Episode 18: Cost Of Not Healing Alopecia

Today’s episode of the podcast is about the Cost Of Not Healing Alopecia

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

Regardless of what type of Alopecia you have and for how long you have it, you need to make your health a priority.

Alopecia, if not treated immediately and properly, can escalate and affect a lot of aspects of your life. It can stop you from showing up your best and living the best life you can.

Join me in today's episode to learn why it is detrimental to deal with your Alopecia right now and what critical steps you need to take to gain your overall health back.

Here are the key takeaways from this episode:

• Alopecia does and will affect your overall wellbeing.

• The impact of Alopecia varies depending on your age and the stage in life when you have it.

• If not diagnosed and treated immediately, Alopecia can lead to many other autoimmune diseases.

• Be mindful of the risks; think of how your condition can affect you and the people you deal with.

• Alopecia may lead to continual depression and anxiety; it can affect your productivity and perspective in life.

• Strive to have more balance in your health to be able to perform your best.

• You always have a choice to take action to create change and make your health your priority.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU CAN'T SIMPLY MISS

• The cost of not healing your alopecia 00:36

• Hair loss affects every area and every facet of your life 01:19

• Alopecia affects your happiness, well being, and opportunity for you 02:20

• Alopecia affects our mood and how we show up in life 03:00

• The cost of not healing, your alopecia is extreme 03:10

• Even as an adult going through alopecia, this was really hard to decipher 04:17

• The cost of not healing, alopecia is astronomical 05:49

• There's also the emotional, the mental, the physical attributes that go along with alopecia 06:10

• Once you're diagnosed with one autoimmune disease, you're three times more likely to obtain a second and a third autoimmune disease 06:20

• There is no one size fits all to how alopecia declines or how it gets better 08:00

• If you have alopecia and you're pregnant, your baby can, and most likely will be receiving the same antibodies 08:22

• The consequences of not healing aloepcia is that you would have continual depression and anxiety 09:29

• Alopecia makes us want to not live up to our potential 10:12

• It's hard to show up and be our best selves if there's an imbalance 12:00

• There is a cost to not healing alopecia and the choice is yours 13:50

• You have more options than you think don't limit yourself 15:21

More episodes: https://www.alopeciaangel.com/podcast-all-episodes 

Transcription

Awaken to hair growth. Awaken to hair growth because there is, possibility to get your hair back. Awaken to hair growth because we're not told that we're able to conquer and overcome alopecia. Awaken to hair growth because I want to be a positive light and beacon for you because I've healed my alopecia and now I help others do the same with different types of alopecia, men, women, children, of all ages of all races and ethnicities.

Welcome back to the alopecia angel podcast. I am your host, Joanna Dolman, awakened to hair growth. Today we are talking about the cost of not healing your alopecia, and this can go several ways depending on who we are, what type of alopecia, how this looks like and what those ramifications are.

And for some of you, you've been dealing with alopecia for many years, maybe 10, 15, 20, 30, even 40 years. And it's been on and off, or maybe it's been on and off and then it just stopped. And then you just went alopecia universalis, or maybe it's just a continual shed or maybe it's continual hair loss that's just perpetual and it hasn't gotten better. And from what I gather from what I see, and from what I know, this will and does affect every area and every facet of your life, whether that's dating, career, school, emotional health, mental health, physical health, spiritual health, there's just so much that it seeps into.

You can't just block it out. So even when it comes to the ability to get up from the bed or the motivation to, you know, do your best at work or school, or even in your activities or your social life, it will and can, and does affect you in these areas. And it stops you from doing many of these things and so maybe if you're an extrovert, you've turned into an introvert.

If maybe you love to travel and go swimming, maybe you stopped swimming. Maybe you've stopped doing many things because of your alopecia, maybe it's holding you back and that's just one side of it, which is also very detrimental especially if you have a child who's going through this and has maybe just closed off and just stopped doing all these things.

But it also affects your happiness. It also affects your overall wellbeing. It also affects the possibility of every opportunity out there for you. So for example, when I was going through alopecia, I had just met my husband and I was dating and so I was dating somebody trying to hide the situation, trying to set this aside, trying to get married, have a life and yet I had this inner situation that A.) I needed to tell him about. I needed to expose him to, and I needed to share it with, because if he is going to be my life partner, which he is, then he should be sharing these ups and downs with me and that affects our mood. That affects how we show up in life, how we show up on every level of life.

And so the cost of not healing, your alopecia is extreme. It really is because I could have shot myself in the foot on so many levels with him, with moving forward with him and my future. I could have been misunderstood with my depression, with my anxiety, with my ups and downs, with my demeanor, with my short temperedness, with my stress, I could have been misunderstood on so many levels.

