In April or May of 2004 I woke up with a pain in my chest. I attributed the pain to having slept on the floor face down for more nights that I care to recall, so I chose to ignore the pain and believed it would go away in a matter of days. It wasn't a constant pain. It only hurt when I pressed my hands together in front of my body or whenever I did any pushing exercises. It felt like my sternum was going to cave into my chest. By August of that year the pain had gotten so bad that I gave up going to the gym all together. In October I finally went to see a doctor to have a check up. She didn't find anything wrong with me. When I told her about the pain in my sternum she suggested I stop exercising, that included running and swimming. So I stopped all physical activity. By early 2005 the pain had gotten to the point that it would hurt to sleep on my side. It was also painful getting out of bed. I began to get a tight sensation in the center of my chest. It felt like it was sucking itself in. To counter this sensation I would arch my back and puff my chest out. Doing this caused a cracking in my sternum just like when you crack your knuckles. It was scary at first but I got used to it. It became "normal". In March I went back to the doctor, and again, all was fine. She had no explanation when it came to my sternum. She speculated that it could be due to some liquid forming in there or something. Not being satisfied with the answer I went online and found a forum of people with the same symptoms. Most exercised but not all. Many had stopped working out due to the pain, some had accepted it as part of their lives and trained around the pain. Some people had recently experienced the pain and there were others who had suffered from this for over five years with no sign of it going away.
After having read a few dozen cases I learned two things. One, no one really knows what causes the pain, and two I was making it worse by not exercising. So that summer I made a conscious decision to improve my posture. I was going to school and was sitting down most of the day. I had my back hunch over and this caused that tight sensation in my chest. With my back erect my chest wouldn't pop as much. Eventually the cracking subsided and the pain went away. I started going back to the gym and only did exercises which didn't aggravate the pain.
I run and swim more than I did four years ago. My chest still pops every once in a while but it's nothing compared to the noise that it used to make. I no longer experience any pain.
At this point you may be asking yourself what this has to do with Alopecia. Well, maybe nothing. The thing is that I never went back to the webpage. I never let anyone know that you can get better and that the pain doesn't last forever.