When you have just been diagnosed with cancer you may have a massive amount to think about, hair loss is a big consideration for many people.
Trust me when I tell you that you are not alone if the thought of losing your hair is one of the things you are dreading the most. That is why we are here to help you through all the questions you may have and give you lots of ideas for looking good.We understand that you are anxious about hair loss...so let’s take a look at the medical side and how it may affect your hair.
Not all treatments cause hair loss...
Hair loss does not happen to everyone and if it does, there is plenty that can be done to help you cope. Right now it is important to clarify whether or not hair loss is likely to happen to you so that we can help you find ways to prepare, look good and take care of new hair when it grows back.
Will I lose my hair and will it grow back?
The short answer to this is that it mainly depends on the treatment type and this is very specific to you. When it comes to major hair loss, this is normally as a result of the side effects of various cancer treatments and not the cancer illness itself.
How do different treatments effect hair loss?
There are many different ways of dealing with cancer: chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, hormone therapy, alternative and other forms of treatment are all options. Your doctor or specialist will have carefully chosen the treatment that they feel is most effective for your particular cancer. It is the side effects of many treatments, not normally the cancer itself, that causes hair loss.
For example, some forms (but not all) of chemotherapy can cause hair loss or thinning as a side effect, but it nearly always grows back once treatment is complete.
Other treatments such as radiotherapy can, but not always, cause hair loss or thinning but this usually occurs only where the treatment takes place. This means it is in an isolated area, so the rest of your hair may not be affected at all.
Sometimes other treatments or procedures such as hormone therapy or surgery can occasionally cause hair loss but this is a lot less common. We will go into great details about this later.
Ill health can also effect how our hair is
Hair loss and thinning can also occur because of illness and body changes but it is rare to the extent that you may need a wig. There are also other factors to be taken into consideration that can affect hair such as the illness itself . Illness can cause changes in our hair, and sometimes hair thinning, but rarely complete hair loss.
There are also other factors such as hereditary hair loss patterns and other hair loss issues.
Let us help you to find out if you are going to lose your hair, whether it will grow back and how to deal with it all.
If you have only just been diagnosed, you may have not yet been offered treatment options yet, so before reading through the information on this site any further, we highly recommend that you wait until you know what treatment you will be having.
Once you know that, you can then ask your doctor if hair loss is a side effect of your treatment because it does not occur in all cases. For example it is a common misunderstanding that all chemotherapy treatments cause hair loss, in practice they do not.If however you know what treatment you are having then please select that particular treatment from the catogories list on the previous page.
Remember we are here to help you, support is just a click away...