Ladies, I have to share with you what I just found out. Last month I had my IUD, Mirena, removed after having it for three years. I lost my hair last year, Nov. '07. Although I went to many doctors to try and find the reason that I was losing my hair not one mentioned the IUD side effects of hair loss. Well, as crazy as it sounds after just one month I have regrowth for the first time since this happened. So, it got me thinking, could my alopecia been caused by Mirena? Thanks to Google I found so many websites that helped me answer that question. So many women have lost their hair because of this birth contol. I know for many of you this info won't be of any use to you, but please remember my story and you might just save one woman from remaining bald for no reason! And by the way, hair loss is only one of the many awful side effects from this drug; Mirena should be researched by anyone considering it as birth control. I will keep posting to let all know if my hair is really going to come back now! Peace peeps!

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Hang in there, Courtney. Seriously, it will get better. It's just going to take time. I had the Mirena taken out in September because I noticed my hair was falling out really bad in August. (Had Mirena put in in June). After I had it taken out the fall out didn't stop... it almost seemed to get worse!! It took about 2-3 months after I had it removed for my hair to start growing back. I never had any bald spots, just all-over fall out. By mid-November I started to notice little baby hairs around my hair line. Now I have a ton of baby hairs all over! I've never been so happy to have little sprouts sticking up all over. Mirena is evil. I wouldn't wish the side effects on my worst enemy. I was having really bad anxiety and panic attacks in December and I still have some lingering anxiety. My advice is to get it removed ASAP (which is sounds like you already are planning on it). Follow your intuition. I don't think you're going through female pattern baldness. I think you're going through Telogen effluvium. Normally 10-15% of your hair is going through this phase, but because of some major event (think the Mirena) more like 30-40% of your hair is in this phase. The good new is that if your hair is in this stage, for every hair that's coming out it means a new hair is about to pop through in the same spot. I went to the dermatologist back in November and this is what he told me. And sure enough... 2 months later I have tons of baby hair. I'm by no means a doctor, but this could definitely be what's going on with your hair. Check out this link:

https://www.dermnetnz.org/topics/telogen-effluvium/

I wish you the best and we're here to support you. You might want to look into getting some hair extensions and hair fiber sprinkles to boost your confidence. I'm still wearing extensions and hair sprinkles because of the amount of hair that I lost. Amazon sells both. xoxo

Mine has been falling out for 1 year with little regrowth. What am I doing wrong. 

Hair loss is hair loss. Normally shed hairs are hairs that are in the anaphase and rest phases. Since the hairs entering the catagen phase and the hairs that have newly entered the anagen phase are in a dynamic equilibrium, the normal amount of hair can be maintained. Pathological hair loss refers to abnormal or excessive hair loss, which can be due to many reasons. The issue of hair loss is simple. In fact, it is a very complicated issue. If you want to understand this issue, it is not a simple matter to make it clear. Therefore, you must understand it in depth. People nowadays are more and more concerned about their own external image. The problem of hair loss is becoming more and more common. More and more people are experiencing such problems. Therefore, I think it is necessary for everyone to understand this issue in depth.

A bathroom covered with loose strands or an ever-scrawnier ponytail can be startling but doesn’t necessarily mean anything’s wrong. By age 50, half of women will complain of hair loss. As we age, overall hair density changes and individual strands become finer. But just because thinning is natural doesn’t mean you have to accept it. There are solutions to help you keep the hair out of your brush and on your head. Now, this is easy!

1. Massage scalp
Whenever you wash your hair, you are in the middle: massage the head in the shower will improve blood flow to the scalp. This means a better hair growth environment, but it also helps you use any hair shampoo penetration.

2.Wear wigs cover
Wearing a wig can be used to modify the appearance, change human hair weaves style is simple and convenient, save time: you can avoid perm, hair, hair damage caused by hair; you can save your hairstyle in the hair salon, bleaching and dyeing, reduce Expenses; Wigs can be free to change hairstyles, avoid frequent hair salon haircut hair damage; can try a variety of different hairstyle design, matching different fashion, so wearing a wig increasingly people's apes.

3. Reduce the use of hair dryers
This is the simplest fix that you have never considered. Hair dryers and irons, especially if you have already coloured, may cause breakage and thinning, so reduce your use as much as possible.

 

4. Improve your diet
Hair thrives on protein, iron, zinc, and vitamin B12. Get them from lean meats, leafy greens, nuts, beans, and fish. (Fish will put you on the right track.)  You’re halfway there every time you shampoo: massaging your head in the shower improves blood flow to the scalp.

5. Relieve stress
Just breathing - seriously, it can help. Both sudden and chronic stress can stop hair growth. If you have experienced a challenging experience (divorce, change of work), hair should grow back. If you are under constant pressure, then the Zen Master - it is easier said than done, but your hair will thank you.

Hello again ladies and gents! I hope that this post finds you all well and back to your new normal of hormones and regrowth! So much to touch on since it has been so long since my last update. I will try not to wait years before my next one, lol.

Okay just to recap on my story, in 2005 I had the Mirena iud implanted after my first daughter was born. Two years later I noticed a bald spot on the back of my head. I went to a "professional" for advice and my hairdresser told me to see a dermatologist. I had to shave my head before that doctors appointment. Pretty quickly after shaving my head I lost all of my hair over my entire body, inside and out. If I saw one doctor trying to figure out what was wrong with me, I saw a thousand. Not literally of course, but I did quite literally see as many doctors as i could in every attempt to find out why this was happening to me. I was not yet 30, healthy as a horse and no family history of female baldness. And i was pissed. I loved my hair and did not just take the diagnosis of alopecia as my final answer. An incurable autoimmune disease? Life sentence of being bald? For no reason? Like hell.  So between doctors visits I did what a lot of you are trying. I changed my diet to include only foods that had one name. Nothing processed, nothing with ingredients I could not pronounce, nothing from a can, a box or a fast food restaurant. After doing this for six months, I had a rockin body but still no hair.

