Dealing with accutane hairloss (help) (suicidal)

[Gunnersup]

Hello, I have been through quite the storm over the past 9 or so months. I took accutane about a year ago, and 4 months into the course I began shedding hundreds of hairs a day. Sometimes reaching 500 hairs. I immediately stopped accutane. The shed has been going on now for 7 months about.

A couple months ago, I finally went to a dermatologist and asked for an opinion. I had a suspicion that accutane triggered a disease called "Lichen Planopilaris", and it turns out the dermatologist diagnosed me with that. But, she also diagnosed me with androgenetic alopecia.

Here is where it gets tricky. Out of the 200 or so hairs I shed a day, the majority are miniturizized. This does not allign with Lichen Planopilaris. So it would make sense that the miniturization is apart of the androgenetic alopecia that is also apparently going on.

However, my hairline has not moved back at all. In fact, I have quite a juvenile hairline. I am probably low T to begin with. All the hair I shed is completely diffuse, no pattern whatsoever.

My current medicaitons are Otezla, tofacitinib, and Doxycycline. These are helping the lichen Planopilaris symptoms including a horrible itch, but the shed is still very much so present.

I come to this forum to ask if anyone has information on what I should do, or if anyone of you have encountered accutane hairloss that persists after the medication is ceased.

More info- I am also shedding hair diffusely throughout my entire body. And I seem to have a condition called "Pilli Torti" which is commonly seen in Lichen Planopilaris.

 

[czecha]

Hello, I have been through quite the storm over the past 9 or so months. I took accutane about a year ago, and 4 months into the course I began shedding hundreds of hairs a day. Sometimes reaching 500 hairs. I immediately stopped accutane. The shed has been going on now for 7 months about.

A couple months ago, I finally went to a dermatologist and asked for an opinion. I had a suspicion that accutane triggered a disease called "Lichen Planopilaris", and it turns out the dermatologist diagnosed me with that. But, she also diagnosed me with androgenetic alopecia.

Here is where it gets tricky. Out of the 200 or so hairs I shed a day, the majority are miniturizized. This does not allign with Lichen Planopilaris. So it would make sense that the miniturization is apart of the androgenetic alopecia that is also apparently going on.

However, my hairline has not moved back at all. In fact, I have quite a juvenile hairline. I am probably low T to begin with. All the hair I shed is completely diffuse, no pattern whatsoever.

My current medicaitons are Otezla, tofacitinib, and Doxycycline. These are helping the lichen Planopilaris symptoms including a horrible itch, but the shed is still very much so present.

I come to this forum to ask if anyone has information on what I should do, or if anyone of you have encountered accutane hairloss that persists after the medication is ceased.

More info- I am also shedding hair diffusely throughout my entire body. And I seem to have a condition called "Pilli Torti" which is commonly seen in Lichen Planopilaris.

@pegasus2 @ChemHead @Georgie
@EndlessPossibilities

would be interested on your take on thjs since I also took accutane and it triggered autoimmune diseases in me
The autoimmune angle to hair loss is so complicated

 

[ChemHead]

Here's my advice to you.. and I say this from a position of a lot of personal experience and studying of clinical medical and pharmaceutical research:

Firstly, stop going to the doctor. You will only be wasting your time and money and you'll need both of those for what I will recommend for you. Doctors know absolutely nothing about what causes any of this. They've been trained to find a preprogrammed output to an input. They look at symptoms and find the corresponding output of a drug they've been trained is a remedy for those symptoms. The pool of data and information they use to get their prognoses is archaic and not even close to being relevant in terms of modern clinical literature.

Secondly, forget about any of these conditions or diseases that doctors have assigned to you. They mean nothing and they tell you literally nothing about the cause of the condition itself. Naming a condition is useless and not helpful at all for you. The only thing it accomplishes is that it gives you a feeling of hopelessness, making you believe that you now have this complex condition that no one knows anything about. Doctors give ridiculous names to conditions they know absolutely nothing about so that they can have the appearance that they actually know what's going on... "Well, Mr. Gunnersup, it seems you have a rare condition called lichen Planopilaris." Translation: I don't what the f*** is wrong with you, but I'm going to make it seem like I do by repeating your symptoms to you that (you're already aware you have) in the form of a series of complicated words you've never heard.

I'm assuming that before you took accutane, you had acne? If this is the case and you didn't have these "lichen Planopilaris" symptoms before taking accutane, then you don't have a naturally underlying genetic condition behind it... which is good, because it means that you can get rid of it.

