Having too much fun so the Docs here prescribed me lithium at 600 mg daily…of course my question to you is does lithium have any potential side effects regarding hair loss???
Simply put, yes… Lithium and other antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs are known to contribute or to cause hair loss.
How soon into a three week period of Oxymetholone therapy will androgenic alopecia become aggravated?
If Oxymetholone does worsen pre-existing MPB, are the effects reversible upon discontinuation of the drug or possibly improved by other means?
Thank you.
Why are you undergoing Oxymetholone therapy? Do you have a major health problem? If so, you might look to that problem as a cause of your hair loss. I am sorry but there is no magic number and no way to tell, but this steroid is known to cause hair loss and once it kicks in, it may not be reversible. In determining if it might reverse, you may want to know if you have genetic balding and determine the degree of miniaturization you have.
Hair loss and the degree of hair loss can be a very subjective observation until one day you notice you are bald, since you can lose up to half your hair density and still look normal.
(female) The last few months my hair has been thinning and my head tingles and I feel extremely stressed out… The upside of this is that I feel stubble and regrowth. My thining is all over the head but mostly in the front (bangs) I feel like it is ruining my life.. I dont feel like going out or working or doing anything! It sucks.. I used to love my hair.. I take xanax for my stress is that making it worse?? Or could it?? I got on it after my hair started falling out.. Since I feel stubble and regowth does it mean its growing back??? Thank you for your time! Have a great day!
While many drugs are known to have a side effect of hair loss, it is relatively rare. You should always pursue if there is a treatable medical condition for hair loss. Hair loss in women have many, many causes and if it is not genetic, there is often an identifyable cause. You need to see a doctor for this who can give you a diagnostic work-up.
I have been on propecia for about 8 years, so far so good. Recently I am on “Coversyl 4mg” to control my blood pressure. I understand most of the high blood pressure drug will cause hair loss. If this drug does, can propecia reverse the effect? I am worried cause it takes me 8 years to maintain reasonable “amout” of hair. Hope to hear from u soon. Regards
Many drugs have the potential side effect of hair loss and antihypertensive drugs are amongst them. If your hair loss is from the side effect of a drug, then it will not respond to Propecia. Speak to your doctor about this drug. Is there a one-to-one relationship? I mean, did the hair loss start exactly at the same time as you started to take the new medication?
I recently got my first shot of depo and it has been going good until now. I started losing ALOT of hair. I have naturally thick hair and have never had an issue with it falling out. I fill the drain in the shower then fill a brush after the shower. It started happening about a month ago and i can feel the differance in it already. I have read that it happens with the depo but will it come back and how long will it keep falling out like this?
If you are talking about depomedrol, it is a steroid and it is a know cause of hair loss. In men with genetic hair loss, it may precipitate permanent acceleration of the hair loss. If you stop the steroids and possibly take Propecia (assuming you are a man), then it might take a few months before you may see new hair growth once the offending agents disappear.
If you are a woman and are talking about Depo-Provera, then birth control pills are known causes for hair loss in women. If you stop the Depo-Provera, chances are that the hair loss will reverse in a number of months. Be sure that your doctor is managing the process and is checking you out for other causes of hair loss. Ask your doctor about alternative birth control to this medication.
Hello Dr. Rassman,
I am a 29 year old female and have been slowly losing my hair for several years. It’s gotten to the point where it is noticible and I am very concerned. I have been to my pcp and determitologist. I have had the standard thyroid tests, etc. and everything is normal. I also have mild vitiligo which I have heard can cause hair thinning as well. I am currently taking spironolactone and am using minoxil. They don’t seem to be helping but I know those can take time.
I have also been taking Levora for about 8 years. I hadn’t thought about that as being a possible cause, but then I noticed that it is listed as a possible side effect. And one of your posts mentions that hair loss is a side effect of birth control pills in 1-5% of women.
Any suggestions? Are there better pills to be on or should I try to go off the pill?
Thanks for your time
It is true that birth control pills can cause hair loss. I realize hair loss is a very sensitive topic, especially for women, but so is an unplanned pregnancy. You should definitely discuss any medication changes with your regular doctor. Some birth control pills may have more hair loss than others, so ask your doctor to experiment with a few of them to determine which one has the least impact on your hair problems.
