Hair loss can be complicated to solve. With everything going on, it seems like a vain concern but it drives me crazy. It's one thing to feel sick... it's another to feel like you look awful, particularly for women.
But it's generally from three main causes - a disruption in hormones, imbalance in minerals or a heavy metals problem.
And these are not always simple to determine.
People say "Lyme & Co" causes this or that - but to be more specific, the infections can disrupt normal health functions for multiple reasons so you need to get to the root causes to understand what is out of balance and why, in order to address the hair loss. SOME people get lucky and continue treating Lyme & CO or improve diet or nutrition with supplements and resolve it - which is awesome.
ENDOCRINE
Often, hair loss indicates a thyroid imbalance, which could have far more damaging impact on health and ability to treat Lyme & Co effectively so that could be a good red flag for bigger problems down the road.
Unfortunately, most MDs have no idea how to effectively test proper thyroid function and administer only a TSH test - which is produced by pituitary glad that is supposed to signal the thyroid to do its thing. You still need to determine if the thryoid is getting its marching orders and is responding appropriately. T3, T4, Reverse T3 and T4 and a even a few more indicators can give you a much better picture of thyroid function.
/stopthethyroidmadness.com/tsh-why-its-useless/ The thyroid functions as part of the HPA axis (hypothalmus, pituitary, adrenal) that interact with neurotransmitter and digestion. And since the GI is where 70% of our immune system lives, it's important that all these functions remain in balance.
DETOX
As also suggested in one of the posts above, the hair loss can be a byproduct of detoxing (our skin is our largest detox organ) so as it's desperately trying to release toxins when we're treating, it can be a little traumatic for the hair follicle.
So, for some people the hair loss resolves with further antimicrobial treatment--either because the body is able to detox what it needs to and/or because detoxing is such a critical part of an effective Lyme & Co treatment protocol. I'd also try to increase modes of detoxing, which might take a little bit of the load off the skin - lymph, GI, etc.
HEAVY METALS
And for others, stopping the hair loss means getting the heavy metals out of the body. For some this can be a long, labored process --particularly for those who don't detox well.
You have to be very careful detoxing heavy metals with chelators which drag the metals out of tissues. Doing this too quickly or ineffectively can allow the metals to be reabsorbed into tissues if your detoxing isn't effective. I'd double up a chelator with a GI binder (they're not really the same although many people use the terms interchangeably).
You also might look at any change in foods or toiletry products you use. I experienced hair loss in my 30s attributed to low thyroid and never got it turned around. Then as I was struggling with severe GI problems I was on a basically liquid diet and found this awesome food powder by Garden of Life - organic, GMO-free, raw, checked all the boxes. But my hair started falling out in clumps. It took a couple months but I finally learned that the rice product in the food powder was sourced from an area in China with notoriously high metals in the soil. I WAS SO PISSED! Stopped eating the powder, hair started falling out.
So infuriating when you can't rely on even quality products. Be wary of any rice product and any ingredient or product with a Chinese or Indian origin - they have a lot of issues with heavy metals.
-p