Now, before I begin telling you what you need to do (and I probably should have started with this first, but I'm not going to reformat this message), you need to understand that your suicidal feelings are directly related to you feeling of hopelessness. You can fix this, but it's going to require a different kind of spirit than the one you have right now. You see, I have had many reasons to feel suicidal, but it has never gone past being thoughts that I would never act on. And this is because I don't have a spirit that will allow me to give up and, now, I actually have experience fixing these types of problems in my own body with great success. I'm going to download a lot of information on you, but for you own sake, it's important to know that you need to search every possible avenue of information and learn whatever it is that you have to learn to understand the information that you're processing. This gives you power in understanding and consequently gives you hope that you'll find the answers you're looking for if you simply continue searching no matter how you feel. What I'm going to tell you to do is going to require a lot of mental strength, but if you do it and you don't give up for any reason, you will be normal again... beyond better than normal.

Luckily, it sounds like you have not yet begun taking finasteride. Don't. Do not take a 5AR inhibitor under any circumstance. It will only introduce new problems that will be even more difficult to fix than the problem that was created by accutane. I have taken accutane and have also experienced the same symptoms. So, not only am I speaking to you from experience with 5AR inhibitors, but also from experience with the use of trans-retinoic acid (accutane). Based on what I'm seeing about the current medications that you're taking, they have all been prescribed for this skin/hair condition doctors are calling "lichen Planopilaris". Stop taking these. All of them. They will do absolutely nothing for you. They will only contribute to making your condition worse. Doxycycline will destroy the bacterial profile of you gut and wreck your body's ability to digest food properly (among other important functions of bacteria in the body) and the immunosuppressive drugs will do exactly the opposite of what you need (which is to strengthen your immune function, not weaken it).

 

[ChemHead]

I haven't looked at research regarding the targets and mechanisms of accutane for awhile because it's been around a decade since I last took it, but I believe that accutane's mechanism for causing hair to weaken, become dry and brittle, and to shed is likely due to its interference with steroid metabolism.. specifically with aromatase. This is also likely why accutane causes birth defects... because it's interfering with a crucial growth hormone during prenatal development. I know what low aromatase expression feels and looks like in my own body because of experimentation and because of this, I also know what to search for regarding clinical research. A quick google search for "trans retinoic acid aromatase" reveals this publication as the very first result: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20685100/

The growth of hair is primarily dependent upon your skin/hair follicle's expression of aromatase and it's ability to produce sufficient amounts of estrogens (likely, primarily estradiol). When you're unable to produce sufficient amounts of estrogens locally (intracellularly) the hair weakens and sheds. This can either be caused directly, as in the case of accutane, or it can be caused more indirectly by hypothalamic dysregulation which causes a subsequent down-regulation in aromatase expression throughout the whole body.

So, your hair started shedding for this reason. The fact that your hair line is still juvenile and you haven't experienced a typical "male pattern" in your hair loss means that whatever underlying conditions (whether genetic, epigenetic/environmental) that lead to decreased aromatase expression in certain areas of the male scalp more than others (temples and crown compared to occipital), you don't have those conditions. Now, you may have a lower "global" expression of aromatase in the scalp compared to people that never experience any kind of hair loss (even while using accutane), but aromatase seems to be evenly expressed in all areas of your scalp, which is why your pattern of loss is more diffuse like the pattern that females experience when they lose hair. Male and female hair loss have the same root cause. The only difference is exactly as I've explained to you... the variations in aromatase expression in differing areas of the scalp.

Ok... so, now on to the solution. This isn't really going to be easy, but, to state it plainly, you really have no other option. There is no solution in the form of a drug or pill that will fix this problem. Your own body is the only thing that can fix this problem and while there are things that you can do to help your body, most of those things consist of actually getting out of the way of your own body's repair of itself. With that being said, one last thing before I list the things you need to do: understand that this process is going to take some time. So, you need to put your self-image out of mind and accept that you're not going to see what you want to see when you look in the mirror for awhile, but also recognize that you should have hope that sustains you to endure until your body has fixed itself.

So, what you need to understand about the body is that it is an organic machine that operates on the same electrical, chemical, and thermodynamic processes that everything else in this world operates on. How does your body generate the energy that it uses on a daily basis and why is it important? Your body is sustained by eating... your energy comes from what you consume. Food is chemical and electrical potential energy. In a broad and simplified manner of speaking, you eat it and your body utilizes it for all types of electrical exchanges and interactions. Different chemical structural shapes that are derived from the food you eat fit various structural shapes within your body that act as receptors and when they fit together, some type of electronic exchange occurs which usually causes a whole cascade of signaled events to occur.