Hello Doctor, I was wondering if the drug Tramadol, or any other perscription pain killers (possibly even neruontin) could cause hair loss? I took Seasonale for one month about a year ago, and my hair was falling out in chunks. It slowed way down after that, and I am now on Yaz (like Yasmin) which I heard is good for women with that kind of hair loss. But I have taken Tramadol pretty much every day since last september for chronic pain, and since then I noticed my hair is a lot thinner on top, mostly in the front but its thin all over. I just stopped taking my tramadol a week or two ago and the hair loss has decreased by about half. Do you think this is just a coincedence and that I truely have female pattern baldness, or is there any correlation between pain medication and thinning hair and if so will it grow back? Thank you so much!
Many medications can cause hair loss. It is virtually impossible to tell if Tramadol is causing your hair loss especially when you are taking other medications. Moreover, stress and chronic pain can also be a factor with your thinning hair.
I was wondering Dr if you take steroids at a young age (19) (I know certain steroids are more harmful to your hair than others), and you do start to loose your hair but after 4 years you still have very thick hair but you do have mild hair loss and you still have enough thick hair to cover up bald spots, what does that mean? Are you predisposed to loosing all your hair or the hair you lost while on steroids is that it, has the hair loss stopped? Mind you, I have been on propecia for close to 2 years but I did stop for close to 6 months and none of my hair in the back fell out but my frontal line receded a bit.
Also, can rogaine cause hairloss? Because I was using rogaine and I did get some growth but I also felt I had some hair loss so I went off of it (I was on for about 6 months) then I have started to lose more hair. I am on propecia, so what is going on? PLEASE HELP ME.
Steroids, especially anabolic steroids (the kind bodybuilders use), may cause hair loss. Unfortunately for reasons not clearly understood, once you start losing hair it seems to continue as if a “switch” has been turned on.
Finally, the hair loss you are noticing may just be your natural course of hair loss indendent of Rogaine or Propecia. Propecia and Rogaine may have slowed down your hair loss to a certain degree, but we will never know the degree of how much of gain or loss you had because you did not continue the drugs for an extended period of time. My opinion is that you may want to continue the Propecia and/or see a hair specialist who may better assess the degree of your hair loss and its balding pattern, hopefully by mapping our your hair for miniaturization to obtain measurements on what is happening to your hair.
Two years ago I had my ovaries removed due to solid cysts. I have had problems with HRTs. Some of the physical problems I had with synthetic hormones went away when I started bioidentical hormones. As soon as I started bioidenticals, I could literally watch the hair fall out of my head. The loss has alternately slowed or stopped,however, on a lower dose of estrogen my scalp is very sore to the touch & itchy. (The soreness is not because I have been scratching my head. I haven’t). What causes this?
Also, I had hormone levels tested before going on bioidenticals(18months after surgery & 16 months after HRT) and it showed I had very high androgen levels, but doctors & pharmacists can’t seem to tell me why, or what I can do about it. Any suggestions?
See Bioidentical Hormone Replacement – HRT Without the Side Effects.
Taking out the ovaries will produce an imbalance in your female to male hormone ratios. Many doctors treat women with HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) to adjust to the changes associated with surgically induced menopause, which follows the loss of your ovaries. I have no doubt that naturally occurring herbs will supply hormones that have the capacities that you outlined, but the amounts of hormones that you are mimicking with these herbs are clearly producing hair loss. This suggests that the testosterone and androgenic effects are inducing the genetic hair loss that you have programmed in your genes. I would generally tell you to stop taking the bioidentical hormone replacement and see the effects on your hair loss. Seek out the advice of a competent doctor to try to manage what you are treating.
In November 2004 I took Ibuprofen for a knee injury and by the end of the week my pain was unbearable; the Ibuprofen did not help with the pain at all, but all of my hair fell out. Well, I used Nioxin and have been taking one Biotin and 3 Hair, Body, and Nail pills a day.
My hair on my head is growing back (finally) It’s very short and I can see differing lengths…. But I have also noticed very fine hairs growing on my face and not just where my eyebrows used to be. Is this the normal fuzz that was probably there before that I didn’t notice or are my vitamins trying to make me look like a man.
I’m 37 years old. Please help me.
While many drugs may cause hair loss, I suspect your hair loss may have been coincidental or from the physical stress caused by your knee injury. With respect to the fuzz you notice on your face, it is most likely that was there before and you had not noticed. You can see this in everybody. We’re all fuzzy!
Hello Dr. Rassman,
I saw in your response to a question about a GNC Mega Man product that it contained DHEA which can cause or accelerate hairloss. Could you please tell me if the supplement MuscleMilk made by CytoSport contains this chemical or any other chemicals which are known to cause or increase hairloss? Thank you very much!
