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Accutane and hair changes
Why do you think accutane causes often hair color and shape to change?
I have naturally red-brown almost straight hair. A year after accutane use I started to grow darker hair, and I also noticed new black and very frizzy hairs that I pulled out with tweezers. They were like animal hairs. My hair was also very coarse and I was losing my hair.
After I stopped eating vitamin A foods, my own hair color returned and thinning spots grew back in (I still have a lot thinner hair but no thinning spots)
I still notice I have oddly shaped or curly hairs.
The question I have been thinking is, is it DNA damage in my hair follicles, that causes broken proteins to be formed, and so my hair is deformed, curly and dark?
The sebum glands in my hair follicles are functioning very badly too, so my hair is breaking off a lot because of dryness.
Because people have recovered from eczema, dry eyes and such, which are DNA damage related if I understand right, maybe my hair will get normal too?
Thanks for reading, I'm new here and this is the first time I write here.
@ladybug Hey welcome over here Kerttu! I think the common thought is that, accutane or high VA intake damage is not permanent. The experimentation we are doing with low VA eating will tell, but have to be patient as results most likely will take some months or years to reveal if they do. Have you ever tested your serum VA levels?
My hair has been shedding too much for years after accutane, and hasn't slowed on 2yrs of low VA, I hope that it will reverse in the next two years, just have to wait and see. I have hope, but expectations are very low, hair loss is a complicated subject. All my other symptoms are doing better. Hair is a tricky one I think...
@orion I have tested for serum retinol levels and they were normal and almost low. But I know it's not reliable.
For me too the hair is something thats one of the slowest things to show positive changes. For me shedding isn't the worst problem anymore, more like the dryness. I wash my hair once a month and still am in pain for a week after I wash my hair. It's also breaking off a lot and not getting longer. I didn't know what split ends even meant before accutane and now that's all I have.
Knowing what has caused my hair to become like this would make this easier.
I hope we will see results soon on this diet
I found a long black hair again last night. Weird! I pulled it off and the root was black too.
@orion I don't see it as positive because I started getting darker hair after accutane use (my hair has gotten lighter again on vitamin A detox) But I get less black hairs today than year ago when I was badly poisoned.
Somehow vitamin A causes my hair to turn dark and curlier, and other people report similiar things after accutane.
@ladybug ok that makes sense, it is probably related to copper dis-regulation, which I think is a common thing with and after accutane dosing, hopefully it will happen less and less and your hair will return to normal in a year or two.
My hair turned white "prematurely"... I never took accutane, but I'm starting to wonder if fermented cod liver oil might be a similar sort of deal. I took it for many years, while also on a very high VA diet in the first place.
IMO, you might want to try washing the hair MORE often, not less. Get rid of the toxic fats on the scalp.
I wash my hair about twice a week. When I do, I follow the old-fashioned instructions: lather, rinse, repeat. The first lather doesn't work half as well as the second.
I believe that things like soap, toothpaste and even shampoo are our friends in this endeavor. Think about it--they are like bile. They break down fats. especially detergents like shampoo. Detergents are actually something I avoided for many years, but like many things I've come around to realizing why they exist--and so closely to human life. I wash my dishes with detergent, but I do use a trad soap afterwards. This will remove traces of detergent. I don't seem to need to use soap after shampoo to rid my scalp of detergents, but it might be something you could try. Liggets bar shampoo is a product out there.