All this is to say that what you eat is the most critical factor that determines your body's ability to produce energy and to function the way it's programmed to function. Now, consider the difference between eating a cheeseburger compared to eating a head of lettuce. The burger has a lot of calories compared to the quite low calorie density of the lettuce and this may lead you to think "I will get more energy from consuming the burger compared to the lettuce because the burger has a higher caloric density." And, based on the definition of a calorie (the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water through 1 °C ), you may be inclined to think "energy out = energy in". Unfortunately, this is not the way it works. The actual equation is energy out = (food in) - (energy required by the body to extract chemical energy in a useful form to the body). So, the problem with a burger is that the energy required by your body to extract useful chemical energy/structures from it can be higher than the actual extracted energy. Your body "spends" energy in the digestive process to extract energy. So, if you can eat foods that "cost" your body less in energy (because they require very little in resources for the body to digest), your body has a higher overall gain of cellular energy and this can be used in bodily repair and maintenance. You can also take this principle another step forward by eating absolutely nothing. Yeah.. nothing. Even more powerful than simply eating foods that are easily digestible and provide the most "bang for your buck" in terms of energy and nutrition, fasting, or eating absolutely nothing in a controlled setting and a for a controlled period of time, will literally shut down your body's digestive system and other bodily processes that are called when you digest food and your body will consume its glycogen stores for 48 hours and then begin to consume fat by breaking down triglycerides into fatty acids. While your body is consuming it's own energy reserves, it's not expending any energy on digestion of food. This means that all that extra energy can be allocated toward bodily maintenance and reparation.

Now, it's not just all about calories, it's also about the quality of the chemical "tools" that your body extracts from food. For example, various plants have differing profiles of chemical compounds that elicit different effects on the body, independent of the concept of energy transfer. While, some chemical structures can be very useful and helpful to the body, some can be detrimental, damaging, and inflammatory. Most of these detrimental compounds come from foods that have been processed and cooked... especially foods that have been charred or burnt. However, some foods just naturally have chemical substances in them that are inflammatory to the human body. Some of these foods are plants, but most of the ones that humans consume on a regular basis are meat and dairy.

 

[ChemHead]

So, here's what I do, what I know works, and what will definitely work to fix your problem:

1. I don't consume any meat or dairy. Not only are they a digestive burden in terms of energy, they contain a lot of proteins and other various natural compounds that your body does not like and which cause chronic inflammation and immune response.

2. I consume mostly leafy greens, vegetables, sprouted microgreens, a small amount of nuts, a limited amount of fruit, a few tablespoons of chia/ground flax seed; supplements like vitamin B12, D3, selenomethionine, biotin, iodine (Lugol's formula), and vitamin C; I also take certain herbs/adaptogenic supplements like maca root powder and ashwagandha; and I only drink water, nothing else. I do not cook any food and I do not consume grains. All of this on a daily basis. I get an incredible amount of nutrition with a very low caloric density and I'm giving my body as much room as possible to allow it to use the energy it needs to repair itself rather than using it to digest the overburdening high calorie, difficult-to-digest, and inflammatory foods. VERY occasionally, I will allow myself to eat something cooked, but I keep it healthy... like a cooked sweet potato/yam. I do this because it's nice to have a warm, cooked meal here and there, but I'm very disciplined with what I eat, so this is like maybe once every month or every few months. I don't set some interval because I don't want to look forward to it. I just focus on maintaining the diet I eat and if one day I just feel like I really want something cooked, then I'll eat it. It's usually only a one-day deviation, though. Do not consume any oils. The only oil you should be consuming is the oil that is naturally occurring inside the nut or fruit or plant that you just ate. When oils are pressed out of plants, firstly, you're simply consuming too much fat and it becomes burdensome to your digestion, and, secondly, these oils immediately begin to oxidize when they are exposed to the air (basically, the second they leave the plant they came from). If you blend fruits or vegetables up in a blender and then let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes, you'll notice that bright pink color from the strawberries begin to turn brown or discolor. Same principle. It's been exposed to the air and it oxidizing. It's worse for oils, though, because oxidized unsaturated fatty acids cause vascular inflammation and contribute a great deal to the modern causality of cardiovascular disease. Any inflammation that you cause to your body through the food you consume, remember that it will cost you in energy and resources. Your body has to deal with that inflammation... it can't just ignore it... which means it has to use it's own energy to create chemicals and immune cells to neutralize that inflammation. When your body is so overburdened with chronic inflammatory immune responses that it doesn't have enough energy or resources to deal with the amount of inflammation it's experiencing on a daily basis, this is when "autoimmune" conditions start to manifest outwardly in the body (like skin problems, arthritis, digestive problems, etc.).

3. I fast. Specifically, I perform long-term water-only fasts. I eat nothing and drink only water for a period of days to weeks. The longer, the better. Ideally, if you could go between 2-3 weeks that would be a good target, but it will likely take a few tries going only for a few days. Some people are very determined and they can go straight from never having fasted to fasting for 2 or 3 weeks. As determined as I am, I only went around 5-6 days the first time I fasted, but it was during the winter and my body doesn't deal with cold temperatures well.

Start with adjusting your diet and begin doing research on the benefits of water only fasting (search for benefits specifically regarding healing, not weight loss) and how to plan for a fast. I have found this resource to be spot on in terms of what to expect when fasting:

What are the common stages of water fasting and what occurs at various stages during the fast? > Fasting > Water Fasting

What are the common stages of water fasting and what occurs at various stages during the fast? > Fasting > Water Fasting

www.curezone.org

It helps you to stay committed while fasting when you have an idea of what to expect at each stage of fasting, which is why I think this information is valuable.

