Today is a day I have fantasized about for 14 years. I took a shower and my hair did not fall out. I AM SO HAPPY – it feels almost unreal. I am going to include a lot of details in this post because as I scoured the internet since 1999, I needed other people’s stories to provide as much info as possible so I could somehow figure out what the hell was wrong with me…so I apologize in advance for possibly boring you to sleep!
I noticed around age 29 that my head of curls and waves was shedding…getting worse every year….i always had regrowth but it always shed so much that I went from all one length to what looked like lots of layers which ended up just being pieces everywhere & looked awful – it seemed to fall out at around 3 inches so I looked like one of those troll dolls…because I had curls I was able to hide it better than if I had straight hair…I got pregnant with baby #2 at age 30 & the shedding completely stopped around month 4 and I had tons of long thick gorgeous hair again…all fell out around 6 months post partum…got pregnant at age 36 & my hair was even more gorgeous than my last pregnancy….prayed to G-d that it would stay in but around month 5 post partum the shedding began….had our 4[SUP]th[/SUP] & final baby 8 months ago at age 42 and I couldn’t wait for my beautiful hair but it never happen this time, it shed throughout the entire pregnancy. For the last 10 years I have never worn my hair down, I always had cute little tiny clips in it so I could disguise the thinning…every single morning before I stood up I put a clip in it otherwise once I stood I would feel the hair hitting my arms and I just refused to begin my new day feeling that awful so in went the clip.
Over the past 14 years I went to many different doctors (dermatologists ,internists & holistic), pleading with each of them to please find out what was wrong with me. They tested my thyroid, my hormones, my iron, anemia, my everything…all came up fine. No smoking gun. Some of these doctors put me on all kinds of treatments: ROGAINE, VITAMINS, NIOXIN, PROGESTERONE CREAM, TESTOSTERONE CREAM…on my own, out of sheer desperation I decided to try PROPECIA & about 7 years ago I ordered dog shedding pills; I told my best friend who then screamed that I was not a canine so I cancelled.
I don’t want to think about all the money I spent on doctors visits, hormonal testing ($750) and all the medications because it has to be around $8,000. I don’t want to think about all the tears I shed because that would fill up an ocean. I am a very happy and otherwise blessed person…this was the one thing that was just killing me emotionally. My best friends felt awful for me & tried so hard to help me but nothing could console me; I just want my hair to stop falling out. I was determined to never give up, every day almost I googled “excessive hair shedding†& just re-read the same stuff over & over again for a really long time. But when I became pregnant this last time I became really disappointed..and even more determined. When I was 6 weeks post partum I went to an excellent and brilliant doctor who my best friend uses. He practices Oriental medicine & uses a different approach than other doctors; he doesn’t want to treat the problem but find out the cause, then fix that. He ordered a full blood work up like all the other doctors do but this time he added something no other doctor ever did and that was my ferritin levels & my iron saturation. My iron came back totally normal, as it always had BUT my iron saturation was 14% and my ferritin level was a 34. There it was, MY SMOKING GUN.
I ran home & googled “low ferritin levels†and there it was; the most common reason for losing hair is a ferritin level below 70. Why the hell this never came up before when I searched I don’t know but whatever….nothing was going to get me down now because I found out what is wrong with me so now I can fix it. I did ask the Dr why I have low ferritin & he said it’s not important why or how, let’s just get my iron stores up. I eat red meat at least 3x a week so it was pretty shocking that my iron is low but for some reason my body wasn’t able to store it. I started on 325mg of FERROUS SULPHATE 2X A DAY…after 1 month my blood was tested & my ferritin level went to 41. Did I notice any hair improvement? A tiny bit – maybe instead of losing 1,000 hairs a day it went down to 950! Then I decided to search for a better way to raise my levels & thank the lord for the internet because I found out that the best iron with the greatest level of absorption is FERROUS FUMARATE…so I started myself on 325mg twice a day AND with each pill I take 500mg of L-Lysine & take it with a big glass of orange juice – if I have to take it with water then I add 500mg of vitamin C….then I waited, but not for long because within 2 weeks my dream came true. The shedding really slowed down….but I thought it was my imagination /maybe I was going insane because I was at my breaking point with my damn hair….i saw my best friend who said, “holy **** your hair looks so thick on top, I think its workingâ€! she asked me to take it down from the clip but I wouldn’t. Not yet. Another week passed and it wasn’t just a dream or wishful thinking but I could tell my curls were longer & when I showered it wasn’t ALL over my body. It’s been about 5 weeks since I began taking my ferrous fumarate cocktail and I am wearing my hair down. I can hardly believe it. I just took a shower and hardly anything came out. A lady at Target came up & asked me if I permed my hair or if my curls were all natural, and I had such pretty hair….TOTAL SHOCK!! I COULDN’T EVEN THANK HER BECAUSE I WAS SPEECHLESS. I haven’t had a compliment on my hair in about 14 years….14 LONG years!
So this is my story with a very happy ending. All it took was a simple blood test followed by 4 weeks of supplements and the nightmare has ended. Every 30 days I will get my blood tested to make sure I don’t go into iron overload but my goal is to get my ferritin levels over 100 and keep them at about 120sih. If I had read a post like this 10 years ago I would have avoided a decade of hair despair. And if your ferritin levels are fine, keep searching for your smoking gun because it is out there
