You DO NOT have Androgenic Alopecia

[Brains Expel Hair]

Would you say that oatmeal is a big no-no while following the gluten-free diet?

In general, yes I would recommend against oatmeal. The oat itself isn't a culprit of gluten poisoning but it most often times processed and packaged on shared equipment with wheat making most brains of oatmeal NOT gluten-free by method of cross contamination.

Overall your diet doesn't sound bad (besides possibly the oatmeal), as long as you're varying the vegetables a decent amount you've got your bases covered. If you do feel the need to replace the oatmeal with another starch I'd recommend either brown rice or something really good for you like millet or quinoa (my favorite). Be careful with the nuts too however, if you're buying them in a the supermarket's packed bulk foods area then they're probably packaged on shared equipment with all of the other prepacked bulk items which could contain wheat or even oats.

Charles, good luck on getting back on the diet. Luckily the EU has actual labeling standards in place for the term "Gluten-Free" and so you can find a lot better labeling in regards to possible or absence of gluten content and even shared equipment warnings over there. Meanwhile we still wait on the FDA to release their voluntary labeling guidelines for gluten-free even when they were legally mandated to have released this 2 years ago.

 

[Mr. Nice Guy]

This sure is a very interesting topic! About a year ago I decided to cut out all the wheat, dairy, red meat, sugar and basically all processed foods from my diet, in order to help battling my receding hairline and also my seborrheic dermatitis. I've had a few ups and downs with my seborrheic dermatitis since then but overall it's been good.

My hair has stayed basically the same, but at the same time I did my dietary changes I also started with finasteride. I also started to wash my hair with nizoral and covering my scalp with coconut oil and apple cider vinegar at the same time so I'm not 100% sure I have my new diet to thank for all the success.

One big downside with this has been that I've had a hard time keeping my weight. My current weight is about 125 lbs at 5"10 and since I've just started working out at the gym I obviously need to eat more. So I'm thinking of making an experiment and "sacrificing" my hair! For a couple of months I'm thinking about going all out on the foods I've avoided in the past and keep a close eye on my hair and seb derm and watch the outcome of it!

I'll watch my scalp closely and see if inflammation increases, if my seborrheic dermatitis flairs up, if I experience any shedding and so on, I'll keep you guys updated if there's any interest to this little experiment. And I know that we're all different and my outcome of this might be completely different for anyone else, but maybe someone finds it interesting anyway. I'll still supplement with a multivitamin and some fish oil.

Anyways, I'm off to chug down some whole milk and a couple of cinnamon buns unk:

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

My hair has stayed basically the same, but at the same time I did my dietary changes I also started with finasteride. I also started to wash my hair with nizoral and covering my scalp with coconut oil and apple cider vinegar at the same time so I'm not 100% sure I have my new diet to thank for all the success.

That certainly is a whole lot of big changes all at once! If I were you I'd take it slow on reintroducing these foods back into your diet. Both gluten and casein (milk protein) are somewhat common causes for inflammation on their own. That you were experiencing flare ups of scalp inflammation could have been due to cross contamination of these ingredients or hidden sources seeing as how food manufacturers try to stick it in everything. Try to put like a week between the reintroduction of each of the substances, that should give you more than enough time to realize if your body has adverse effects towards either.

When I first went gluten-free I lost 15 pounds in one week and have been very slow to gain any weight. Then I swapped multivitamins to a type that I incorrectly thought were gluten-free and lost 5 of the pounds I had regained. However in the same time as all of this I've noticed an increase in muscle mass and an almost complete disappearance of where my body used to store fat (consequently requiring me to buy new sized pants). I wouldn't worry so much about the number on the scale as opposed to how you fill out a tshirt, it's not like a female can see your weight from across the bar.

 

[Mr. Nice Guy]

That certainly is a whole lot of big changes all at once!

Thank you for your feedback, that does seem like a much better idea, I guess I got a bit too enthusiastic about it yesterday lol! I'll start by introducing dairy for a week or so and keep going from there until I can rule out what foods are giving me issues. Oh and also, it's actually not my body that makes me want to gain weight, it's my face. I naturally have a thin face and with such low body fat I kind of look like misterE's avatar, very sickly-looking.

But to keep to the topic discussion, after excluding gluten, did you ever eat it by mistake and if so what symptoms did you experience? I just remembered long ago when I one time had been grain-free for a couple of days. I'm suffering, just like many on my mothers side, from depression. Either way I felt quite good but then I ate a big bowl of pasta and almost immediately after, I started to experience brain fog and anxiety that I had throughout the rest of the day.