If you have the financial resources, there is also a clinic in Santa Rosa, CA called True North that will help you do the fast. They have a team of medical doctors monitoring you daily throughout the fast and you stay at their facility for the entirety of the fast. They also feed you for a period after the fast to make sure that you recover properly. Doing fasting alone without the diet can work, but it will be slower and the benefits are less likely to persist since you will be dumping inflammatory garbage back in your body as soon as you're finished fasting. Likewise, changing the diet alone without fasting can work, but it will be slower than doing both. The first time I healed from 5AR inhibitor use, I didn't really do any long-term water fasting... I only had a very strict diet. So, it is possible to heal without the fasting, but I would do both because.. why not get better faster. Not only that, you'll likely feel far better than you ever have at any point in your life when your body has repaired itself.

Keep in mind that I'm not recommending these things to you from a dogmatic perspective. I'm not a vegan and I don't have some other reason or crazy ideology behind the way that I eat. I consistently do what I do because I've proven it is the best way to live based not just on my own experience, but also base in actual scientific logic and reasoning, much of that being deduced from clinical literature. I definitely stay away from all dairy, but I do have meat once a year and sometimes 2 or 3 times if there are very special occasions that come up. If you're wondering how I eat and you picture me sitting here as I'm writing this just eating plain-*** romaine lettuce, that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm just eating whole leaves of romaine lettuce. It's actually quite a simple and refreshing lifestyle. I don't have to think or worry about how to prepare or cook food. I just eat it as it is. It's kind of boring, but you adapt and your taste begins to change and soon you're able to discern very subtle flavors you never could before. Things that taste bland become bright and colorful. Things that once tasted bitter to you become sweet (for real). When you're not flooding your body with excessive sugars and salt, your taste will change.

At some point, you may think to yourself "what's the point in doing all this or living if I can't even enjoy food I've always enjoyed?" And that would be a valid question if doing this didn't actually cause major positive changes in your body chemistry. However, it does. It will take a little time to adjust to the taste of these foods. Not too long, but maybe a few weeks. It will also take around a month to two months for your digestive system to get used to eating this way. You'll have diarrhea and an upset stomach and then it will just stop after a few weeks. This is because your intestinal bacterial profile is adjusting to a new ecosystem. Bacteria that normally feed on fermented meats and grains will have some adverse interactions and then they will die off as colonies of different types of bacteria that feed on plant matter replace them. Your digestion will become very clean and you'll begin to notice that you have a lot more energy and that you don't need as much sleep as you normally have needed.

I've been doing this for awhile now (probably 4-5 years at this point) and believe me, if the benefits of doing this didn't far outweigh the enjoyment I used to get from eating foods I ate before deciding to follow this lifestyle, I definitely would not continue doing it. And it's not like I can't eat those things anymore... I just don't really have any desire to eat them anymore because I almost always instantly regret it due to the way it makes me feel after eating it. Sometimes I do it anyway, but very rarely because I like feeling good more than I like the pleasure I get from eating certain foods.

Anyway that's about it. If you diligently and consistently do what I've told you regarding diet... at least for around 3 months... you'll easily recognize very positive physiological changes and those changes will give you the encouragement and incentive to continue down that path until you feel like you're completely healed. And then, when you feel like you're fully healed and maybe you want to experiment with eating other foods again, then go for it. You control what goes into your body.. not some ideology. I doubt you'll want to change, though, after experiencing the huge physiological changes. There's probably a whole lot more I could say, but it's just far too much to put into a post. If you have any questions, just ask. Remember, the goal is to put your body into a state in which it can heal itself.. and most of that is accomplished by getting out of its way by not putting things in it that are burdensome. It's not necessarily the healthy things you put in your body the make you healthy. 80% of the battle is not consuming things that are burdensome to your body and the rest is giving your body easily digestible nutrient dense food.

 

[Selb]

So I understand the idea of letting your body heal itself by taking advantage of your metabolic system. But if we break it down to the root cause, accutane messed with his hormones, specifically his aromatase expression in his scalp according to your hypothesis.

If he supplements with topical estrogen on his scalp, that would make up for the missing level of testosterone to estrogen conversion. Why not let him treat it using estrogen? There’s no feedback loop that would hurt him, and it’ll directly provide hair protective effects that were missing with the hypothesized low aromatase.

Also to add, when accutane induced shedding in my hair, minoxidil use stopped it.

 

[ChemHead]

If he supplements with topical estrogen on his scalp, that would make up for the missing level of testosterone to estrogen conversion.

Because the only way this works is by flooding your body with enough estrogens that would cause a male to female transition. The only way estrogens given externally will ever reach your hair follicles is by sufficient osmotic pressure... The concentration of estrogens in serum have to be so high that they diffuse into the cell. And the high levels of exogenous estrogens will cause problems far worse than he already has. There is no round about way to solve this issue with pharmaceuticals.

