There are many extraintestinal manifestations of Crohn’s disease. I’ve blogged before about fatigue, fistulas and how the disease affects all different parts of your body but today I wanted to talk about hair loss in particular and  how hair loss can be a common part of living with IBD.

Is hair loss part of IBD?

Yes absolutely. A study a few years ago found that one-third of patients with IBD reported hair loss and this was not associated with any age, gender or disease duration in particular. Whilst all of those patients experienced hair loss from the scalp, a very small minority reported it from the rest of their body (I’ll let you use your imagination there 😉

It was estimated that 62% of the patients reported hair loss at the time of a flare-up. We also hear many patient stories about hair loss but I couldn’t find any official guidance on CCUK’s page when writing this; probably because it’s such a wide topic that could be linked to so many parts of IBD and other conditions.

Why do people with IBD experience hair loss?

I think I could easily spend the whole post talking about this! Firstly, looking at some studies again; I wanted to share one fascinating snippet. Another study (you can read it here if you’d like) explains that hair loss can occasionally present itself as a symptom of IBD before gastrointestinal ones! It states: “We present a 10 year-old-child with telogen effluvium (fancy word for temporary hair loss!) that appeared one year before the diagnosis of Crohn’s disease, as the first and only symptom at that time.” I’m genuinely intrigued by this! Who are you, 10-year-old child? reveal yourself?! It makes me think as a teenager my hair was SO thin and would come out easily-but I just put it down to hormones. As you probably know, my gastro symptoms started when I was 16, so this makes sense!

However, more likely hair loss and IBD is a result of…

• Nutritional deficiencies. Both anaemia and B12 deficiency can present as hair loss. As hair loss is one sign of malnutrition, essentially any deficiency could potentially reveal itself this way.

• Extreme stress. Flare-ups put extreme stress on our body and the immune system- and this can manifest itself in strange ways: whether it’s hair loss, random allergies or new symptoms altogether.

• The immune connection. Alopecia is said to be autoimmune in it’s nature so it makes sense those with other autoimmune conditions would be more suspcetible.

• Medication. IBD medication such as Azathioprine has been linked to hair loss.  The study I mentioned earlier in this paragraph states: ” in addition, alopecia may be an adverse event of treatment with agents prescribed for inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) such as methotrexate, mesalamine, 6-mercaptopurine [3–5], and anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α drugs, such as infliximab and adalimumab.” However, another study suggested that anti-TNF drugs like Humira actually lower your chances of hair loss. All I can think is that this is because patients on these treatments are more likely to have their diseases under control and perhaps less likely to suffer from flare-ups?

• ‘Idon’thaveabloodyclueitis’ This is a very rare condition* that I have only just named. In which the body acts in random ways in a daily basis and no one has a bloody clue what it is doing. In other words my life. *This is not a real condition.

What should I do if I have hair loss?

I am not an expert in this area, because other than my hormonal bout I mentioned earlier, it’s remained pretty stable. However, I would recommend the following…

• Having an up-to-date blood test to check for nutritional deficiencies.
• Ask your GP to check your thyroid levels to be on the safe side.
• Consider an omega 3 supplement or tucking into wild, oily fish as that can help with thinning hair.
• Consider using natural hair products. I blogged in my Natural skincare edit post about Pure Potions; they do shampoo and conditions for those with sensitive scalps and psoriasis. 

I do hope this blog post helps. Do you suffer with hair loss issues? Let me know below!