Over the Christmas break of 2019, I noticed I was losing a LOT of hair. It was thinning and didn’t have its normal vigour that I had been blessed with throughout much of my life. My scalp was also very itchy.
It was unpleasant as I could fill my hand with a very large ball of hair every time I washed my hair, let alone what would brush out afterwards.
From a hand full of hair each week and each wash, to a small ball for each… this is the change over time I’ve experienced by getting curious with how I wash my hair and what treatments I use!
I get stressed too!
2019 was an exceedingly stressful year for me, so this loss of hair wasn’t a complete surprise as I know that stress can lead to hair loss. I realised I needed to address the issue before I went bald!
It then became a matter of “heal thyself”. I was well established with the Root Cause Protocol by this stage and understood the effect that stress can have on the body and not unlike my clients, my body was subject to the impact of stress!
What’s going on?
I took time to reflect on what was going on in my life; what the sources of my stress were, how I responded to them, what food I was eating, the quality of my sleep that I was getting etc.
I realised that the stress that took place in 2019 backed onto a series of stressful years (then COVID hit soon after!). During that time I hadn’t addressed how I was responding to the sources of stress in my life. I wasn’t as sick as I had been when I started exploring the RCP protocol, so I kept on pushing myself forward and not listening to my body.
As I looked back over those years I saw that I had been experiencing new symptoms but I had been ignoring them. Those warning signs kept calling out until it became a scream with the large hair loss!
As I ran through my mental checklist of my situation, I was able to see what was going on in my world on a day to day basis that could be contributing to my hair loss. I knew that I needed to take action in the short term with something practical ‘here and now’ to calm my scalp down. I also became acutely aware of my need to change up my routine if I was going to make longer term improvements and address the stress.
This article outlines the changes I made to stop my hair loss.
I changed my shampoo
I realised that my choice of shampoo could be adding to the problem as many shampoos contain chemicals that can irritate the scalp.
I went looking for a shampoo that had minimal ingredients, the more natural the better. I found Auromere Ayurvedic Shampoo with neem and aloe vera online, and started using it as soon as it arrived. It helped immediately, my scalp felt cleaner and I could tell it was less inflamed.
5 steps to stop the hair drop
I knew that castor oil has many restorative benefits (including anti-histamine properties) so I started to experiment to see if I could regrow my hair with castor oil.
Step 1. Coat your scalp in oil. Use a little at a time because it’s thick, gluggy and a bit tricky to work with. If you have long hair, apply the oil section by section as the oil doesn’t need to go through to the ends.
Step 2. Massage the oil into your scalp.
Step 3. Leave for no more than 10 -15 minutes.
Step 4. Put conditioner (not shampoo) on your scalp before you get in the shower to rinse the oil off as the conditioner will begin breaking up the oil.
Step 5. Rinse the oil from your hair then shampoo as normal. You may need to do a second shampoo until the oil is all gone. No conditioner is necessary after you’ve washed the oil out.
To start with, I used this process every week. As my scalp calmed down I switched to fortnightly, then monthly.
It took a few weeks for my hair to start to thicken up again, I could feel short spiky hair coming through to replace past lost hair. My scalp was no longer getting itchy and it was less likely to get oily.
During this time I also started to work on some long term changes. I’ll share those in my next blog post.
If you’ve been experiencing hair loss, give these options a go.
What’s important to know however, is that hair loss is a symptom of mineral imbalances in your body that ultimately need to be addressed. The way we do this at Supporting Balance is with a consult. To work out which consult option is best for you, book in for a free 15 minute call with our team and we will point you in the right direction.