Think about it this way... Let's say you want to make a pickle from a cucumber and you need to expose the cucumber to a strong brine.. a strong concentration of salt water, right. But let's say you're going to make this pickle in a giant pool of water rather than a jar. And you've decided your method will be to put the cucumber in the large pool and then sprinkle copious amounts of salt around the cucumber every once in awhile. It's possible that maybe a little bit of that salt ends up in the cucumber, but pretty much all of that salt will diffuse outwardly as its concentration equilibrates throughout the pool. The only way that cucumber is going to have a sufficient amount of saltwater diffuse into it is if that entire pool is overwhelmed with a high amount of salt and the osmotic pressure is sufficient to force saltwater into that cucumber. It's the same problema with using any topical drug and expecting it to work.

The hair follicle needs to produce its own estrogenic activity intracellularly and then deal with cleaning up those estrogens after they're used so they don't end up in high concentrations floating around in the blood causing problems. That's how's the body is supposed to work.

Edit: I'm also saying this all from experience. I've already tried all these things, which is why I know they don't work and also how I came to understand why they don't work.

 

[Selb]

Because the only way this works is by flooding your body with enough estrogens that would cause a male to female transition. The only way estrogens given externally will ever reach your hair follicles is by sufficient osmotic pressure... The concentration of estrogens in serum have to be so high that they diffuse into the cell. And the high levels of exogenous estrogens will cause problems far worse than he already has. There is no round about way to solve this issue with pharmaceuticals.

Think about it this way... Let's say you want to make a pickle from a cucumber and you need to expose the cucumber to a strong brine.. a strong concentration of salt water, right. But let's say you're going to make this pickle in a giant pool of water rather than a jar. And you've decided your method will be to put the cucumber in the large pool and then sprinkle copious amounts of salt around the cucumber every once in awhile. It's possible that maybe a little bit of that salt ends up in the cucumber, but pretty much all of that salt will diffuse outwardly as its concentration equilibrates throughout the pool. The only way that cucumber is going to have a sufficient amount of saltwater diffuse into it is if that entire pool is overwhelmed with a high amount of salt and the osmotic pressure is sufficient to force saltwater into that cucumber. It's the same problema with using any topical drug and expecting it to work.

The hair follicle needs to produce its own estrogenic activity intracellularly and then deal with cleaning up those estrogens after they're used so they don't end up in high concentrations floating around in the blood causing problems. That's how's the body is supposed to work.

Edit: I'm also saying this all from experience. I've already tried all these things, which is why I know they don't work and also how I came to understand why they don't work.

I follow the logic here and I appreciate your experience with the issue. Would you say that hypothetically speaking if he didn’t treat this and let it be for a while without making changes to his diet and lifestyle, it would heal on its own eventually? Like rather than take a year or two with your method, it would take a decade? Maybe more?

And even then, he himself says he has androgenic alopecia. Finasteride has proven to be prob the most effective mainstream treatment for that

 

[infamousrodi]

As a former accutane hair loss sufferer, all I can say is it gets better. My hair fully recovered after 2.5 years. It’s telogen effluvium
And it takes a while for your hair cycle to normalize. Hang in there man I felt like sh*t too. I don’t use any treatment and it all came back to normal it just took forever. Don’t stress

 

[ChemHead]

I follow the logic here and I appreciate your experience with the issue. Would you say that hypothetically speaking if he didn’t treat this and let it be for a while without making changes to his diet and lifestyle, it would heal on its own eventually? Like rather than take a year or two with your method, it would take a decade? Maybe more?

And even then, he himself says he has androgenic alopecia. Finasteride has proven to be prob the most effective mainstream treatment for that

Yes. In the case of Accutane, in my experience it went away without making any change. It will take longer, though.

However, in the case of finasteride, in my own experience, I simply didn't begin recovering from finasteride until I made dietary changes and forced it to happen faster. So, I could have waited to find out how long it would take... At that point, it had already been 6-7 years with zero improvement. If I would have waited and changed nothing, maybe it would've only taken ten years.. Maybe more, but I would prefer to waste as little of my lifespan as possible. Also, you simply can't replace how healthy and wonderful you feel if you do what I do imo.

 

[Gunnersup]

@ChemHead thankyou so much for replying, I haven't read it all yet but I will soon. I appreciate having someone I can bounce ideas and thoughts off of.

As for the lichen planopilaris, I actually self diagnosed myself with it, and it was the derm who immediately diagnosed me with it without me telling her. Still though, you are right that no doctor fully understands this.

 

[Selb]

As a former accutane hair loss sufferer, all I can say is it gets better. My hair fully recovered after 2.5 years. It’s telogen effluvium
And it takes a while for your hair cycle to normalize. Hang in there man I felt like sh*t too. I don’t use any treatment and it all came back to normal it just took forever. Don’t stress

At the 2 year mark would you say that you recovered for the most part or we’re still badly diffused? Also, how much percent density did you lose?

