Rapid Hair Loss

Hello,

I have been taking entivyo for over a year. I have been responding to it quite well with no bleeding, increased appetite, and little to no stomach pain. I thought that I was well on my way to recovery until I started noticing hair loss this month. In the beginning of the month, I noticed a bit of hair loss. I didn't think much of it at the moment, but my mother took a picture just im case. Now, just a little over two weeks later, I see a drastic amount of hair loss! My hair is thin and breaking off easily. I lose hairs just by running my fingers through my hair😢. I don't understand what has caused this. It's extremely devastating because I am only 18 years old and my hair is very important to me. I've experienced hair loss before but never to this extent and never in so many areas of my head. Does anyone have any recommendations?

P.s. I'd like to post pictures, but this website seems to be a bit dated and won't allow me to post from my phone.

Hair loss or thinning hair is often a delayed-reaction to a UC flare (a couple months after) with and without taking UC medications. Why? Flares are pretty harsh on our bodies, we can loose weight rapidly causing malnutrition, anemia (low blood iron), and various vitamin deficiencies (D, B, B12, among others). Any of those things can cause hair loss. During times of stress and deficiencies, our body often sheds hair first.

Hair Regrowth is often a delayed-reaction to healing and seeing significant improvements in your UC symptoms (entering a remission). Hair regrowth is a slow process but can start a couple months after healing from your flare. Be patient, it will take a while. And it's essential that the underlying problem is resolved.

To that end, have you had any recent blood work to check to see if you are anemic, low on any of those vitamins? Considered taking a daily multivitamin?

I've found myself to be a lot less vain the longer I've had an UC. The fact is we can rapidly loose weight during flares, rapidly regain weight as a consequence of corticosteroids (prednisone), and loose hair. Just part of this whole awful chronic illness gig and totally out-of-our-control, love it or hate it...

There's no way to directly post an image on healingwell (yes, the site is very dated). Best you can do is post the images elsewhere, and post a link to them here. For example, post an image on Imgur.com, photobucket.com, or your choice of site, and then paste the resulting URL to that image here. Here's an example image of my silly little parrot climbing up a bathrobe: /imgur.com/6Arz18c (mind you, he can fly but climbing is just so darn much fun!). However, we are all familiar with UC hairloss, and have had it to varying degrees (some of us more light hair loss to others where it has been a lot more dramatic).

Have a complete check by your doctor...including hormones.

Are you on the pill?

Explain your hair breaking off easily...

q

I too had hair loss after Entyvio and tried biotin and supplements and hair products which did zero.

I was a little busy with a heart procedure resulting in no stent - nothinburger.
A little busy with creatinine 2.0 which was also a nothingburger ( May Cystatin-C proved otherwise ) so via ultrasound and additional diagnostics I have an eGFR of 115 not 50 and no kidney disease and do not need to see the Nephrologist any longer.

But back at the Entyvio internist I was explaining all this since he sent me to the Nephrologist and I complained about the hair thinning again. He saw in the system I had walked in and did a serum DHT test and it was off the chart more than double the maximum end of the range kind of like my creatinine.

So THAT is why my hair is thinning. Why is the DHT higher ? I do not know if it is the Entyvio or something else but it comes from Testosterone which was in the normal range.

So I am now two weeks into reducing my DHT and that will surely resurrect my hair. It will just take a long time but mine grows quickly so by summer I should know if I save it in time.