I Don't Dislike My Hair That Much

It's almost 3am here and on any normal day I'd be sleeping.  My plan was to have my next post be about my latest trip to Trader Joe's, but I find my 2am wake up bark to be more interesting.

Bill, our pudgy little doxie boy, tends to switch between my parents' bed and his (and his sister's) blankie in the loft at night.  When he wants to get back into bed, sometimes he's just too lazy or achy (he has a bad back) to use his doggy steps to get up there himself, so he barks for somebody to help him.  At 2am I got a bark, a rare occurrence since he usually wants to get into my parents' bed and not mine.  It was then that I realized I had to pee.

Upon washing my hands and glancing in the mirror, I noticed an unusual amount of white on my head where the part in my hair was. Because I had woken up and not fixed my hair, it was on the opposite side of my head than usual and messy.  I fooled around with my hair a bit and was shocked to notice that my hair seemed thinner in the front than I remembered.  Panic.  What young female wouldn't panic?

I had noticed more shedding than usual while combing my hair after showers, but I passed it off as a seasonal shed.  I hoped it was.  But now I realize my latent fear is a reality.

My pseudo-veganism is causing me to lose hair.

I sighed and figured I'd sleep on it and talk to my mom tomorrow--or rather today at a reasonable time.  I hate the idea of talking to her about this because she still hasn't accepted my vegan diet.  She believes I'm depriving myself and taking on all the world's problems and suffering for everyone else.  She worries than I'm not getting protein and vital components of a healthy diet.  I can't tell you how many times she's suggested I have a dairy day a week.  Obviously I refuse.  So you can only imagine what telling her I'm losing my hair would do.

Well, I can't sleep.  I turned on my trusty laptop and did a search for the vegan diet and hair loss.  Boy was that a relief!

Friends, the vegan diet apparently causes a type of hair loss that begins 2-4 months into the diet and corrects itself a few months later.  The body recognizes the diet as a crash diet (and the fact that I'm trying to lose weight probably doesn't help things) and crash diets often cause hair loss.  Also, vegan diets are often short on iron and zinc, which can cause hair loss.  I'll be supplementing that, although I'm sure there's enough in my multivitamin.

I started my pseudo-veganism 4 months ago.  Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to waiting for the hair loss to stop and reverse, I want it now!  Who wouldn't?

I'm a little upset.  I'm mostly relieved.  I'm also trying to restrain myself from jumping out of bed right now to go buy supplements and oils to make the diet all nutritious and wonderful.