 

[infamousrodi]

At the 2 year mark would you say that you recovered for the most part or we’re still badly diffused? Also, how much percent density did you lose?

It’s hard to say, I think
I gradually just saw less shedding and thickness returned gradually. I probably lost about 40% density. I had a combination of seb derm And Telogen Effluvium from when I came off accutane.

 

[Johnsmith63747]

So, here's what I do, what I know works, and what will definitely work to fix your problem:

1. I don't consume any meat or dairy. Not only are they a digestive burden in terms of energy, they contain a lot of proteins and other various natural compounds that your body does not like and which cause chronic inflammation and immune response.

2. I consume mostly leafy greens, vegetables, sprouted microgreens, a small amount of nuts, a limited amount of fruit, a few tablespoons of chia/ground flax seed; supplements like vitamin B12, D3, selenomethionine, biotin, iodine (Lugol's formula), and vitamin C; I also take certain herbs/adaptogenic supplements like maca root powder and ashwagandha; and I only drink water, nothing else. I do not cook any food and I do not consume grains. All of this on a daily basis. I get an incredible amount of nutrition with a very low caloric density and I'm giving my body as much room as possible to allow it to use the energy it needs to repair itself rather than using it to digest the overburdening high calorie, difficult-to-digest, and inflammatory foods. VERY occasionally, I will allow myself to eat something cooked, but I keep it healthy... like a cooked sweet potato/yam. I do this because it's nice to have a warm, cooked meal here and there, but I'm very disciplined with what I eat, so this is like maybe once every month or every few months. I don't set some interval because I don't want to look forward to it. I just focus on maintaining the diet I eat and if one day I just feel like I really want something cooked, then I'll eat it. It's usually only a one-day deviation, though. Do not consume any oils. The only oil you should be consuming is the oil that is naturally occurring inside the nut or fruit or plant that you just ate. When oils are pressed out of plants, firstly, you're simply consuming too much fat and it becomes burdensome to your digestion, and, secondly, these oils immediately begin to oxidize when they are exposed to the air (basically, the second they leave the plant they came from). If you blend fruits or vegetables up in a blender and then let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes, you'll notice that bright pink color from the strawberries begin to turn brown or discolor. Same principle. It's been exposed to the air and it oxidizing. It's worse for oils, though, because oxidized unsaturated fatty acids cause vascular inflammation and contribute a great deal to the modern causality of cardiovascular disease. Any inflammation that you cause to your body through the food you consume, remember that it will cost you in energy and resources. Your body has to deal with that inflammation... it can't just ignore it... which means it has to use it's own energy to create chemicals and immune cells to neutralize that inflammation. When your body is so overburdened with chronic inflammatory immune responses that it doesn't have enough energy or resources to deal with the amount of inflammation it's experiencing on a daily basis, this is when "autoimmune" conditions start to manifest outwardly in the body (like skin problems, arthritis, digestive problems, etc.).

3. I fast. Specifically, I perform long-term water-only fasts. I eat nothing and drink only water for a period of days to weeks. The longer, the better. Ideally, if you could go between 2-3 weeks that would be a good target, but it will likely take a few tries going only for a few days. Some people are very determined and they can go straight from never having fasted to fasting for 2 or 3 weeks. As determined as I am, I only went around 5-6 days the first time I fasted, but it was during the winter and my body doesn't deal with cold temperatures well.

Start with adjusting your diet and begin doing research on the benefits of water only fasting (search for benefits specifically regarding healing, not weight loss) and how to plan for a fast. I have found this resource to be spot on in terms of what to expect when fasting:

What are the common stages of water fasting and what occurs at various stages during the fast? > Fasting > Water Fasting

What are the common stages of water fasting and what occurs at various stages during the fast? > Fasting > Water Fasting

www.curezone.org

It helps you to stay committed while fasting when you have an idea of what to expect at each stage of fasting, which is why I think this information is valuable.

If you have the financial resources, there is also a clinic in Santa Rosa, CA called True North that will help you do the fast. They have a team of medical doctors monitoring you daily throughout the fast and you stay at their facility for the entirety of the fast. They also feed you for a period after the fast to make sure that you recover properly. Doing fasting alone without the diet can work, but it will be slower and the benefits are less likely to persist since you will be dumping inflammatory garbage back in your body as soon as you're finished fasting. Likewise, changing the diet alone without fasting can work, but it will be slower than doing both. The first time I healed from 5AR inhibitor use, I didn't really do any long-term water fasting... I only had a very strict diet. So, it is possible to heal without the fasting, but I would do both because.. why not get better faster. Not only that, you'll likely feel far better than you ever have at any point in your life when your body has repaired itself.

