Looking for Effective Medical Treatments

Oh wow⤴️ it usually only displays in AMABs I'm always surprised to see otherwise. But, my maternal grandmother had full-body alopecia and I never knew bc i thought the pencilled brows and wigs were just an "old lady thing" of hers ☺️😮‍💨

I’ve found that keeping inflammation down in my body over all helps with alopecia flairs. I’m also very careful about any product I put on my hair or skin. I wash with baby shampoo and apple cider vinegar only as often as needed, usually about once a week. I refresh in between washes with a light conditioner and water wash. I also use rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball to dab at tender areas and cool down the “hot spots”, essential oil like lavender help for flairs also. I’m time it always grows back but spots will always eventually reappear in areas on the hairline near my temples. I’ve made peace with it.

Then I saw an extremely rude, dismissive dermatologist in December 2020 who prescribed Clobetasol Propionate usp 0.05% and told me "it might work. It might do nothing." and gave little instruction at all. It has an applicator *nozzle* and runs thin as water, so there's a ton of waste and my hair ends up looking greasy all over beside wherever I applied it, absorbing and spreading a steroid all over the place. Sweet. Used off/on because i hate applying it and can't touch it with my hands and it doesn't seem to do much of anything except add a task to my day. As stated, eventually everything but the beard grew back "fully." Somewhere in Jan 2021 idk exactly, I got a new quarter-sized spot on the right side of my scalp. I saw a new Dermatologist last week, and he confirmed areata and prescribed Triamcinolone Acetonide Cream, USP 0.1% to be used "twice daily for 10 days of the month, any 10 days but people usually do the first 10 days to make it easy to remember." I was excessively clear about allergies to petrol-derivatives and ovclusives, and aversions to PEGs, parabens, and that I'm vegan so no Lanolin for me, thanks🙏. This cream's label reads: "each gram contains 1 mg triamcinolone acetonide USP in a water washable cream base consisting of mineral oil (and) lanolin alcohol, isopropyl palmitate NF, propylene glycol stearate, propylene glycol USP, cetyl alcohol NF, sorbitan monostearate NF, polysorbate (60) NF, sorbic acid NF, polyoxyl (40) stearate Nf, polyparaben NF, methylparaben NF, and purified water USP" It's literally only made of the things I asked not to be prescribed, so I can't really report on its effectiveness. New dermatologist in April.

My chin of my beard had completely fallen out, via getting itchy af and me just finding stray hair everywhere (Oct 2020). They certainly passed the "exclamation mark hairs" test by eye, 💯 under a 30/60x. I ended up with the Hulihee+neckbeard, essentially. As the scalp grew back, the chin started with extremely sparse vellus hair, then it became fuller, but not coarser. Still trans-parent. Still treating with clotrimazole. Then the back of the head finished filling after a really stubborn area behind the ear. That all came in thicker, soft as chenille, and darker than my old natural brown. Still is. The scalp returned as normal. Then the chin became silvery-translucent. Then translucent-white-ish. Kept filling in slightly more, slowly. (My hair grows slowly anyway. It took me from 2016 spring through oct 2020 to grow it 12". After the patches filled back in, it has taken about 6 months to now to reach 2 in.) Now (03/22) it's partial to both white and translucent, but as time goes on, the shaft becomes coarser. Some (random ones) are so coarse they hurt as they grow and irritate the follicular pore and surrounding tissue, and "must" be extracted (pain and irritation and itching + ADHD-ASD focus and sensory sensitivities won't allow focus on anything else), which plucking then evidences that their roots were anchored in there *excessively* strong. Under a 60x there's clearly an abnormal gooey-looking root bulb that's maybe 4x wider than the shaft. The follicle wall (¿or outer root sheath?) often comes with it, but never appears "normal"—instead is also gooey and looks just like a really thick, tinted sebaceous plug. How weird. I stopped the clotrimazole when it was clear that this was Areata bc of the exclamation hairs and the overlapping circles. Keeps.com agreed and refused me service.

First i went with the "extreme dandruff" hypothesis but that became clear as incorrect when the one growing patch front+left near my forehead hairline turned into 2, 3, 5, 7... Circles on the back of my head from my left ear to the right that overlapped. I used a clotrimazole 1% 2x + daily, and aftera month or so the scalp one reduced from the margin-inward and the ones on the back started filling in (though not quite "each circle, in order as they appeared" as much as "mostly in chronological order but just kindof filling in in general" because the overlaps had really made it just a huge amorphous blob)

Oh gosh, I feel like I've tried it all (minus injectables) and it still appears 100% stress-induced an unpreventable/untreatable