Beauty & Grooming  Discussion Forum

We have an extreme hair-loss problem in our fourteen-year-old daughter without an easy explanation or solution. I would like to get any feedback or ideas from any one who has useful details on this problem. My daughter grew up in the US her whole life before we moved back into India in March 2008. She was about twelve then. Until then she had a long, beautiful hair, a pride of my wife' s family heritage. After October of that year, suddenly, my daughter started to lose hair suddenly in small lumps now and then. In Pune, we lived in an apartment complex which was just on a busy road which threw dust all the time into our apartment. Even after that her hair looked fine, by usual standards. The hair has been falling since then and she has a small hair now. We approached a thyroid specialist and a bunch of skin specialists who could not figure this out. Of course, her vitamin D has been low, but not alarming enough to explain the hair loss issue. No thyroid problem either. Along with this hair loss problem, my daughter' s height growth too has stunted. Until 2008 her growth was quite decent, but it has stopped since then. She is now 5 feet tall, but when she was six or seven, the US doctors had predicted that she would be in the top level of height for our Asian gene. Even that has been disproved. Otherwise, our child is perfectly fine and quite healthy and smart. We are disappointed that science does not explain things beyond a point, which makes us wonder if we should think of a non-scientific explanation. Any thoughts--scientific or unscientific--why this could have started suddenly? Thanks for your time.
Padmaja replied. Hi Mr Balan,
Moving from one country to another can be very stressful on a person.

I am sure you might have gone through the same when you came to US from India. First of all its a big cultural shock. Lot of learning to adapt to this lifestyle, and lot of adjustments o make.

You said your daughter was raised in US.
I am sure you daughter is under a lot of stress.
First of all its a big cultural shock as things are entirely diffrent in Inida when compared to US.

Stress can do a lot of damage to the helath of a person.
One of my cousin sister had the same problem. She had long hair upto her knees and she lost all of it.
Finally once she was treated for her stress problems she recouped.
Her hair grew back again.


Have you tried talking to your daughter before moving from US to India?
There are so many things she could be going through in school, making new friends learning new languages adjusting to the new environment etc., etc.,.

I would suggest you to take her to a child psychology specialist.

Teaching her ways to combat stress, by getting her into yoga and meditation classes will be rally helpful.

And a few changes in her hair care and nutrition can help.
Stop using shampoos and try using natural products. Now and then give oil massage to the head.
Try giving multivitamins, and anti oxidants can help in stress reduction too.
You can try homeopathic remedies they really work and do not have too many side effects like the allopathic medicines.

Hope this helps.