And if there's anything we want most during this time is to be understood. And it's so hard because most people don't and I would say that no one does. I would honestly say this, so if you have never experienced alopecia and you think you understand you have another thing coming because you don't understand and you'll never understand. And I say this because I've gone through it. I say this because now I'm a parent and I can relate to parents who do the program for their children. I can relate to parents on so many levels, and this is why, like, I want to give them all the information, all the knowledge, all the tools so that they can better support their child.

Because I got to tell you, even as an adult going through this, this was really hard to decipher, to put together and to understand, and to self evaluate and self analyzed, much alone, being a child who maybe is going through puberty or maybe is developing an elementary school and maybe has no clue because they're way too young to understand, or maybe is going through high school and is getting bullied and getting teased and getting criticized all the time.

This is a harder, more complicated situation then let's say, and not to compare. I don't want to compare them, but I'll say maybe that's a harder situation in your teens or, you know, when you're like 11 to 18, because you're still developing not just physically and mentally and socially, but then also as a person you're still developing and you're trying to figure out what you like, what you don't like, who you are, what your personality is like, you know, are you the rock star basketball player? Or are you the guitarists, like who you are, what you're, what you like, everything's developing. You know, when I got my alopecia, I was in my thirties. I knew who I was. I knew what I wanted. And I knew what I didn't want. 

And like I said, in many other podcasts before I'm a go-getter. So I go and get what I want, because I know who I am. I know what I'll stand for and I know what I don't stand for. And so this is very different as a 30 something year old compared to a 16, 15, 10, 5, two-year-old, it's a very, very different and understanding everything that's going on internally in the head, in the body, feelings wise is also very different.

And so the cost of not healing, alopecia is astronomical. It really is. It's astronomical and for those of you who are like naah, it's just hair and who just want to label it as just hair, okay, that's your decision. You can do that, of course and I totally respect that. If it's just hair to you, okay but there's much more to that.

There's also the emotional, the mental, the physical attributes that go along with alopecia. There's also, for those of you who don't know, that once you're diagnosed with one autoimmune disease, you're three times more likely to obtain a second and a third autoimmune disease. And don't think that that doesn't happen to children because it does, it happens to children and it happens to adults.

I actually just have a client. She's six years old, brand new client and within six months of being diagnosed with alopecia, she got two more diagnoses of two other autoimmune diseases and it breaks my heart to see this because alopecia, depending on each of us and on the circumstances, it can be really quick and swift, you can be alopecia areata today and tomorrow you can be alopecia universalis.

I've had clients that in 24 hours, they go to alopecia universalis, in three weeks they go to alopecia universalis in three months, in six months, they can lose it all. This is something you need to take into consideration. This is something that doctors are not telling us. No one told me about, and I saw, gazillion doctors. I know, I'm sure you have to. And this is also something that's not widely spoken about. I do widely speak about these things because I see it. I've helped hundreds of families, hundreds of people, and I can see and compare and contrast and see what those numbers look like. It can happen super quick or it can take many years.

For some people they've had alopecia, let's say on and off in cycles in a roller coaster type of cycle for 10, 15, 20 years and by the time it's like year 21, they lose it all. And maybe their health goes downhill really quick, it just depends. There's no one size fits all, I keep saying this, there is no one size fits all to how alopecia declines or how it gets better, but the possibility to get better is there.

But the possibility to also have it be worse, is also there. And so it's a slippery slope and if you don't care about the hair, I would encourage you to care about all the other effects, including the fact that if you have alopecia and you're pregnant, your baby can, and most likely will be receiving the same antibodies.

They could be receiving the antibodies from you from that alopecia, because that crosses over through the placenta, meaning they could be more susceptible to getting alopecia later on in life as well. So, this is another reason why I would encourage you to heal it because as a parent, I'm sure you, like I do, want my children to be as healthy as possible, always.

And I want to give them the best start. I want to give them the best foods. I want to give them the best education, the best, everything, right. This is the love that parents have towards their children. They want to give them the best that they can do for them and the best start in life, starts at the time of conception.

That's when that starts. That's when that life starts. If you are not your healthiest self, you could be having complications with that pregnancy or transmitting things to your baby as antibodies do. And so that's just some food for thought for you to be thinking about. 

The other side to not healing alopecia, the consequences of not healing is that you would have continual depression and anxiety. I know throughout those three years that I was going through it, I had continual depression and anxiety. I know my clients do too, until they see this light at the end of the tunnel, until they start seeing and feeling the changes, then they're able to be like, yes, I got this. Yes, I'm optimistic. Yes, I have this encouragement and support. 

It's very different to be isolated and alone because again, no one understands you. No one understands what you're feeling, what you're going through. And how this out of body experience is like coming together, because it really is an out-of-body experience. The not healing, alopecia, succumbs us to want to play small, makes us want to not live up to our potential. Not to be the best we can be. It also decreases productivity, right? Because if your thoughts, mind, body, and spirit are thinking and are focused on your hair loss? there's no way you can really focus on school, on work, on promotion, on the wellbeing of your children or on the regular day to day.