Muscle Milk appears to be a whey based product. Whatever the cow ate, the hormones that the cow produces and the hormones that the diary farmer gave the cow will appear in the milk of the cow and in the whey based products that make up many of the nutritional supplements that ‘fitness’ focused individuals take. The use of growth hormones in some dairy cows will be in the milk and the whey (whey is a byproduct of cheese manufacturing — a concentrated milk byproduct). Even without added steroids, these products may have some steroid-like impact (see: LE Magazine). You may have risk here, but as I am not an expert in the use of these supplements, I am hesitant to make a statement about the things that are either naturally in the supplements from the whey itself, or added by those that manufacture such products as GNC Mega Men or Muscle Milk.
Doctor,
You recently mentioned (GNC Men’s Mega Men and Hair Loss) that a certain GNC multivitamin contains DHEA, which can produce hair loss as a side effect. I use the GNC mega men multivitamin, and I can’t find any mention of DHEA –or the full name of Dehydroepiandrosterone– in the ingredients. Does it go by a different name? I suspect one or more of the following ingredients: L-Arginine, L-Carnitine, L-Glutamine, L-Taurine, L-Valine, L-Leucine, L-Isoleucine.I also take a protein shake that contains much larger quantities of L-Isoleucine, L-Leucine, L-Valine, and L-Glutamine. In addition, I take a creatine supplement with L-Glutamine, Taurine, Glycine, K-Arginine, and L-Methionine.
Ironically, I usually take these supplements alongside of a DHT blocker (first propecia, more recently Avodart) because I was experiencing thinning hair a while back. I’m under the impression some of these may increase DHT production in the body.
I would appreciate it if you could tell me which, if any, of these ingredients produce hair-loss, or increase DHT, as a side-effect.The good news is that I haven’t noticed any additional hair loss, but I would like to cease use of these products ASAP if they accelerate the hair loss process.
Thank you very much.
My comments that reflected the presence of DHEA in the product GNC Men’s Mega Men come from the GNC.com website, where it states “Features DHEA, one of the most abundant hormones produced in the body and is a precursor to other hormones.. ”
DHEA can cause hair loss and that is all I have said about it. I am not against this product, just looking for things that cause hair loss and reporting what I learn to this audience.
With regard to the other listed nutrient supplements that you asked about, clearly a deficiency of any essential dietary elements in your diet can, by themselves produce hair loss.
L-Glutamine: There is a suggestion that high amount of this can cause increases in growth hormone, which could therefore produce hair loss if that association bares out.
Taurine, Glycine, K-Arginine, and L-Methionine : There is no direct association that I know of between taking amino acids supplement and hair loss. Any deficiency in these however, will produce hair loss. Good diets should alone produce adequate amounts of these essential nutritionals.
Hello Dr. Rassman last you told me to go to a doctor in ny, I went to see him but he stated that he just didn’t know. I a 3rd round of accutane over 2 years ago, and have experienced hair thinning since.. I am very distraught since I thought the ny doctor could give me more answers and explanations as to how accutane could possibly damage hair follicles forever. I’ve been researching but its all about people like me complaining aobut the accutane induced hair loss, but no reason how it could do this damage. I was told that accutane works by reducing your sebacous gland. I had no idea that sebum would play a role in thinning or damaging hair.. I don’t know why doctors are saying it can be permanent, when in the past they said its only temporary.. and its been over a year, my hair is so thin. I’m taking biotin and I’m not even sure if that will work. I have no one to turn too. Can you explain to me what needs to be done, or how it can damage the hair follicles, if accutane only effects the sebacaus glands. thanks.
Medical clinical science is as much a descriptive science as a biological science. That means we describe what we see, possibly more than we understand what we see. Do not be too hard on the doctor, because I am sure he told you what he knows. As for scholarly doctors, that doctor is as scholarly as they come. We know that Accutane does, at times, cause permanent hair loss (that is what we see) but if we really knew why, then we could surround the cause of it and maybe fix it. I do not have the answers you are looking for, nor do others I have asked. Sorry!
dr. increased my toprol-xl from 50 mg to 100 can this cause hair loss? never noticed any loss or spots on my face until it was increased.
thank -you
Toprol-XL is in a class of blood pressure medications (beta blockers) which, amongst other side effects, include hair loss. With women it is reversible, but in men it may accelerate genetic hair loss and may not be reversible.
Hi Dr. Rassman, just a quick question. Upon starting propecia 7 months ago i noticed a definate decrease in body hair. Have you come across this in your practice and what would you make of it.
Many thanks
Yes, through people that have written in to this blog, I have heard that this is a side effect. I have had one patient of mine who (like you) reported reduced body hair with Propecia use. I just wish it would have done that for me because at times I feel that I look like the picture on the right.