Month: October 2006

When you lose hair due to illness, do you lose hair from all over your scalp or just on top? Is the location of the hair loss different than it would be with genetic factors?

Stress such as an illness can produce hair loss. This is explained because illness requires that your body conserves its resources to fight off the illness. Hair is a high metabolic organ, consuming considerable amounts of nutrients, blood supply, cardiac output, etc.. The body diverts is support activities and abandons those organ systems of low importance. Hair qualifies for that sacrifice. I might expect hair loss to be a generalized loss over your entire scalp, possibly including some body hair as well. That being said, the illness or the stress may have set off a genetic “switch” that probably kick started male pattern hair loss process when the gene is carried by the patient.

My Grandmother told me that in Sicily where she grew up it’s widely held that artichokes cause hair loss. I’m not sure what to make of this. Any thoughts?

There is no connection between artichokes and hair loss that I know of. Sometimes I laugh at myself as I put in some quick research to be sure that there are no connections between hair loss and the variables presented to me on this blog time after time. Every once in a while, I am surprised that I actually find an informative connection that makes me wiser and more humble.

Hello,
My hair is not thinning, however, it just won’t grow. I’ve had the same length for most of my 52 years. Can’t even get it to shoulder length. The back will grow very slowly but the sides and the front just won’t move. My sisters and daughters all have hair that grows like a weed. Is this a vitimin deficiency?

It is possibly a vitamin deficiency if your diet is poor, but it sounds more like a short hair cycle. When you say the hair is not growing, I believe that you are saying that the hair stays the same length. It is almost certainly growing, just growing very short so that the hair cycle is very short. Hair, as regular readers of this site should know, goes into telogen usually 3+ years after it starts to grow, but in your case, the cycle may be very short (only months). The way to confirm this is to mark a few hairs with some color (use an indelible marker). If I am correct, the marked hair will just disappear when the hair is cycled. Of course, it will be replaced by a new hair that will grow from the scalp at about the same time and it will grow until it reaches the maximal length, which is you is very short.

I have heard that too much vitamin A can cause hair loss, is this true? My multi-vitamin contains 100%DV and I recently found out that a medium sweet potato has over 400%DV. There are other items in my diet as well with small amounts of vitamin A.

Too much of a good thing can be bad, and yes, getting too much Vitamin A can produce hair loss. But, I doubt natural foods such as sweet potato can cause you to lose your hair, nor any ordinary supplements with Vitamin A in it.