I did have a look on the site but I couldn't seem to find anything. This past year I noticed I was loosing a lot of hair I thought it was possibly something else the matter with me, so I went to get a blood test and that came back all clear and then I mentioned to the doctor that I had PSA and he said that that was most likely the cause but its rare that the patient loses hair.
I should add I am currently on no medication for my PSA and haven't been for the past 3 years.
This year especially I've been under a lot of stress and my doctor thinks that this is what may have caused it to flare up again, particularly the last 3-4 months ( when I started college) have been very stressful for me and I have noticed my symptoms coming back bit by bit, this is also when I started loosing A LOT of hair. I was wondering if any one else has experienced something similar with the hair loss?
( I'm being referred back to the hospital and will no doubt start medication again )
Yes, I have had similar experiences with hair loss and sadly have thin hair to begin with. My sister a beautician is convinced it is because I wear my hair up in a pony 5 days a week for work but there are extremely noticeable differences with stress in the amount of hair I loose. My rheumy also said the same thing that some experience this minus meds as well. I have found nioxin shampoo really helps regrow hair better and adds body plus your hair doesn’t fall out if stop using it, lol!
I also wanted to say I read your profile and was truely moved by your honest expressions! Sounds like you’ve been through alot and have come out ahead college how great! You have the world at your feet and tons of self experience ahead. Good luck and remember its not the end but a beginning if you need to start meds again. They have much more choices and many that don’t require pills.
Thankyou for taking the time to reply! Sorry to hear you're also experiencing hair loss, I had really long thick lovely hair and then suddenly it just started falling out, its so thin now im having to get it cut, I wear my hair in loose braids as not to cause too much tension on my hair too, but I'll try to find that shampoo or something similar and give it a go!
Thankyou for reading my profile! I felt it would be good to share my story and experiences with other people. Thankyou for the encouragement and kind words& yes when I was younger there was only certain medications they could give me but now I'm older theres a larger variety, we will find something to suit me eventually haha
I've always had thick hair. Then suddenly, round about July this year I think, I started getting big bald patches. At the time I was having a psoriasis flare. The first bald patch did correspond to where I'd had a particularly thick psoriasis plaque but despite having a generally itchy, scuzzy scalp, there weren't many other really scabby areas (sorry for the charming detail!) but I got more bald patches nonetheless. Soooo ..... do you have psoriasis at the moment?
At first the dermatologist thought I had something called Alopecia Areata, another autoimmune disease. And that it might have been caused by the physical stress of the psoriasis flare up which was pretty nasty and affected much of my body. However they (the dermatologist and my rheumy) eventually decided that the most likely cause of all the psoriasis and the baldness was that I'd stopped Methotrexate back in January. Sounds weird, but apparently withdrawal of some systemic medications can trigger psoriasis. So they then decided that my scalp psoriasis was bad enough to stop my hair follicles from functioning properly.
I re-started Mtx 3 or 4 months ago. After a couple of months my hair started re-growing really quickly. All the bald patches (one was the circumference of a mug I'd say) are now covered in proper hair. It might be worth running my tale past your rheumy and, if you're not seeing a dermatologist, it might be a good idea to see one. Her or she might have a take on the hairloss even if you don't have psoriasis at the moment.
Hair loss can also be a sign of low thyroid function, so that might be worth getting checked out. It's not uncommon to have multiple autoimmune illnesses. I have Hashimoto's thyroidosis as well as PsA, so I thought it was worth a mention.
Interesting I found out about my thyroid problems when going through the blood tests for PSA. I hope that doesn’t rule out my shampoo theory because I sure would love to use one that smelled more pleasant, lol!
I've been checked for a low thyroid because that's what I thought it was,tests came back clea, my thyroidis fine and so are my vitamin levels and hormones
I've always had mild psoriasis on the scalp and never had hair loss before, I have however got scalp treatment I plan to start using so that may help.
So far they firstsuspected it may be a thyroid problem so they took some blood tests but it came back all clear. I then asked if it could be the PSA ad theu said yes so tats all i know at the moment.
I also don't think it's due to me stopping the Methotrexate medication,I stopped taking that at least 3-4 years ago and my hair loss has only started within the last year.
Thankyou for your commen though! Its helped me rule out a few possibilities !
Sybil said:
I've always had thick hair. Then suddenly, round about July this year I think, I started getting big bald patches. At the time I was having a psoriasis flare. The first bald patch did correspond to where I'd had a particularly thick psoriasis plaque but despite having a generally itchy, scuzzy scalp, there weren't many other really scabby areas (sorry for the charming detail!) but I got more bald patches nonetheless. Soooo ..... do you have psoriasis at the moment?
At first the dermatologist thought I had something called Alopecia Areata, another autoimmune disease. And that it might have been caused by the physical stress of the psoriasis flare up which was pretty nasty and affected much of my body. However they (the dermatologist and my rheumy) eventually decided that the most likely cause of all the psoriasis and the baldness was that I'd stopped Methotrexate back in January. Sounds weird, but apparently withdrawal of some systemic medications can trigger psoriasis. So they then decided that my scalp psoriasis was bad enough to stop my hair follicles from functioning properly.
I re-started Mtx 3 or 4 months ago. After a couple of months my hair started re-growing really quickly. All the bald patches (one was the circumference of a mug I'd say) are now covered in proper hair. It might be worth running my tale past your rheumy and, if you're not seeing a dermatologist, it might be a good idea to see one. Her or she might have a take on the hairloss even if you don't have psoriasis at the moment.
Regardless of the Mtx connection in my case (I agree with you, I can't imagine that you'd get a knock-on effect from stopping Mtx over 3 years later) the cause of the actual hair loss was thought to be scalp psoriasis. I have had it before without losing hair though. And while I did lose the most hair, most quickly, where the psoriasis was awful, I was getting smaller bald patches where the scalp was just a bit red as well. All I can conclude is that psoriasis sometimes makes hair fall out and sometimes doesn't.
I hope you're getting really good help with this. I got to the point where I asked my dermatologist to write down and thoroughly explain a step by step treatment plan. Before then I'd been told to do various things with an ever-changing list of products and just didn't really know what was most important, what was most likely to help the psoriasis, what was just to make me feel a bit better and so on. Something that gave me a bit of back-up was that my very no-nonsense rheumy stated that he considered significant hair loss in women to be a serious matter. No ifs, not buts.
My hair has been thinning for a long time and thinking back to it, it coincides to when I began having joint pain. I did notice that when I increased my fish oil tablet from 720mg a day to 1200 mg a day 3 months ago, the balding areas seem less noticeable. I am not sure why that is.
I am not currently on meds for my PsA so I know my hair loss is not due to meds.
I do actually get scalp psoriasis i do have one area that consistently has it, but i have no balding there whatsoever, it was more so falling out all over collectively rather than specific places & im sorry it took me so long to respond! after i cut my hair last February and left college things seem to have improved with my hair. It’s growing fast and is lovely and thick again, healthiest it’s been in a long time.
I hope that all of you have found some solution to your hair loss problems and that if so , they are working well for you. i noticed i already replied to some of the stuff so i deleted it and i think even this response is a little jumbled
Yay on the hair front! So glad to hear your hair is thick & healthy again. Sometimes I think I’m thick and unhealthy but my hair’s doing fine. It’s straight but the new growth came through really curly so for a while I had a crown of curls, an odd look but very welcome!
Congratulations on finishing college. Is your PsA behaving itself? I hope so.