Thinking back I've been coping with depression quite well the last year, so I'm thinking this might be related to gluten. If that's the case then that would be a much greater reason to avoid it than keeping my hair, but since my mother and her brothers also suffer from depression I guess it could also be genetic. I'll have to see when I start to introduce gluten again in a while, maybe beginning with something light like oatmeal.

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

As I mentioned before, I accidently swapped multivitamins two weeks ago to a brand that it turns out had hidden gluten in it. The first 3-4 days of it I had pronounced lethargy (energy sapped), slight anxiety, had to pay a bit more attention to locomotion, increased abdominal pressure and heavy brain fog. I normally take my multivitamins right before going to sleep so I wasn't awake to notice the onset of symptoms which for me start slowly around the 1 hr mark (although I've heard of people reacting much sooner).

I actually stayed on those multivitamins for over a week cause I had checked their gluten-free status on an outdated company statement yet they had changed formulations since then and it was no longer gluten-free. My symptoms, especially digestive increased over the week+ along with my hair improvement reversing, scalp inflammation coming back and reaching unbearable levels and I was gassing a lot sooner during my workouts.

Since I was unaware as to the actual source of all of it I was starting to doubt things again, all of the symptoms are so subtle that it's easy to just think "well maybe I'm just supposed to be depressed, anxious, lose hair, not gain muscle."

Finally I after cutting out a bunch of other sources that I thought could be contaminated I contacted the vitamin manufacturer and found out their formulations change. Since then my inflammation has been decreasing again, my intestines have returned to normal functioning, my circadian rhythm is back to normal and my mental clarity has almost returned back to what it was before swapping vitamins.

You mention that you may believe your fluctuating depression to be influenced by gluten consumption but feel it may be genetically linked instead. Gluten sensitivity itself is strongly genetically linked and once one person in a family is determined to be gluten sensitive basically everyone else in the family needs to get tested or try the diet. So far I've been successful at getting my father and his sister to go gluten-free and they're both noticing some major improvements not only physically but mentally. If after you reintroduce gluten you experience brain fog, indigestion, depression or anxiety other than immediately learning about all the hidden sources of gluten in processed foods and how to avoid cross contamination, you should talk with your immediate family to convince them to try the diet as well.

Oatmeal would not be the best food to reintroduce in order to observe the effects of gluten. Oats themselves do not contain the gluten molecules but they are recommended to be avoided by those with a gluten sensitivity because they are a frequent source of contamination. You could however simply just end up buying a batch with no cross contamination which would give you a false sense of safety. Try something that you know is going to have high gluten in it, the bigger the possible shock the more you'll know for certain if it needs to be avoided. I would suggest a really heavy, hard bread (not stale, but very firm). Hard breads use a flour with higher gluten content than things like desserts or quickbreads.

 

[dpdr]

Brains Expel Hair (or misterE :whistle: ) -

Stop talking bullshit, for you, stop Gluten is like "the cure for male pattern baldness"

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

Brains Expel Hair (or misterE :whistle: ) -

Stop talking bullshit, for you, stop Gluten is like "the cure for male pattern baldness"

How severe of an idiot do you have to be to call anything and everything you don't understand bullshit? Do I have to put a disclaimer on every single one of my posts so that your small scarred spec of grey matter can understand that there are no absolutes and that I have never claimed there to be absolutes and I have frequently responded to posts of yours and posts of other pharm reps in disguise by flat out saying that there are no absolutes, yet you all still whine and b**ch every single little time someone mentions something that you don't agree with because it doesn't apply to your specific situation? YOU ARE A SICKENINGLY IGNORANT LITTLE MAN WHO'S SAD VIEW OF HIS OWN SHITTY LITTLE LIFE IS ANNOYING THOSE AROUND HIM, IF YOU ARE SUCH AN ABSOLUTIST WITH YOUR TERMINAL VIEW OF DETERMINISM THEN JUST REMOVE YOUR FLAWED GENES FROM SOCIETY ALREADY.

You rag on me and anyone else who even tries thinking for themselves instead of just spewing up the same lame sh*t that is "safe" to say. You don't offer any insight or productive voice to any discussion, you only seek to demerit others so that your limited scope of knowledge isn't brought to light and shown for how pathetic it really is.

This thread is about once specific thing, if you don't like it then I don't give a sh*t and neither does anyone else. If you don't agree with it, fine lets see you actually try thinking for yourself and forming a cohesive argument against it instead of just the same old crying. How the hell can you be so stupid as to try and refer to my claims as being complete bullshit when there's someone else, just 2 posts above you who also might potentially have a gluten problem? Do you think I'm making this up? Is the concept too confusing? Is your web browser stuck only on this single website preventing you from actually acquiring new knowledge from anywhere else on the net?