Keep in mind that I'm not recommending these things to you from a dogmatic perspective. I'm not a vegan and I don't have some other reason or crazy ideology behind the way that I eat. I consistently do what I do because I've proven it is the best way to live based not just on my own experience, but also base in actual scientific logic and reasoning, much of that being deduced from clinical literature. I definitely stay away from all dairy, but I do have meat once a year and sometimes 2 or 3 times if there are very special occasions that come up. If you're wondering how I eat and you picture me sitting here as I'm writing this just eating plain-*** romaine lettuce, that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm just eating whole leaves of romaine lettuce. It's actually quite a simple and refreshing lifestyle. I don't have to think or worry about how to prepare or cook food. I just eat it as it is. It's kind of boring, but you adapt and your taste begins to change and soon you're able to discern very subtle flavors you never could before. Things that taste bland become bright and colorful. Things that once tasted bitter to you become sweet (for real). When you're not flooding your body with excessive sugars and salt, your taste will change.

At some point, you may think to yourself "what's the point in doing all this or living if I can't even enjoy food I've always enjoyed?" And that would be a valid question if doing this didn't actually cause major positive changes in your body chemistry. However, it does. It will take a little time to adjust to the taste of these foods. Not too long, but maybe a few weeks. It will also take around a month to two months for your digestive system to get used to eating this way. You'll have diarrhea and an upset stomach and then it will just stop after a few weeks. This is because your intestinal bacterial profile is adjusting to a new ecosystem. Bacteria that normally feed on fermented meats and grains will have some adverse interactions and then they will die off as colonies of different types of bacteria that feed on plant matter replace them. Your digestion will become very clean and you'll begin to notice that you have a lot more energy and that you don't need as much sleep as you normally have needed.

I've been doing this for awhile now (probably 4-5 years at this point) and believe me, if the benefits of doing this didn't far outweigh the enjoyment I used to get from eating foods I ate before deciding to follow this lifestyle, I definitely would not continue doing it. And it's not like I can't eat those things anymore... I just don't really have any desire to eat them anymore because I almost always instantly regret it due to the way it makes me feel after eating it. Sometimes I do it anyway, but very rarely because I like feeling good more than I like the pleasure I get from eating certain foods.

Anyway that's about it. If you diligently and consistently do what I've told you regarding diet... at least for around 3 months... you'll easily recognize very positive physiological changes and those changes will give you the encouragement and incentive to continue down that path until you feel like you're completely healed. And then, when you feel like you're fully healed and maybe you want to experiment with eating other foods again, then go for it. You control what goes into your body.. not some ideology. I doubt you'll want to change, though, after experiencing the huge physiological changes. There's probably a whole lot more I could say, but it's just far too much to put into a post. If you have any questions, just ask. Remember, the goal is to put your body into a state in which it can heal itself.. and most of that is accomplished by getting out of its way by not putting things in it that are burdensome. It's not necessarily the healthy things you put in your body the make you healthy. 80% of the battle is not consuming things that are burdensome to your body and the rest is giving your body easily digestible nutrient dense food.

After your post on diets its convinced me to give it a go. Do you mind if I ask how lean you are? Do you do much vigorous exercise? I worry that this sort of diet may cause excessive weight loss (at least in my case) and be detrimental to a physical lifestyle. Do you have any of those problems with this diet?

Any chance you’ve ever read Catching Fire: how cooking made us human by Richard Wrangham?

 

[jamesbooker1975]

Hello, I have been through quite the storm over the past 9 or so months. I took accutane about a year ago, and 4 months into the course I began shedding hundreds of hairs a day. Sometimes reaching 500 hairs. I immediately stopped accutane. The shed has been going on now for 7 months about.

A couple months ago, I finally went to a dermatologist and asked for an opinion. I had a suspicion that accutane triggered a disease called "Lichen Planopilaris", and it turns out the dermatologist diagnosed me with that. But, she also diagnosed me with androgenetic alopecia.

Here is where it gets tricky. Out of the 200 or so hairs I shed a day, the majority are miniturizized. This does not allign with Lichen Planopilaris. So it would make sense that the miniturization is apart of the androgenetic alopecia that is also apparently going on.

However, my hairline has not moved back at all. In fact, I have quite a juvenile hairline. I am probably low T to begin with. All the hair I shed is completely diffuse, no pattern whatsoever.

My current medicaitons are Otezla, tofacitinib, and Doxycycline. These are helping the lichen Planopilaris symptoms including a horrible itch, but the shed is still very much so present.

I come to this forum to ask if anyone has information on what I should do, or if anyone of you have encountered accutane hairloss that persists after the medication is ceased.

More info- I am also shedding hair diffusely throughout my entire body. And I seem to have a condition called "Pilli Torti" which is commonly seen in Lichen Planopilaris.

Accutane don't cause Androgenetic Alopecia, in fact, Isotretioin inhibit DHT as Finasteride Or Dutasteride . You alreay had male pattern baldness, why you so, on that shedding, was the same shedding you might have on Finasteride or Dutasteride when it start to work, you was actually stoping male pattern baldness on really early stage .

