17 year old daughter lost half her hair

[Anonymous]

I've seen this happen to people who tend to have alopecia in the family. Sometime back couple of generations.

[Anonymous]

Please check out WigOuulet.com and WigStudio1.com and get her a wig. Ellen Wille makes especially comfortable and realistic ones for white women.

[Anonymous]

Also research wigs if she wants hair. It might be that or buzz cut until it grows back or doesn't.

[Anonymous]

WigOutlet.com

[Anonymous]

You need a better doctor and more bloodwork.

I am not a doctor, but have struggled with anemia and learned a lot along the way.

Having low iron and high ferritin is not normal. Something is preventing your daughter’s body from utilizing the iron stores. You can still have anemia with high ferritin.

What types of doctors has your daughter seen?

[Anonymous]

Is she on birth control?

[Anonymous]

Check for allergies? I was allergic to my shampoo (and am allergic to most shampoos and hair products). Hair loss was the main symptom.

[Anonymous]

Any new hair products? I lost a lot of hair using Living Proof Volumizing Shampoo.

Stress once too. But in patches that time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Her doctor should be pushing for more bloodwork. Surely they didn't just shrug their shoulders, right???

Im the OP. Thanks for all the replies. We have gone to 3 doctors and they all shrugged their shoulders.

My teen is irritated and has outbursts everyday. Her grades have gone down and she won’t leave the house unless it’s school.

She’s not pulling it out. Her iron came back low but they said it is still normal.

I am so sorry to hear this OP.

I have no advice for you sadly but I know how important hair is to an adolescent young girl. 💞

I hope things work out for your daughter soon!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need a better doctor and more bloodwork.

I am not a doctor, but have struggled with anemia and learned a lot along the way.

Having low iron and high ferritin is not normal. Something is preventing your daughter’s body from utilizing the iron stores. You can still have anemia with high ferritin.

What types of doctors has your daughter seen?

She needs to have her bloodwork looked at by a hematologist. Ask her doctors if they have one in their practice, or can recommend one.

I encourage you to continue looking for answers, OP. Even though this might turn out to be temporary and the result of stress or post-viral syndrome, your daughter could have the beginnings of an auto-immune disorder or some other serious issues. My 13 year old was diagnosed with lupus when her doctors finally took her stomach complaints seriously and ran bloodwork that turned out to have some red flags. More extensive bloodwork was completely abnormal, with some markers of inflammation that were several hundred times above normal. We went through several specialists to rule out cancer and liver disease before identifying lupus. It was a difficult journey for a young teen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That is it normal. Get a second opinion and a fuller test panel.

+1

See dermatologist

DD has similar issue. In our case, the dermatalogist looked at her for less than a minute and had no suggestions.

Mine has thinning too, not 50% (yet?!). Derm did lab work but found no issue and had nothing to offer.

[Anonymous]

Yes, this happened to my daughter. It started with a physical trauma (an accident that almost killed her, required several surgeries, multiple broken bones) and never went back to normal. It’s not alopecia — seems to be straight-up female pattern baldness.

There are shampoos that help a lot. They are expensive. Nothing else has helped.

But make sure you’re doing bloodwork bc it happened to another kid I know and that time it was stress from still-undiagnosed type 1 diabetes.

[Anonymous]

Is she on birth control? I know the implant can cause this

[Anonymous]

This brings back bad memories for me.

Adolescent girls with health problems are so dismissed by doctors. Everything is deemed caused by psychological problems because, well, they are adolescent girls and anyway they supposedly are at an age for peak health so nothing real could be going on. The problems are "diagnosed" by non-psychiatrists (not that psychiatrists aren't all too willing to chalk physical health problems to psychological causes).

In the end only you really know your child. Keep going for second, third, whatever opinions until you get someone who will take this seriously and get to the bottom of it. I had to take my teenage DD to 50 providers until she was finally diagnosed with spinal arthritis, a relatively significant health condition that should have been picked up long before provider 50 (three cheers for him, though). She claims to this day that the whole experience and the treatment she received from health providers during that time have left her with medical PTSD (a whole other story).

[Anonymous]

I am the OP and have scheduled an appointment with a new dermatologist.

What questions should I ask? Im scared this will be yet another one of those situations where they just shrug their shoulders.

This dr has his own hair clinic so I wonder if he will even want to look at blood work? As you can imagine this has been mental hell.

Thank you to everyone 💗