 

[hairrific]

I just looked up the symptoms of Celiac disease at the mayo clinic and web MD and I see nothing in the very long list of symptoms that list male pattern baldness or scalp hair loss or hair loss in general as a symptom of Celiac disease. Seems to me they list everything else but not hair loss, and they even say the long list of symptoms very from individuals but still no hair loss is mentioned.

And those of you who mention that you had no or little beard growth and body hair, but now that you are on a gluten free diet beard is growing....I got news for you. As you age and if you have DHT, you will grow more beard and body hair, and your male pattern baldness will accelerate to the point of saying my god I look like just like my dad and granddad!

 

[Lucky13]

Its quite sad how this site rules out "different" causes of alopecia. I'm glad I don't think 95% of hair loss in men is just rooted towards a generally named "male pattern baldness." There are many causes for hair loss, it is not a DHT only problem. People should not go bald(period) It is an internal problem. I'm glad the so called "big 3" has helped people but there are underlying causes that are not addressed, which is why if you stop taking the "medicine", what happens? It all falls out.

 

[josh89]

I just looked up the symptoms of Celiac disease at the mayo clinic and web MD and I see nothing in the very long list of symptoms that list male pattern baldness or scalp hair loss or hair loss in general as a symptom of Celiac disease. Seems to me they list everything else but not hair loss, and they even say the long list of symptoms very from individuals but still no hair loss is mentioned.

Good you can read, you're just lacking commonsense. Malnutrition causes hair loss. Celiac disease causes malnutrition if a gluten-free diet is not followed.

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

I just looked up the symptoms of Celiac disease at the mayo clinic and web MD and I see nothing in the very long list of symptoms that list male pattern baldness or scalp hair loss or hair loss in general as a symptom of Celiac disease. Seems to me they list everything else but not hair loss, and they even say the long list of symptoms very from individuals but still no hair loss is mentioned.

And those of you who mention that you had no or little beard growth and body hair, but now that you are on a gluten free diet beard is growing....I got news for you. As you age and if you have DHT, you will grow more beard and body hair, and your male pattern baldness will accelerate to the point of saying my god I look like just like my dad and granddad!

Now that's how to intelligently refute claims! I don't think hair loss is a super common symptom of this disorder, and unfortunately the research on gluten sensitivity is still quite in its infancy at least here in the US. I read a study awhile ago claiming to disprove the link between autism and celiac because in the populations they studied there was no higher of a percentage of positive biopsies (gold standard for celiacs) in either group yet the researchers completely failed to point out the importance of the fact that gluten serum antibodies (gluten sensitivity marker) were twice as common in the autistic group. If you look up celiac disease on european websites they list "hair loss (alopecia)" as a symptom (taken from Coeliac UK Charity: http://www.coeliac.org.uk).

The link between gluten sensitivity and hair loss is largely anecdotal at this point, and will regrettably remain so until the medical community in this country gets their act together regarding this disorder. After getting diagnosed myself I read hours and hours worth of posts on various celiac and gluten sensitivity support groups trying to understand what until that point had just been a random word that I only slightly understood, and during that came upon many different claims of people showing reverse in their hair loss from following a gluten free diet. Not just a reverse in those who had shown patchy hair loss only, but even one or two claims of unreceeding hair lines. I actually cut and paste a number of those in another post of mine that I think was on the New Treatments, Studies and Discoveries forum, I could dredge it up if you'd like but it is honestly just people's claims and there were also instances I found of people claiming no reverse in hair loss from a gluten free diet, no absolutes.

As you read the symptoms I'm sure you're aware of some of the more common changes that occur as a result of gluten sensitivity: Hypothyroidism, altered sexual hormone levels and nutritional deficiency (most notably and common being Iron, Vitamin D and a number of the Vitamin Bs). Coincidentally all of these things are also loosely related to various forms of altered hair growth.

Yes I'm quite aware that your body hair is supposed to pick up as you age. On my father's side however it doesn't. My father (in his 70s, Norwood 7ish) has sparse to no growth on his limbs save for his forearms which are mostly left uncovered by his dress attire. In his friction areas (knees, under pockets, ankles) he has never had hair and his torso has always remained bare. He also can't grow a full beard and is stuck with the same amount of facial hair he's had ever since he was around 20 years old. My father is who I inherited my gluten sensitivity from, and this same pattern of body hair growth can also be found in one of his nephews.