At every doctor visit i filled out my forms and listed the Mirena as a prescription I was taking. Not one doctor over two and a half years ever even suggested it could possibly be the foreign object in my body causing the hairloss. Friends, at one point I went into a hospital for a learning thing for multiple doctors to see me at one time, all from the learning hospitals of the United States. All these doctors from different fields came into my hospital room, where I sat naked and bald, to look me over, poke, prod and ask me their questions. At the end of this ordeal all the doctors got together in a conference of sorts to discuss their thoughts, experiences and opinions. Then my doctor was going to tell me what the consensus was and hopefully give me some answers and hope. The experience was tramatic in and of itself. The results were just as bad. Nothing was found out. All agreed it was a.u., a life sentence and the only thing i learned was that there was a huge chance my nails might fall off. I was feeling quite helpless, sad, alone, ugly and again, pissed.

After the news from all these doctors that I was going to have this disease for the rest of my life I felt like I had to decide how I was going to take the news. I thought there were really just two choices. One, let it kill me. Or two, live my best life, for me and my baby girl. I choose to live. Unapologetically. And I did. I had bad days when I would allow myslef five minutes to cry and feel sorry for myself. Then I would dry my tears, splash water on my face and go be a mom to my perfect baby girl that was almost 5 by then. She had only known me as a bald mommy since I lost my hair when she was only 2. She thought I was beautiful and she brushed my imaginary hair lol. I refused to be a sad mom or a depressed mom or even an angry one on account of not having hair. It was a choice for me as it is for all of you. And I rocked my bald head. But inside I refused to believe it was forever. I am not one who just takes the word of a doctor or anyone else for that matter as my gospel. Mind over matter, in part. Constant research. And a healthy appetite for sex. That kept me hopeful. And when sex started to be uncomfortable because I could feel that Mirena wire and so could my husband at the time, I immediately made the appointment to have it removed. For the record, I have to give credit where credit is due and from the very day I noticed my hair falling out my mom said to me, "get that foreign object out of your body." I dismissed her witchy mom craft and shouldn't have. As usual, she was right. A month after removing the Mirena I had peach fuzz growing all over my head. Another month later I was pregnant with my second daughter and for the past 9 years have been growing my hair along side with her and hers. When I let myself start to believe my hair was actually growing back I sat down alone at my computer and googled, "mirena and hairloss," for the first time. There it was. Side effect. Hairloss. Alopecia. Less then 3% of people experienced that side effect. In the United States they didn't have to publish that low of a side effect in our informative sheets we are given with a new prescription. It had to be 5% or more of people in the testing of a drug that experienced the same side effect before it was told to us. Crazy, right?!? In New Zealand, however, if anyone had a side effect from a drug they published it for the consumer's knowledge. And in New Zealand the Mirena pamphlets had not just hair loss mentioned. Alopecia by name was listed.

Now, almost ten years later... I have hair on my head, eyebrows, eyelashes and pubic hair. Just this past summer I started growing arm hair and I have like five leg hairs I have to shave every once in a while. No armpit hair either. And my hair, although long now, never grew back as thick as it was before Mirena. So there is a part of me that still feels as if I am not cured 100% or all my hair would be back, right? But lets not kid ourselves, I am beyond grateful and thankful and much happier having the hair I have today then I ever was bald, lol. 

After my experience with Mirena I wrote my story here hoping that I might, just might, help one woman going through hairloss after starting the Mirena birth control. I am very proud that I have, in fact, helped one woman figure out why her hair was falling out. To get on here today and lose count of how many women have cured themselves of an incurable autoimmune life sentence of a disease just because they googled, "Mirena and hair loss,".... Speechless, proud, grateful, humbled. That is how I feel sitting here talking to all of you this morning. And again, pissed. Why? Because we have a lawsuit here, in my humble opinion. I used to say joking that, " I wouldn't shave my head for a million dollars!" But turned out I had to go bald without a dime because of a man made drug that I was given by a doctor without even the entire list of possible side effects given to me so that I could make the decision to take the risk or not with this damn drug. I am so glad it was not a side effect like death, for real, but how many of you dealt with severe depression? Anxiety? How many family or friend functions did you not attend because you were embarrassed or scared? How many of us missed out on one if not more of life's opportunities because of this negative side effect we were experiencing without a clue the drug we had put inside of our bodies could even cause it?!?! Pissed, again, and still. 

Gateful, blessed, happy that I was able to help the first woman that googled, "mirena and hair loss," after me and the many that followed her. Thank you for reading this. Thank you for posting your inspirational stories. I hope to keep getting updates from all of you and I hope that soon we stop having new members joining this thread. That would mean that this drug and others like it along with the possible side effects being published have all been changed, no longer exsist and no longer threaten women around the world.

Anyone interested in finding out more about a lawsuit with me and I know I am going to be successful eventually, join the ride with me. The more the merrier! Any information that may already be out there i would love to hear about.

Take care of yous!

Wow, you are so strong for sharing your journey! It is an amazing turn around after removing the toxin from your body! I am having a very similar experience with an anti-depressant. I lost all my hair 4 years ago and now have come off the medication and my hair started growing back. I have gone to numerous doctors and they all called it not curable as you stated. But never once questioned the medications or objects we put in our body’s! So pumped for you and you will help so many people with your story! 

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