the old me, because that was MY real hair. But it has helped. There is still a lot to mull over in my mind because there is this identity crisis (a tiny one) each night when I take it off. I am taking Rogaine and am going to see if that helps. If it does, maybe some day I can get extensions. But if it never grows back, I feel like I have found a lifelong solution. This youtube video shows the first time I put it on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBIKFi40HDc. There is bad tracking in the beginning.
too late to change it. Thank you for sharing your story. I am going to share more in the future.
Thank you so much for sharing! It’s great to hear that you have found a way to move forward from what I know is initially a dark place!
I’m also so thrilled my words helped you. I am always telling people that when they speak from the heart it will always resonate with someone and that is a whole reason for us being here and able to communicate! So thank you again!
I would encourage you to start spending some time deliberately loving who you are without the wig, even if it doesn’t feel authentic at first. After all, that’s the you that’s around, so you might as well love her!
Also while you wear the wig and love it, brilliant! After all, love is the energy in which we heal, so you can’t be helping yourself more
I look forward to hearing more from you
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