As for myself, the increase in body hair, or rather the actual appearance of any, occurred within 2 weeks of going gluten free. Could be coincidence sure, however as I mentioned above some time after going gluten free I accidently reintroduced a constant source of gluten back into my diet through a new brand of multivitamins and during that time I was perplexed as to why all the new hair growth on my body, face and hair line simply stopped along with the resurfacing of some severe scalp inflammation and I finally started noticing a the occasional shed hair. I foolishly stayed on these multivitamins for 2 weeks before realizing my error about 6 days ago and the inflammation is once again fading. I think I'm starting to see a reemergence of the tiny little hairs that had been trying to fill out my beard (miniaturized beard hairs) but I'm not sure how much progress has happened up top since cutting out gluten once again, at the very least the sometimes unbearable scalp itch has almost completely faded.

 

[5920715]

I don't think food intolerance is causing my hairloss but then you never know.

I hope it is


what do people think of food intolerance kits like the Food Detective Food Intolerance Kit?

http://www.camnutri.com/

[youtube:2avixvso]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ua9cABHjt4[/youtube:2avixvso]

 

[justaquestion]

I always enjoy reading your words, BEH. we seem to be in very similar cases, as you said. cant wait to get my blood work done.

 

[captain_que]

I always enjoy reading your words, BEH. we seem to be in very similar cases, as you said. cant wait to get my blood work done.

do you have any good advice what to ask for when getting your blood work (what you want them to check for) ?

 

[dpdr]

Brains Expel Hair (or misterE :whistle: ) -

Stop talking bullshit, for you, stop Gluten is like "the cure for male pattern baldness"

How severe of an idiot do you have to be to call anything and everything you don't understand bullshit? Do I have to put a disclaimer on every single one of my posts so that your small scarred spec of grey matter can understand that there are no absolutes and that I have never claimed there to be absolutes and I have frequently responded to posts of yours and posts of other pharm reps in disguise by flat out saying that there are no absolutes, yet you all still whine and b**ch every single little time someone mentions something that you don't agree with because it doesn't apply to your specifi .......

:listen:

Show me at least 15 studies on the Gluten x male pattern baldness and stop defecating at the mouth, OK ?

 

[Brains Expel Hair]

Show me at least 15 studies on the Gluten x male pattern baldness and stop defecating at the mouth, OK ?

Fail harder at reading once again troll.

do you have any good advice what to ask for when getting your blood work (what you want them to check for) ?

First off, if hair loss is the ONLY one of the symptoms I've mentioned in this post that you're experiencing, you can probably save yourself a trip to the doctors office for this test. With the occurrence of some of the other symptoms however the tests you are going to want might be difficult to pry out from your doctor unless he's actually up to date (read: 2009+ studies) on the issue of gluten sensitivity. The bare minimum tests you would need for this would be:

-Total IgA
-IgA Gliadin
-IgG Gliadin
-IgA tissue TransGlutaminase (tTG)

The first one lets us know if you have an even rarer occurrence of naturally low IgA levels which would invalidate the specific IgA tests. The two gliadin (a type of gluten molecule) let you know if your body is specifically creating serum antibodies for gluten and the IgA tTG tests to see if your body is creating antibodies for cells in your intestine. Gliadin antibodies without tTG antibodies most likely point towards Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS) while the tTG antibodies mean you have Celiacs. Treatment is exactly the same for both so it's up to you to decide if you want to double check high IgA tTG results by getting a biopsy that can often times fail to accurately be sampled at the correct locations leading to a potential false-negative diagnosis.

The good part about the serum tests is that the IgA ones have a good amount of sensitivity meaning that if you test positive for them then there's only about a 5-10% chance that it's wrong and there's no problem in your body. The IgG one has a bit lower of a sensitivity so there's about a 20% chance that you could get a false-positive. Unfortunately all of them have a somewhat low specificity so there's between a 20-35%ish chance that you could get a false-negative when the truth is that you do have a problem.

Because of the specificity problems associated with those tests it might also be a decent idea to get additional liver/thyroid tests done as well. Those two systems are almost always affected in a gluten sensitive/celiac situation and so if you end up getting negative results across the board but you still feel strongly about the possibility of you having a gluten problem you can always just try the gluten-free diet after your tests and if you believe you feel an improvement you can go back in after a three months of being on the diet and check to see if it had any effect on your liver/thyroid tests.

That food detective kit looks decent and I'd be interested in knowing what sort of accuracy it has. Based on all the steps it just looks like a simple ELISA test which is exactly what the lab your doctor sends your blood off to performs, minus the absorbance units. How much is it? A US company uses a slightly different approach to take home intolerance testing and they claim to have a much for accurate test by getting you to send them fecal material instead of serum. They claim that their test can also catch accurate results for quite a while after you've removed the offending food item from your diet. I do believe it's a bit more expensive too.