The regular day-to-day is going to drag on and not going to be as great. It's not going to be as fulfilling, life won't be as sweet or as satisfying. And it just disrupts, it disrupts every area of life productivity decreases and showing up in life won't be there either in order for us to show up in life, we need to find the zest.

We need to be working towards our best selves. Again, that doesn't happen one day after the other one day to the next but there is possibility to feel better. There is, possibility to see hair growth, even in just a short amount of time. In my program, people see hair growth around 85, 90% of people see hair growth in less than eight weeks.

Imagine getting a jumpstart on the hair, growth on the health, getting that support, and then having you follow through it can be all quite simple, but not healing. Alopecia has ramification, has possibilities of not being whole, of not being complete. I'm not saying this because the person itself is not whole or complete, it's because something's missing.

When we have a disease of any sort, when we have, even if you don't have an autoimmune alopecia and you just have regular hair loss, but it's consistent hair loss over months, years, days, weeks, there's an imbalance and when you have an imbalance something's wrong and it can get worse, whatever that imbalance is.

And this is the thing is like, we want to be our best selves and it's hard to show up and be our best selves if there's an imbalance. And so we need to strive to have more balance, in our health, in ourselves at which point the hair growth, the happiness and everything else comes as well. It just floods.

Can you be happy with alopecia? Absolutely, I don't know anyone personally, who has alopecia and is happy. I do know many of my clients who have healed the alopecia and are extremely happy. That's who I do know personally, I haven't really spoken to anyone who has alopecia and they are like completely living life to their fullest and then bliss with alopecia or with the disease. I think we can all strive to do our best. I think we can all do our best, but maybe sometimes our best is only 50%. Maybe it's only 10%. Maybe it's only 20 or maybe it's 90 or a hundred percent. It just all depends.

I think everything is possible. And I know that hair growth is possible for you. Just like it was for me, just like it is for my clients at the end of the day, we each have to take into inventory. What’s that cost of not healing alopecia looks like, like, do you want to continue to be a shell of yourself? Do you want to continue to have that open window towards the second or a third autoimmune disease?

Do you want to continue to obsess about your hair loss? To obsess about why this product, why that product, why this situation is happening without taking action or without taking true action. Because again, those quick fixes don't work. Those are misleading you, those are misleading you into wasting your money and not getting the results you want.

It's really up to us. It's up to us to take control of our health. It's up to us to see that we can heal. We can reverse this. We can put this to sleep as I like to say and at the same time, there is a cost to not healing it and the choice is yours. The choices in all of us, whether we're the parent or the teenager or the adult, and even maybe with the child, you know, I'm saying for anyone under 18, Sure. Okay.

What your parents say is kind of like how things go, but then after that you have the choice to make a different situation to take action on your health. Don't think that just because nothing has happened in the past, that nothing can change because the only thing that will create change is action. That has to go together, action creates change and then through trial and error, like in me, you see results. And this is why I created this program. This is why I help others do the same. There's no need to struggle anymore. There's no need to live in uncertainty. There's no need to live in doubt or in fear. There's no need to feel helpless to be constantly depressed or anxious.

Think about it. This would affect, this does affect. Every aspect of your life, of your school, your relationships, personal, social, friends, family, partners. This affects your work, your career, this affects your confidence, your self esteem, how you show up in life, what you actually go for, what you don't go for.

Do you, are you going to go to try out for the basketball team? Are you going to try out for that promotion at work? Are you going to travel the world like you want, or are you just going to like to be in your shell because of the situation, you know, the choice is yours and at the same time I'm telling you, you have more options than you think don't limit yourself.

You have more options. You have the option to heal. You have the option to get better. You have the option to do better. It's just all up to you but with those options, there's also that option of not healing your alopecia and understanding those ramifications as, um, is, is important. You have to look at the pros and the cons, like what happens if I don't do anything in what happens if I do do something, if I do do something, the world is your oyster, right?

You'll be on top of the world. This Mount Everest will be below you and you'll be an amazing champion. If you don't do anything, there's risks and losing more hair and going bald and getting a second or a third autoimmune disease. There's a risk and letting these emotions weigh you down so much where you can't move forward or get unstuck.

So I leave you with this, you know, for some food for thought, it's important to understand where you are, where you set and what you want, one size doesn't fit all and maybe you're okay with your alopecia diagnosis. If you're listening to me more than likely, you're not okay with it more than likely you want results more than likely you want hair growth.

You want health, you want vibrancy. You want to look and feel your best. And this is why I'm here because I look and feel my best. And granted, it's also working progress. Today I should have gone to the gym and I didn't, it's a work in progress. You know, I cut myself some slack and you know, you do better the next day. Cut yourself some slack, do the best you can and I'm here when you're ready to take care of.

Thank you for listening to the alopecia angel podcast, a positive light and healing alopecia. You can do this and we can help. Spread the word that reversing alopecia is possible by telling your friends and family.