Help for those struggling with hair loss

This text was initially revealed by Hopkins Medicine journal in its Spring/Summer season 2018 difficulty

Dermatologist Crystal Aguh research way of life components affecting hair loss in ethnic populations—an space the place most dermatologists concern to tread. She speculates that is as a result of dermatologists, the overwhelming majority of whom had been by no means uncovered to the subject in medical college, are sometimes “nervous on easy methods to method therapy.”

This failure to speak is especially devastating to African-American ladies, as almost 50 % of them endure some sort of hair loss. Research counsel a good portion of middle-aged African-American ladies really feel their hair is “unhealthy”—maybe on account of experiences involving hair care and styling—and that these issues lead many to keep away from exercising, in order to guard their present hair.

Few of those ladies talk about their hair and scalp points with their medical doctors, says Aguh, and those that do are sometimes dismayed at their physicians’ lack of information about frequent African-American hair points. These embody dryness, breakage, and fragility—the results of curly hair that’s farther away from the scalp’s pure oils than straight hair.

“Hair loss significantly impacts vanity and high quality of life,” says Aguh, who turned the Department of Dermatology‘s chief resident in 2014 and is now an assistant professor. “I at all times be sure that to herald a field of tissues once I’m speaking with my hair loss sufferers. It actually impacts their total being.”

One frequent kind of hair loss that just about completely impacts African-American ladies is central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia, or CCCA. It is a everlasting, scarring kind of balding involving power irritation radiating outward from the crown of the scalp. There isn’t any remedy or efficient therapy but for CCCA—although Aguh is learning the identical sort of new, platelet-rich plasma injections that different researchers are investigating for his or her doable use in treating inflammatory points, together with tendon accidents and arthritis.

Nonetheless, Aguh can work with sufferers to maintain a tough scenario from getting worse.

“With CCCA, the worst hair loss comes in the course of the scalp, however tight braids will pull out hair somewhere else (notably the entrance and sides of the scalp),” she says. “As a result of there are not any nice CCCA therapies, I need them to max out their hair in all places else. Individuals who wish to camouflage their hair loss wish to understand how styling can come into play. So each affected person I see with hair loss will get this dialogue.”

As one in every of fewer than a dozen dermatologists nationwide specializing in hair care, Aguh treats greater than 200 ladies a yr (and a few males) involved with their hair loss and injury. Typically, they arrive in pissed off: They might have a dermatological scalp situation for which their specialist has prescribed a shampoo with directions to make use of it daily—not understanding that every day shampooing typically destroys curly hair (one other impact of the shortage of pure oils).

“Primary styling is not a part of any medical college dermatology curriculum, although it must be,” Aguh says. “If somebody has everlasting hair loss and dreadlocks, the common dermatologist would concentrate on giving them steroid injections or steroid lotions. However nobody will ask them how typically they see their loctician and [discuss] the sort of totally different, looser dreads they may swap to that will not trigger hair loss.”

Aguh lately co-authored Fundamentals of Ethnic Hair: The Dermatologist’s Perspective (Springer, 2017) with Johns Hopkins dermatologist Ginette Okoye. The textbook covers fundamental science, together with a comparability of the chemical and bodily properties of Asian, black, and Caucasian hair—and discusses hair styling and its cultural and non secular roots.

“Our e book was, partly, aimed toward growing dermatologists’ consciousness of routine, frequent styling practices amongst our sufferers,” Aguh says. “That is [been] a nonstarter primarily based on present curriculums.”