How Diabetes Cause Hair Loss
To the American Diabetes Association, more than 30 million people in the U. S. are diabetic. When your body doesn’t create insulin, it is referred to as you have diabetes. Insulin is a hormone. It drags the sugar from your blood to put in cells. In here, sugar comes from foods that you consume. Later this sugar turns into energy that you need for movement.
When your body doesn’t have insulin, sugar accumulates in the blood. This overwhelmed sugar later harm your entire body. Your eyes, nerves, immune system, kidneys, stomach, and so on are a few examples. The harm includes also blood vessels. Usually, vessels drag oxygen through your body. By doing that, it provides organs and tissue nutrition. Once these vessels get harm, they couldn’t carry an adequate amount of oxygen. Especially oxygen in hair follicles runs out. Without oxygen, hair follicles could not carry the hair growth cycle. So it results in hair loss.
There are two types of diabetes, Type 1 and Type 2. When your immune system attacks the pancreas, you have Type 1 diabetes. The pancreas in here, as having an important role, creates insulin. When your cells are not able to use insulin, you have Type 2 diabetes. Even though your body makes insulin, for some reason cells might be in this structure. Because you have insulin resistance in a case like this. Indeed, Type 2 diabetes is more common than Type 1.
Insulin is a hormone. It provides stabilization in your blood sugars, so overwhelmed or lack of sugar couldn’t harm your body. It also provides help in the absorption of glucose by your body. Thus it uses this absorbed glucose for energy. In some people, their body doesn’t create insulin as it should, which leads to diabetes.
Refreshment of Hair During Diabetes
Hair loss is a natural aspect of life. Anyone could experience it at any age. But once it occurs at an early age, it might be very stressful. Normally, the process of hair growth has 4 stages. It follows these steps: Anagen (Growing Phase), Catagen (Transition Phase), Telogen (Resting Phase), and Exogen (New Hair Phase). All of these cycles complete themselves in the time phase from 5 to 8 months. At the end of the cycle, when hair completes its cycle, it falls out. New hair might usually grow in the identical follicle. In this way, it refreshes itself. Sometimes it might fail in the refreshment cycle. Sometimes the area of failed hair follicles is so much that hair loss could be seen easily from outside. A lot of factors could affect the hair growth cycle. Some of them are stress, hormonal changes, overwhelmed blood sugar levels, or underlying health conditions, such as diabetes.
The active growth phase might last two years or more. During that time, hairs grow about 1 to 2 cm per month. Then it gets into the resting phase. It might last about 100 days or more. Some of the hairs fall out in this stage. Diabetes infers these stages and decreases their speed. So they get slower. When stages get slower, especially the resting phase lasts longer and you lose more hair than normal. As having diabetes, you don’t only lose hair on your head. You might also lose hairs in your forearms, legs, or even genitals. Regrowth of hair in diabetes doesn’t show your health. Because their cycle is actually slower than the normal rate.
What Should You Do
Studies suggest that people who have Type 1 diabetes are likely to develop alopecia areata more than other people. So what is alopecia areata? Alopecia areata is an autoimmune condition. Often it starts with sporadic patches in your head. These patches could reveal as coin-sized shapes, or sometimes bigger. It could be seen in other parts of the body as well as on the scalp. Beard, eyebrows, eyelashes, or even pubic hair are examples of it. However, it is quite different from male pattern alopecia, which is the most common type of hair loss. It does not reveal in a noticeable path. You could see these patches anywhere in your body. So it might be unlikely for you to realize easily. Furthermore, as an autoimmune disease, your immune system attacks your hair follicles. As we talked about earlier, hair follicles are the ones who produce hair.
So what can you do in a situation like this? The first and one of the golden rules is admitting that you have this problem. Perhaps you would not be able to see it. Still, mind what your family, friends, and close ones say to you. They might see what you could not see about you. Then, another golden rule is to mention your hair loss problem to your doctor as well as other symptoms. Because hair loss in your forearms and legs could be signs. Your blood might flow irregularly.
Sometimes your hair loss might be a result of your diet. In a case like these, give yourself some time to adjust your diet. Or you might adjust also your lifestyle to the treatment.
Treatment Options and Healing Process
In fact, when you start with your treatment, you would be able to see progress in your hair. It is about mostly bringing the situation under control. In the beginning, you would start to lose less hair. But in time, lost areas in your start would regrow.
Your doctor might prescribe you minoxidil (Rogaine). It is mostly used for hair loss. To use it effectively, you rub it onto your scalp. The doctor also might prescribe you finasteride (Propecia). Although it has great success rates, there are some side effects in this medicine. When you start using it, your sexual activity is likely to decrease. Also, it hasn’t approved for women yet. Recently men use it. In the case of alopecia and diabetes, your doctor might provide you steroid medicines as well.
In addition to these, some studies show that exercise might help you to maintain your blood circulation. Due to it increases blood flow in different parts of the body, it might also help you with hair loss. Because blood flow reaches hair follicles as well.
If you want to get more information about other dynamics and treatments for hair loss, check our other contents on https://www.tecnifue.com/. Also feel free to contact us with Whatsapp, phone call, email, or face-to-face.