How Trying to Stop Hair Loss Affected My Body and What I Did About It
By: Angel Ortiz
Tags: Hair, Health, Recovery, Hair Loss

How Trying to Stop Hair Loss Affected My Body and What I Did About It

Disclaimer: The information, including but not limited to text, graphics, images, and other materials contained on this article is used to tell my own personal story and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before undertaking a new health care regimen, and never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this post.

Having bad hair genes truly sucks. I first noticed signs of hair loss at the age of 17 (nothing too extreme). Fast forward ten years and my hairline has only receded more. The truth is that I wouldn’t be so afraid of the idea of becoming bald if I wasn’t so insecure about the size and shape of my head… but I am.

The pandemic only excacerbated the problem; being locked up at home unable to go out and socialize stressed me enough to fall into a deep depression and accelerate my hair loss.

Whether it was the androgenetic alopecia that runs in my family acting on my scalp, telogen effluvium (stress induced hair fall), or a mix of both, this new situation had me panicking like never before. So, like most Web surferers, I started to look for solutions online.

Three products were repeatedly recommended in every forum and blog site I visited; they seemed promising. Their function was not only to stop hair from falling, but to promote new hair to grow as well. Without thinking to much of it, I ordered all three online.

I stayed on this new treatment since early January, 2021, and while it did stop my hair from falling and caused a few strands of it to grow too, I began to experience side effects 10 months later.

Some of the symptoms I experienced were:

Numb face

Aggravated tinnitus

Extreme insomnia

Increased anxiety

Muscle dystrophy

Frequent urination

Mild decrease in libido

Heart palpitations

The worst symptom by far was insomnia.

My sleep quality saw a steady decline since the beginning of October, 2021. I tried ear plugs. Nothing. Then, I went on antihistamines. No improvements either. It was after removing one thing in my life at a time that I found the source of the problem, but by the time this happened, my sleep problems had turned dreadful.

This is my journey to recovery…

1. Managing my expectations

What I first did was ask myself the following questions: do I usually experience side effects from other types of medications, such as antivirals or antibiotics? How do my parents usually respond to medications? How long did it it take for me to experience side effects from this hair loss treatment?

Hm, I sometimes do experience side effects from certain types of drugs and my father always responds negatively to all types of treatments while my mom doesn’t. It also took me more than 9 months to experience any side effects. This led me to believe that I had a 50/50 chance of recovering slowly.

Someone on Reddit suggested that I looked into a website called PropeciaHelp.com. On that website, I was able to find countless other stories from sufferers of this condition and what their road to recovery was like. This helped me understand what to expect and to consider that this may take a very long time; patience was key.

This first part of the journey was important because the severity of many of the symptoms I experienced made me depressed and borderline suicidal; I had to face the reality of the problem in order to adequately change my mindset. I soon after stopped panicking and learned to accept the situation for the time being.

2. Learning to Quit

I’ve suffered from obesity before and, like many know, quitting junk food is hard; the desire I had to enjoy a tasty large burger often outweighted my desire to lose weight. I compared this situation to the desire I had of retaining my hair and having added confidence versus the desire to live a healthy life.

My experience with food, as well as other addictions I’ve suffered from in the past, reminded me of and helped me to take into account one very important thing: rebound.

When I began to experienc side effects, I noticed a sudden increase in hair loss yet again (probably due to stress). Once the side effects diminished, I once again considered retaking the pills, forgetting all about the bad things they had done to my body. The only way I could stop myself from commencing a vicious cycle was to throw the pills away and change my perspective on hair loss. So I did.

Now, I remind myself every day that hair loss is not a condition; it is the natural result of the procreation between two different kinds of ancestors of mine. It’s normal… Although, I would look better with a full set of hair… Damn it, this is hard! Might as well look into a hair transplant.

3. Understanding the Problem

I thought it was important for me to understand the mechanism of these miracle drugs in order to incorporate the right solution for me (something I should’ve probably done before I chugged these pills down my throat for the very first time). Thankfully, I live with a doctor and through her advice together with the information I found online, I was able to make a plan.

One thing I learned was that I should stay away from anything that messes with my hormones; these are involved in an infinite number of processes in our bodies and it is difficult for even the best scientists to keep track of all the undesired outcomes that result from their alteration.

I also learned about the drugs’ half-lives and their effect on our body’s natural detoxification mechanism. It seemed that it would take me at least one month for these drugs to leave my body and for my body to begin recovering. Regardless, I wondered, could there be a way to accelerate the process?

4. Lifestyle Changes and Supplements

I wanted positive results fast (I’m a very impatient guy), so I looked into supplements and lifestyle changes that would help me mitigate some of the side effects I was experiencing.

Insomnia. I set a rigurous sleeping schedule with which I stuck to religiously; I went to bed at 9 pm, sometimes 10 pm, every night because I knew that it would take me anywhere from 6 to 7 hours to fall asleep. Both the time it took me to fall asleep and the time I stayed asleep were persistent issues.

