Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

You know, some questions are best left unanswered.

Case in point: as I was blowdrying my hair this morning, I thought yet again about the fact that my hair has been thinning noticeably over the past several years.

I wondered how much hair I have lost. And what my head looked liked from a tall person's or low-flying airplane pilot's perspective. So I had the brilliant idea to take Canon2 and just point it at my head. Here's the picture.

AAaaaaaaaccckkkkk!

I didn't realize........ Oh, my.

I decided I couldn't possibly be this bald, and took several more pictures, experimenting with various comb-overs, each looking worse than the last.

Egad.

So my normal mode of operation when faced with something distasteful about my body is to immediately find something on which to blame said distasteful thing. The handiest excuse was, of course, autoimmune disease. Which definitely CAN cause hair loss. But before I could smugly accuse Sjogren's syndrome for my expanding bald spot, I realized that there could be many other culprits - thyroid disorders, stress, and medications including plaquenil. According to Mayo Clinic, actually there's a zillion other possibilities. Here's just a few, but go to their site, here, and read all of them.

• Poor nutrition. Having inadequate protein or iron in your diet or poor nourishment in other ways can cause you to experience hair loss. Fad diets, crash diets and certain illnesses, such as eating disorders, can cause poor nutrition.
• Medications. Certain drugs used to treat gout, arthritis, depression, heart problems and high blood pressure may cause hair loss in some people. Taking birth control pills also may result in hair loss for some women.
• Disease. Diabetes and lupus can cause hair loss.
• Medical treatments. Undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy may cause you to develop alopecia. Under these conditions, healthy, growing (anagen) hairs can be affected. After your treatment ends, your hair typically begins to regrow.
• Hormonal changes. Hormonal changes and imbalances can cause temporary hair loss. This could be due to pregnancy, childbirth, discontinuation of birth control pills, the onset of menopause, or an overactive or underactive thyroid gland. The hair loss may be delayed by three months following a hormonal change, and it'll take another three months for new hair to grow back. During pregnancy, it's normal to have thicker, more luxuriant hair. It's also common to lose more hair than normal about three months after delivery. If a hormonal imbalance is associated with an overproduction of testosterone, there may be a thinning of hair over the crown of the scalp. Correcting hormonal imbalances may stop hair loss.
• Hair treatments. Chemicals used for dying, tinting, bleaching, straightening or permanent waves can cause hair to become damaged and break off if they are overused or used incorrectly. Overstyling and excessive brushing also can cause hair to fall out if the hair shaft becomes damaged.