Alopecia Areata

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So question here, uh, mini podcast on alopecia areata. What do you do about it? What causes it? Well, this is a question that's near and dear to my heart. Um, my eldest daughter actually suffers from alopecia areata and many patients who have alopecia areata, it's gonna be a multifactorial effect. Um, this is for some reason, an autoimmune condition where the body can kind of, uh, somewhat attack your own hair and it creates these patches is a classic sign. When you can see this with, um, a tricho on how the hair looks, um, classic sign. When you look at some it's head, there's different versions of alopecia areata, thankfully my daughter's alopecia areata are these patches that come and go. Um, she does not have complete alopecia areata, uh, which is, um, super stressful for patients or total alopecia or uni universal alopecia, which can include the eyebrows, um, on some patients.

Um, but that being said, it's stressful, nonetheless. And what brings on alopecia is different for every patient, but it seems to be stress. Um, whenever anyone has an autoimmune response, there's different ways to kind of treat that the classic way is to turn off your, the immune system a bit. And the way I like to do that is with steroids of some effect for most of our patients, that it means an injection of can or steroid of some sort into that area to turn off that it means response. Um, but you have to be careful with steroid injections anywhere on, on the face or body because they can live at your dents. Um, but when properly administered, this seems to be the best treatment for most patients. I'm not a big fan of oral medications for patients who do this. Uh, because again, it's gonna have systemic side effects with steroids taking long term steroids.

Um, and why not just do a topical oral injection in that area? Um, and then I think the other thing that it seems to be helpful for patients with alopecia areata is practicing mindfulness and stress from relieving strategies, because it does seem to be triggered by stress, but not always, um, practice a healthy diet, because again, when the body's sensing stress, whether it's mental, physical, or any other type, it may manifest itself externally with that, those patches, if hair loss, hopefully that's helpful for those patients. We do see quite a bit of patients develop and for most of them it's a simple injection and they're kind of on their way. And it's often little lecture like this, about what to do to manage, um, some of the other factors in hair loss.