On the other hand , Tofacitinib may help you with male pattern baldness too. DHT just start a reaction where inmune system is involve . Not the heatlhier way to stop it, thought .

Also, hair loss with accutane might happen, only when you use high dose, and I am talking 100mg per day cause it deplete vitamin B , specially b 12. No idea why, people still use high doses, and what it is worst , without a Vitamin B supplement.

 

[Selb]

Accutane don't cause Androgenetic Alopecia, in fact, Isotretioin inhibit DHT as Finasteride Or Dutasteride . You alreay had male pattern baldness, why you so, on that shedding, was the same shedding you might have on Finasteride or Dutasteride when it start to work, you was actually stoping male pattern baldness on really early stage .

On the other hand , Tofacitinib may help you with male pattern baldness too. DHT just start a reaction where inmune system is involve . Not the heatlhier way to stop it, thought .

Also, hair loss with accutane might happen, only when you use high dose, and I am talking 100mg per day cause it deplete vitamin B , specially b 12. No idea why, people still use high doses, and what it is worst , without a Vitamin B supplement.

I would agree with this but the problem is that I’ve run into a few people with accutane hair loss. And it’s the same thing, diffuse loss with curlier hair. Dry and different textured hair. And an inflamed scalp sometimes. Plus there’s not much family history of early balding. If it was really accutane stopping male pattern baldness why would it cause hair loss in such a weird way?

I’m not convinced it’s androgenic. It’s autoimmune related and it takes years to reverse. I’m guessing topical steroids or JAK inhibitors will help.

I mean it would be interesting if someone with accutane hair loss jumped on finasteride to see if it helps

 

[Gunnersup]

I would agree with this but the problem is that I’ve run into a few people with accutane hair loss. And it’s the same thing, diffuse loss with curlier hair. Dry and different textured hair. And an inflamed scalp sometimes. Plus there’s not much family history of early balding. If it was really accutane stopping male pattern baldness why would it cause hair loss in such a weird way?

I’m not convinced it’s androgenic. It’s autoimmune related and it takes years to reverse. I’m guessing topical steroids or JAK inhibitors will help.

I mean it would be interesting if someone with accutane hair loss jumped on finasteride to see if it helps

Someone with accutane hairloss, (curly hair+ itchy scalp+ diffuse) tried hopping on finasteride and it did nothing except damage his body horribly

Charles story

How old were you when you started Finasteride? 21 How old were you when you quit? 21 How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)? cold turkey What type of Finasteride did you use – Propecia, Proscar, Fincar or other generic? propecia What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every...

forum.propeciahelp.com

 

[ChemHead]

ALL forms of hair loss (with the exception of alopecia universalis), whether male pattern, female pattern, accutane induced, or most other drug-induced forms of loss, are caused by insufficient intrafollicular estrogen synthesis. They're all just slight variations in what causes the lack of intrafollicular estrogenic activity.

In male pattern, the primary cause is the high intrafollicular expression of 5AR which draws away the follicle's entire supply of androgens and leaves insufficient levels behind for aromatization. The male pattern is simply due to the variation in both 5AR and aromatase expression in different areas of the scalp.

In female pattern, the primary cause is low aromatase expression and/or low estrogen receptor expression. The female scalp generally has quite low expression of 5AR, so it generally plays very little role in female pattern hair loss. Females that experience diffuse "female" pattern hair loss have uniformly (or globally) lower levels of aromatase and/or estrogen receptor expression, which leads to insufficient intrafollicular estrogenic activity. This manifests in an evenly distributed pattern of loss.

In accutane-induced loss, there is an impairment of the aromatase pathway which leads to a linear increase in hair loss on top of any other condition (like male pattern hair loss), if there is any. Accutane-induced loss on its own (with no underlying male pattern loss) will manifest the same as female pattern loss because accutane affects the aromatase pathway uniformly.. not just in the scalp, but the entire body.

 

[BetaBoy]

ALL forms of hair loss (with the exception of alopecia universalis), whether male pattern, female pattern, accutane induced, or most other drug-induced forms of loss, are caused by insufficient intrafollicular estrogen synthesis.

So i’m guessing we would observe a total lack of scalp hair in individuals with EIS should this hypothesis be correct?

 

[ChemHead]

So i’m guessing we would observe a total lack of scalp hair in individuals with EIS should this hypothesis be correct?

Possibly, but I'm not sure how significant a role the ERalpha vs. ERbeta plays in hair loss. It's something I may have known at one point and I may have some clinical publications filed away, but I don't remember which of these ERs is more significant regarding hair growth/loss. I think EIS is due to impairment of ERalpha only, but I could be wrong.

But generally, I will say that anything that impair the hair follicle's estrogenic expression will negatively effect hair and complete impairment.. meaning the hair follicle gets absolutely no estrogenic stimulation.. will result in a complete inability to grow hair. And I will also say, this includes hair like beard and body hair as well.