I also started taking melatonin (yes, it’s a hormone, but it was only for a few days), but only when I began to sleep between 3 and 4 hours a day. I also never took it daily and I quit using it after one week because, according to this article,

“If you take melatonin orally, you’re essentially taking away the need for your body making melatonin on its own. This then throws off your natural production of melatonin and might lead to consequences when you forget to take the supplement.”.

I also discovered that this hair loss treatment probably messed with all sorts of neurotransmitters and neurosteroids in my body; basically, it most likely ruined things in my brain and my nervous system.

What I found on the internet is that there’s an important neurosteroid in our brains called allopregnanolone, which helps our bodies to relax. It is synthesized from progesterone by the sequential actions of two enzymes, one of which is called 5α-reductase type I (5α-RI. ). This enzyme’s production is actually inhibited by the drug I was taking.

Why is this important? Well, allopregnanolone acts as a potent neuromodulator for the actions of an amino acid called GABA at GABA(A) receptors, say scientists. In other words, it activates these receptors, and according to an article I read online, GABA(A) receptors are directly involved in our body’s natural sleep process.

I also read that GABA is as much a receptor agonist for GABA(A) as allopregnanolone is (an activator). Thus, my non-scientific logic told me that I needed more GABA while my brain naturally fixed its allopregnanolone production problems. I also came across another article that explained the effectiveness of combining GABA and L-Theanine to decrease sleep latency and improve NREM sleep. Well, this certainly worked for me!

Nevertheless, taking into account that I am not a neuroscientist or a doctor, I decided to quit using these supplements once I felt my body had recovered enough to go on its own.

Finally, I continued to use foam ear plugs and a sleep mask throughout my whole journey to avoid any noise and light source during the night.

Increased Urination and Possible Shrunken Prostate. The need to go pee would wake me up several times a night. I set myself the rule to not drink any liquids after 7 pm.

My increased urination problems resolved on their own and I have no idea what size my prostate is, but I hope it’s regular-sized.

Muscle Dystrophy. I am almost completely positive that this problem was a direct result of the sleeping issues I was having. This is because once I started to rest properly, my muscles stopped shrinking.

I used creatine to lift heavier weights and retain some water to increase the size of my muscles. I avoided taking it at night though, because it gave me a lot of energy. I also continued to consume around ~120 grams of protein every day and I never stopped going to the gym. I had to be careful with the latter however, since having no sleep meant my body wasn’t recovering enough.

Abolished Gut Bacteria. Like many antibiotics, this treatment seemed to have wiped out my gut bacteria, causing me to have bad stool, strange flatulance, and obnoxious stomach aches. This affected my sleep too, since the pain or distraction wouldn’t let me sleep. I restored it by consuming basic lactobacilli every day.

Next time I’ll make sure to spend more money on this to further increase the biodiversity of my stomach’s bacteria, since greater diversity leads to a healthier microbiome (as all things in nature).

Low Libido and ED. I never looked too much into these since these symptoms weren’t as pronounced as the rest. Nevertheless, when I did see weak erections, I tried to improve them by first fixing my sleep and by trying a supplement I found in an online homeopathic store.

What I did notice is that as soon as I started sleeping properly again, my erections went up to 110%.

Low DHT. As I had mentioned previously, 5α-reductase type I (5α-RI. ) is an enzyme inhibited by the hair loss treatment I was taking. This enzyme metabolizes testosterone into something called dihydrotestosterone (or DHT), according to many studies. In addition to that, low DHT can cause breast development in men and weight increase, between other things, says one other study.

When I started taking the drugs responsible for this catastrophe, I was also attempting to counter the effects of creatine, which I’ve always taken to build muscle. Some studies link creatine to an increase in DHT inside our bodies and other studies link DHT to hair loss due to its miniaturization effects on hair follicles, especially those with androgenetic alopecia.

Ironically, once I started experiencing all the side effects of my treatment, I used creatine with the intent to save my body from that same treatment; I took creatine every day to hopefully restore my DHT levels.

Vitamins and Minerals. A few studies have found vitamin d deficiency in patients who took the same pills I did. I therefore started spending more time under the sun (with sunscreen, of course) and took vitamin d supplements. Some other supplements I took were magnesium and omega-3.

Caffeine. I was never a big fan of coffee, but apparently caffeine has therapeutic effects against neurological diseases through neurotrasmitter modulation. Now I’m a huge coffee fan!

5. My Results

I made a slow but steadily recovery. I went from sleeping 1 hour every 2 or 3 days during the first week after suspending my medication, to 2 hours every other day the following week, then 3 hours every day, and so on so forth. Now, I am able to sleep 7 to 8 hours a day without waking up in middle of the night.

Furthermore, the sensitivity on my face’s skin returned, my heart palpitations stopped, my anxiety decreased, and I noticed an overall improvement in my wellbeing. Also, my muscles and joints finally stopped aching and I felt that I was truly getting the rest my body needed after so long.

I will never forget this experience as it was one of the worst ordeals I had ever had to deal with in my life. I’m happy to have gotten out of it.

6. References