Losing a lot of hair!

[elwaytaffy]

Hi everyone I am new, I've been visiting for a while but here is my first post. As you can tell from the title my hair has thinned out significantly over the past 2 months. I've been raw for 3 months. I would love any advice, suggestions, or stories if you have the time. Here is a little about me to help...

I'm a 30 yr old female
I've lost 19 lbs and could stand to lose 15 more
My average eating day looks like this...

am-2 apples
snack-an orange and grapes
lunch-huge baby spinach salad w/ carrots, cuccumbers, celery, and Alissa's Cilantro Dressing (LOVE this dressing, I add a jalapeno & extra cilantro for extra zip!)
dinner-another salad or Alissa's Pesto or Marinara sauce w/ zuch. & squash noodles (I just discovered the Pesto and am obsessed w/ it!!)

I think that I am getting enough calories, nutrients, etc. However, I know that a symptom of malnutrition is hair loss. I am so scared that a mo. ago I started taking 1,000 mcg of B12. Last week I started taking a women's multi vit. FYI...I can't tell a difference w/ the B12 yet. My hope is not to take these, but my hair is much, much thinner. I'm really nervous, I hope you don't think i'm vain!

So I ordered Alissa's Shape Shift and Green Food Drink last week. I haven't received it yet, but I'm hoping that this will eliminate any lack of nutrients that I'm not getting presently. Those of you who have these products, how much do you take daily and any suggestions on how to mix them?

So I promise I will wrap this up now. I would love any advise, it's getting so bad that I am concidering going to 70% raw, which I DO NOT want to do. I feel so great these days, my skin, energy, weightloss, and overall well being. So please help!! Thanks again!
Take care!

[kirk]

Hi elwaytaffy,

Welcome to the board! I wished that I could be of help with your hair loss problem but all I can offer is a thread dealing with the subject.

http://www.30dayrawchallenge.com/forum/showthread.php?t=199

There are others here that are more informed than I. Hope they can help you more.

kirk

[ConsciousCuisine]

Welcome!

Since I don't know your weight or height or activity level or any of the exact sizes of the portions of foods you are eating or all of the specific ingredients in your foods, I cannot tell you if you are indeed getting enough nutrients or calories.

It looks like you are getting (roughly) somewhere between approximately 800 and 1,200 calories a day. That is really not much for any average adult, unless you weigh 100 lbs. and are less than 5 feet tall and never exercise. Then again, calories are not the most important part of a Raw diet. Nutrients are! :) Again, I don't know the exact numbers and cannot gague anything without the above information...

Living Harvest's ShapeShift™ Organic Pro-Terrain Meal (this is what you mean when you say "Alissa's Shapeshift", yes?) contains many nutrients that your diet appears to be lacking as it is. It supplies 10 g. of high-quality protein, EFA's, Vitamins, Minerals and Probiotics and more than enough B-12.

It is a good choice for those who don't eat a variety of food or are worried about specific nutrients.

Good luck and welcome! This is a great place to share!

Brande

[marigold]

i have no advice and i have heard of a couple of raw friends who have had serious hair loss on raw..both thought it was deficiacy.!!!!

[Rawkinlocs]

Well, I'm no doctor, but just from my own personal research; I think that the hairloss that sometimes occurs when some (definitely not all) people switch from a cooked food diet to a raw food one due to one of the following:

1. Deficiency - but unless your diet is all nuts and seeds and very little fruit and veggies, I honestly don't see that being it. We are still very programmed to believe that nature is incapable to provide us with what we need.

2. Detox - especially if chemicals were frequently used on the hair (and rather recent from the time of going raw) such as perms or relaxers or hair color.

3. The body 'doing it's thing' to regulate otherwise irregular, imbalanced hormones.

4. Heredity

I've seen a few stories in various places online about hairloss when raw for a given period of time, BUT...the women later reported the hair growing back; growing in fuller and healthier in some cases.

Please contact Amanda of http://rawesome.com as she has gone through this too and noticed new regrowth of her hair.

[elwaytaffy]

thanks for taking the time to respond. ConsciousCuisine, my weight when I started was 157 lbs, I now weigh 138. I am 5 feet six inches. There really is no hairloss problems in my family. I guess it would be a good idea to try to journal my calories for a couple days. I totally agree that nutrients are more important, but if I could possibly be only eating 800 (give or take) calories a day...that's not good. Rawkinlocs & kirk thanks for the sites, I will definately check it out.
thanks for all the infor

[Jeanne]

On page four of this forum I started a thread called 6 month crisis...need help. It was about losing a lot of hair. This seems to happen a lot when I start something healthy ay about the 6th month mark. I got a lot of helpful posts. One thing that was mentioned was to eat more greens so I started using green powder 'superfood' as well as increasing my green leafies.
Something else I was told was that the new cells push out the old cells and this shedding is just part of making way for new and healthier.
I have heard of people losing fingernails too! Not because of something wrong, just part of cleansing.
The greens helped slow the hair loss down for me.

[elwaytaffy]

Thanks Jeanne for that information, it was really interesting and helpful! :)

[smasty]

My hair is still ok...but my fingernails went to hell after my 3 week fast. I figure I really shocked my system and it took about 3 months for that to grow out. As I approach my 5 month anniversary on raw, my fingernails have just stopped peeling and are long and strong!

I have found it so interesting and facsinating to watch the change in my fingernails...and correspond it to my change in health. I could definitely see the shock they took, then the renewed health.

[lil]

Interesting -

That's the first thing noticed, is my nails are peeling and breaking off since going raw. My nails have always been strong. So - sounds like I have to wait it out. It's good to hear it happened to someone lese!.

[smasty]

Hi Lil----I went through 3 whole months of peeling nails, when they had never peeled before. I've had 2 weeks now with no peeling at all and they are growing like crazy. Stick it out!