hair loss

abz

Gold Member
I've seen a few posts about hair loss around. do people often lose hair doing cd? and if they do, why?

abz xx
 
Good question, I have noticed in the last few days that mine has started to fall out. I'd love to know the reasons behind it and if it will be ok and how long it takes.
 
Found this on the Cambridge site - hope it helps explain x

I have lost 3st (42lb - 19kg) on the ‘Sole Source’ programme and am now experiencing some hair loss. Is this due to the Cambridge Diet?
Hair loss, with a generalised thinning of the hair, is usually linked to emotional stress, severe illness, malnutrition, hypothyroidism, hormones, and (for a few people) extensive weight loss over a sustained period of time whatever the method of weight loss used. So, it is due to a physiological response to the actual weight loss process rather than to the Diet, and the incidence is very low. Hair does re-grow, usually thicker and glossier than before. It is the "lesser of the evils" and you will have the best of both worlds – a healthy weight and a good head of hair.
 
I get it. My hair falls out for fun anyhow but its noticably worse on CD, fortunately I started off with mountains of the stuff anyhow but if I had thin hair I'd be scared! There have been some threads about it before, maybe try searching & see if can find any advice.
 
hey fingers x if you find any advice let me no pleaseeeeee as i have very thin hair and omg am not looking forward to it falling out
 
hopefully it won't do nightnight. i don't think it happens to everyone. luckily i have loads of the stuff, but i still don't want it falling out!!

abz xx
 
Lily posted this interesting article back in October, 2007!

The science bit...
It's pretty common to lose hair when dieting. Here's why...

Each hair on your head grows for 4-5 years, then falls out. So your hair is always renewing itself. The long growth stage is called anagen and the short stopping phase that follows is called catagen. Then the hair falls out, which is telogen. The hair follicle then goes back into anagen and makes a long hair for the next 4-5 yaers.

What happens during weight loss is Telogen effluvium. It also happens after any stress to the body. Some of your hair follicles go into catagen to conserve body resources. So the hairs stop growing and "rest". Once your body feels safe again, those hairs go back into anagen - but because there was the pause in the middle, the brand new growing hair pushes the old hair out of the follicle. So in reality you have just as much hair as you did before - and it's probably far healthier hair. But the new hairs are short :)

Normally around 10% of your head of hair is in the catagen or telogen phase, in essence resetting itself to prepare for new hair to grow in. Because you have so much hair on your head, you don't even notice. During weight loss that percentage gets higher, but this is only temporary. Your body starts creating new hair in its normal cycle once it settles into a healthy weight and those hairs start growing again. Remember that hair doesn't reach a long state overnight! So all those new, healthy hairs need time to grow out to whatever length of hair you have chosen.

Usually it takes 6 months for your head of hair to have grown back out to typical fullness. Hair grows around 1/2" per month, so at the 6 month mark, the hair is around 3" long which is enough to seem thick on most heads. Again, it's not that the hair is MISSING during this intermediate time. It's just that it is brand new and growing from scratch.

Copied from here Weight Loss, HairLoss and Low Carb - Low Carb if you want to read the whole article!

 
I'm on Lighter Life, and I got this response from them when I enquired about it. My main question was about my dizziness but they just told me to see my GP :rolleyes:

With regard to hair loss this is a known side effect of very low calorie dieting. The reason this happens is that the hair root is one of the most active sites in the body in terms of new cells being produced. Hair grows in three stages. The very active phase (anagen) when new hair cells in the hair root are being produced and the hair shaft is growing. Then there is a resting phase (catagen) when there is little cell division in the hair root and the hair shaft is not growing. The base of the hair disconnects from the root and just rests in the follicle. Then there is the telogen phase when the hair sheds because the hair root has gone back into the anagen phase ie growing again, the cycle is starting again,. with the new hair pushing out the old. There are millions of hair follicles in the body. At any one time most follicles are in anagen around 3% are in catagen and around 11-15% are in telogen. Because anagen takes up a lot of energy when energy balance ie calories are reduced, anagen is the preferred process for the body to shut down. Therefore more follicles go from anagen into catagen than would normally be the case about 18-20% although the exact proportion is different for everyone. When energy intake eventually increases these same follicles go from catagen into telogen and the hair in them is shed. This means that for anyone who is on a diet there are more hairs being shed than normal but this usually remains unnoticeable. However in about 4% of people the proportion of follicles in telogen exceeds 30% and this is when the hair loss becomes noticeable (the condition is called effluvium) it is more likely to be experienced by people who have experienced hair shedding in the past eg following a pregnancy, stress etc. Once energy intake is increased the proportion of follicles in the different phases goes back to normal and hair growth proceeds as normal. Hair shedding due to calorie restriction is a temporary condition and it indicates the growth of new hair. If there is reduced energy supply our bodies will react to prioritise vital functions, how this happens is a very individual response but unfortunately for some people it will present with hair shedding which can be very distressing. While on a very low calorie diet no two people will be identical as to when hair starts to shed and when new growth will commence it will depend on the individual. As a natural adaptive response there is not much that can be done to resolve the problem other than waiting for the cycle to complete, which we cannot be definitive about as the amount of hair that is the resting phase at any one time for an individual will be unknown.
Once calorie intake is increased, hair will start to grow in the follicle, for this process to complete this can take 3 months or more exactly how long this will take to complete we are unable to say, and we do appreciate that it is a very distressing situation but unfortunately it can be a known side effect of very low calorie dieting, irrespective of the particular diet programme chosen.
 
I knew hair loss was a possible side effect and thought it was just a symptom of VLC dieting, as mentioned above.

My CDC says that two women she knew lost loads of hair doing CD, and she finally discovered it was because they'd been making up the recipes with all of their packs, and pre-mixing their shakes hours before they drank them, and consequently all of the nutrients were destroyed.

I'm not sure I believe that, because very few people in the world get any vitamins or minerals or nutrients at all and they don't lose their hair.
 
but if you were used to a nutrient rich diet and stopped having it you might lose all the extra hair you'd gained because of it? maybe?
whereas if you never got the nutrients then you might not have the extra hair to lose in the first place? i don't know...

abz xx
 
i have been losing alot (and i mean LOADS) of hair since i started messing around and trying atkins/ ss+/ etc...

as soon as i stopped strict ss'ing (week 12 i think) my hair has been coming out in huge amounts each time i wash it. i now wash it every 2 days as i am sick of it all falling out :-(

hope it stops falling out soon, my pony tail is sooooo straggly!
 
Mine has also started to fall out at a pretty alarming rate. Just this past week or so. Thankfully i have loads so hopefully wont cause too much of a problem :eek:
 
I took 99.9% of my packs as normal, sometimes, not often used the vanilla like milk for tea and coffee and I still had hair loss but it grew back perfectly, if not actually fuller.:D

Back on the diet again and I just see this as part of the process.

Some people don't lose their hair.

Mandy B2 for example has long hair past her waist and it is still there long and beautiful.

I also lost my hair after pregnancy:rolleyes:

Love Mini xxx
 
Every day, you lose about 50 to 100 hairs. You've seen them. They swirl down the drain in the tub or get stuck on the back of your sweater. Or, worst of all, one might get in your mouth. Gross.
Normally, when hair falls out, new hairs start forming in the same place as the old ones. But when someone has hair loss, the hairs don't grow back. Or they do grow, but there aren't enough of them to take the place of what's already fallen out. This often happens to men, who start to go bald as they get older.

Help! It's Hair Loss!

This is an interesting article about Hair Loss:)
 
Why oh why do you only lose hair on your head? I would love it if I lost a few from my pits, my legs, or even better my chin.............:eek: :D
 
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