surrounded with beautiful girls with beautiful hair at cosmetology school 9-5 mon-fri is an incredibly hard mental battle. As much support as they give me Im not ignorant to their initial reactions. When i open up and show my hair loss everyone makes that same face... you know the one. Its a mix between shock, concern and disgust. I get it.. i do, it's not common for a perfectly healthy 21 year old girl to just wake up one day with bald spots. I dont feel pretty when i have to pull my hair…

Well thats it my hair is definitely coming out now and im am so gutted this is happening again and i have only had about 7months of enjoying my hair being back. I cant cope with this at all and cannot accept this. People around me have no idea how i am feeling and some say i cope well, but im crumbling inside. I am going to go for counselling to try help me accept this as i cant let it rule my life which it is doing just now. I went to order a new wig yesterday just in case all my hair came…

Those of you who may have read my previous posts I did a post about wig frustration, I find it so hard to pick a wig there are often so many choices out there, colour, style, many styles start to look the same the more you look at the different ones, along with length etc. Well anyhow I am nearly getting to a point of actually making a choice, I have narrowed it all down to a few different things…

1) I decided to not bother with Human hair, unless I pay a LOT of money the human one I…

Since my first introduction into the alopecia community in August of 2010, I have experienced a wide range of emotions, and revelations.

My first thoughts when I was first diagnosed with alopecia as an 8 year old was horrified. How can something like this happen to me? And how can I possible live like this. Well obviously 28 years later I do continue to live. In fact I thrive.

A very quick overview of my experiences growing up with alopecia..... I was diagnosed at 8. It was…

In 2006 miy best friend Missy, (who happened to be my aunt but we were only 5 years apart) died. It happened to be on Thanksgiving Day. By far this was the worst day of my life. One month later I noticed my hair was falling out. Not just a little, but huge patches. So to add to my grief, I lost my long brown hair. I went through HELL. I left my relationship of six years, (he was supportive) but I hated myself and everyone, besides my kids. Even my children were embarrassed, and I wore wigs…

Never Ever....EVER assume something about someone <3 I went on holiday to england and this one boy went to me "do you have cancer?" "No i dont i have somthing else" i said really shy *low confidence...* "Looks like it ?" I hate it when that happens they see someone with less than the average amount of hair and assume it cancer ? If you Assume you make an *ASS* out of *U* and *Me* <3

When my hair is combed just so, no one can see the many bald patches around my head. However, it's a different story when the wind blows, my long hair catches on the collar of my coat or I bend over. I decided this morning that I'm tired of constantly worrying if a patch is showing, especially as I continue to shed and have a wonderful trip to Europe coming up a few weeks that I don't want to be spoiled. I have made an appointment for a consultation tomorrow morning to see what my options…

i hope no one takes this the wrong way and i mean no disrespect because i have dealt with the emotional pain and the physical embarrassment of alopecia for years during an fragile time in my life. i don't know if a coincidence or not but when i first got alopecia i was about 12 years old and i struggled with it for the next 5 yrs. it wasn't until i was 17 when i started to smoke pot. 6 months later it was gone. the doctor said i just grew out of it but I'm not sure now because i just lost my…

its crazy the impact of having alopecia has had on my life and the others around me !.
I think that having alopecia has made me a better person,more understanding and i know never to judge someone simply by the way they look.
Sure i have doubted myself and felt not good enough but i also think it has made me more confident and willing to share my story.
Im also talking to others about it and therefor makeing them more understanding and to never judge a book by its cover. x

Wondering if anyone with Alopecia also has any joint issues. I have calcific tendonities both shoulders and arthritic hips feel sort of young for these issues and it has been 10 years or so diagnosed (Alopecia since 4)

This past January will be 4 years since I lost all my hair. I think I have coped pretty well with it, tried to stay strong & up; but, lately, it just seems I am missing my hair, angry at my body. The why's coming back. Why the eye brows & eye lashes, will they or my hair ever come back. Do we all go through this? I know that my wounds ar still fresh, 4 years isnt really that along. I admire so many Alopecian sisters & brothers who have delt with this damn disease with such…

Sigh... I've just been looking around on line for wig ideas. I learned which suppliers the local hair places use and look through the catalogues on line. But what I don't ever understand are the price differences. It could be the same brand of wig but the long hair lengths cost less then the required shorter length. Do I buy long then go to a decent hair dresser to cut it? Do I keep looking for a decent priced short length. Man they are so expensive in the UK. I'm also a bit worried about on…

Tomorrow I've decided that I'm going to transition from my beautiful long curly wig to my short dark straight hair that has been slowly growing back over the last few months. I'm so scared. I hope to think that this is the end of it all (my dermatologist has said my recovery was good) but what if it comes back? It was easy enough to transition to a wig as nobody noticed, but I'm so worried the hair I have now will fall out then I wouldn't know what to do! It would be embarrasing for me to…

Occasionally I receive an email from someone saying that they wished they had my strength to handle alopecia -- as if I woke up one day without my hair and was immediately ok with it. As most members here would attest, that is hardly ever the case. Where I am today is probably where many of you will be tomorrow.

I wrote the following in response to one such email and thought that other members that are new to alopecia or struggling may benefit from it too:

You would be…

So I'm having lunch with a few of my girlfriends sharing little anecdotes about our lives, as you do, when one starts to tell what happened at work. Now she's a nurse in an aged care facility and one old gentleman who has dementia has started doing strange things like peeing in corners of the room etc and he happens to wear a toupee. The toupee is getting more and more ragged looking and the nurses had been plotting on how to take it off him as he's pretty attached to it [no pun intended].…

Four years ago today I took back my life by shaving my head smooth. In my first photos on my page, you can see what my hair looked like the night before, and what I looked like right after shaving.

Four years. I wish I knew on January 30, 2008 what I know now:

1. I am still me.

2. It's okay to be bald in public - people don't run away screaming at the sight of a bald woman.

3. I can still feel beautiful and feminine without any hair.

4. Life will go on and…

For the last 9 months I've been living in denial that my alopecia may be getting worse, progressing from Areata to totalis or universal (These are the 3 my Dr and many dermatologists have told me my case could progress to)

Maybe I should restart. I've been away because my lovely son has become mobile (crawling and assisted crawling) and most of my day is chasing him around, making sure cupboards are locked and what not. It's a wild ride! For those who have read my posts before and…

A Mouse Model of Clonal CD8+ T Lymphocyte-Mediated Alopecia Areata Progressing to Alopecia Universalis

Rajshekhar Alli*, Phuong Nguyen*, Kelli Boyd*,†, John P. Sundberg‡ and Terrence L. Geiger*

+ Author Affiliations

*Department of Pathology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN 38105;

†Department of Pathology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37232; and

‡The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME 04609

Address correspondence and reprint requests…

I am 20 years old and have had alopecia areata since I was 4 years old. It never really affected me all that much until about 6 months ago, when the spots became harder and harder to cover with my existing hair, and more and more hair was falling out. I am currently almost bald, I have a few synthetic wigs but they are so itchy I would rather wear a hat. In less than a week I am shaving off what is left of my hair and getting a real hair wig. I know that I barely have any hair left but the…

TODAY I presented my senior project on Alopecia. It went so great :D I'm so happy of how well I did. I thought it would be a disaster. BUT it was AMAZING :D No more stressing out on this project anymore. Thanks to those who helped me out too :) Oh man I just wanna celebrate I never thought I could do something like this in my entire life. I feel like a whole new person. haha
That's all, hope you all are having a great day :D