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Alopecia areata is an auto-immune disease where the body turns against itself. In about a third of cases, the first bald patch clears up quickly and never returns. In those less lucky, the condition develops into alopecia totalis where all scalp hair is lost, sometimes along with the eyebrows and eyelashes. A fifth of all cases become alopecia universalis where all hair on the entire body falls out. Other people are plagued by alopecia areata all their lives, with patches occurring and reoccurring again and again.

Alopecia androgenetica can be a hereditary condition and is thought to be brought about by fluctuating levels of the male hormones, the androgens, in both men and women. In conventional treatment, no attempt is made to find out whythe hormonal levels have gone out of balance, and yet this is a very important question to ask. In many cases, the wrong diet, toxicity or interference from medically prescribed drugs such as the contraceptive Pill are to blame. But just coming off those drugs is often not enough to bring the hair back. Once hormones are out of balance, the body needs a lot of support to find its natural balance again, and this is best done with the right diet and with supplementation of the right vitamins, minerals and herbs.

Any artificial substance that enters the body can cause toxicity, even if we only ingest or inhale a minute quantity. Toxicity can occur with something we eat, something we drink, something we breathe in or something that touches our skin. You will have already seen in my answers to Question 3 that mercury fillings can poison the body, but so can vaccinations, medically prescribed drugs, recreational drugs, household chemicals, cosmetics, air pollution, water pollution, and so on. Some toxic substances can even be transmitted from the womb to the baby so that if your mother smoked or took pharmaceutical or recreational drugs before conception, these toxins will have an effect on the baby.

But there are other ways in which our bodies can become toxic: we can pick up bacteria and viruses as well as parasites through unhygienic food preparation, and the more stressed we are, the more unhealthy our diet, the more likely it is that our body does not have the strength to eliminate these toxins.

Especially with alopecia areata, it is vital to detoxify the body. Alopecia areata is an auto-immune disorder where the body attacks its own tissues. From my experience, this tends to happen when your immune system is in overdrive because of something that is in the body that the body cannot cope with. This can, for example, be a toxic metal that leaks from your tooth filling, or it can be an inocculation that has alarmed the body to an unusual extent.

But also for other types of hair loss, toxicity is a big factor. The more strongly your body is poisoned with metals, chemicals, bacteria, viruses, parasites or yeast infections, the more this will negatively affect the hormonal balance. We all know how polluted our environment is these days, so detoxification is an important issue for everyone, no matter how healthy. Certainly with a hair loss problem, it is vital to make sure the body’s toxicity load is lessened. (You will find various Factsheets concerning toxicity in the Services section.)

There are a great number of supplements on the market that are designed to reverse hair loss. All of them have valuable ingredients in them – vitamins, minerals, amino acids and herbs that are all known to be involved in healthy hair growth.

In my research over the last few years, I have found that reputable literature cites about forty different vitamins, minerals, amino acids and herbs as being directly involved in helping hair grow again. These are:

Vitamins A, B2, B3, B6, B12, folic acid, biotin, inositol, PABA, bee pollen, Vitamins C and E, iodine, calcium, sulphur, zinc, L-methionine, L-lysine, L-cysteine, L-taurine, L-glutathione, potassium, iron, silica, selenium, EFAs (essential fatty acids), cayenne, pleurisy root, black cohosh, prickly ash, kelp, agnus castus, helonias, motherwort, blue flag root, nettle, yellow dock, gentian, gingko biloba, digestive enzymes.

But which ones are right for you? – The only way of finding out is to ask your body! Every person is different, and two women who have hair problems because of polycystic ovaries may need very different vitamins and minerals to help sort things out.

A hair or nail sample is an ideal way of finding out exactly what your body needs. All I need are about 20 hairs, 2 inches long, or a few nail clippings from your fingernails. For more information, please download the Order Form for the Hair/Nail Sample Tests in the Services section of this website.

Your GP may not consider your hair loss problem a great priority and may be reluctant to refer you for tests. It is worth paying privately to have these tests though because it gives you a way forward with treating your hair loss.

There are no laboratories who do all the tests for hair in one go. You will have to ask for a a mineral analysis for ferritin, zinc and folic acid, as well as one for Vitamin B12. Your test results will give you a figure to tell you at which level your, say, B12 levels are, together with a ‘normal reference range’. This shows you where within the normal reference range your result figure is.

The problem with ‘normal reference ranges’ is that they vary from country to country and are not definite. Also, you may be within the ‘normal reference range’ with your result but still be deficient in a particular mineral.

Vitamin and mineral analysis

The advantage of having these tests carried out by a laboratory is that you get clear figures for your mineral levels. The disadvantage is that these tests can be expensive and you still don’t know whether it is actually your diet that is incorrect, whether you lack certain nutrients or whether you need to detox from certain metals or invasive organisms to recover.

Toxicity levels

If you are having conventional laboratory tests carried out to check for toxic metals or invasive organisms, these can be unreliable. Laboratories can test for toxic metals, but they can only check how much of the metals are in your urine or in your blood. They cannot test whether there are toxic metals stored in your body tissues, and these can be considerable. The advantage of conventional laboratory testing is that you will get an approximate figure of how much of a toxic metal was found in your urine or in your blood.

Invasive organisms such as parasites are often hard to detect as they can hide in organs or body tissues so that they are not found in your stool. Conventional laboratory testing can return a result or ‘all clear’ just because your stool did not show any traces of eggs or parasites, even though you have them in your body.

You can send a hair or nail sample to me and let me analyse it with kinesology. This means that I will check which frequencies of toxic metals, invasive organisms or food intolerances are reflected in your hair or nail sample.

Each substance, living or inert, has its own frequency which can be picked up via radionics or via kinesiology. If toxins are in your body that make your hair thinner or which make your hair fall out, these toxins can be detected in this way. In the same way, frequencies of supplements can be checked against your sample to see exactly which supplement matches your toxicity and will therefore help remove the toxin from your body.

The advantage of having these tests carried out with HGUK kinesiology is that the toxin will register even if it is stored in body tissue. A conventional laboratory test can only tell you how much mercury you have in your urine and/or in your blood, but it won’t tell you anything about the toxin that has already been stored in body tissues over the years. HGUK testing will NOT give you any figures, but it will pick up the overall toxicity in the body, i.e. in the blood, urine AND in the body tissues.

Kinesiology testing tells you what toxins are present in the body and what you need to take to detox from them so that a physical balance is restored which will allow your hair to grow again. If you have accumulated lots of ‘layers’ of health problems over the years, it will be necessary to re-test every eight to twelve weeks to see how far you have detoxed and whether you prescription needs to be changed.

To have a hair or nail sample analysis done, please go to the Services section for an order form and fees.

Your diet influences your physical stamina and energy levels. If most of your diet consists of sugary soft drinks, alcohol, crisps, sandwiches and chocolate, the body has a very difficult job trying to keep functioning smoothly. Imagine pouring petrol mixed with sugar water into the tank of your car – you would not be surprised if the engine gave you problems. And yet, when it comes to the food we consume every day, we expect our body to cope on junk.

A big problem for most people is that they are dehydrated because they don’t drink enough water. Every living cell requires water, just as it does nutrients and oxygen. In order to function properly, the body needs to be replenished with water throughout the day. The body functions because electrical impulses are sent through the network of nerve fibres which in turn trigger the activity of many organs and glands. In order to relay information efficiently, these electrical impulses need water as a conductor. Water also helps all the organs in the body work more efficiently by lubricating the digestive tract and detoxifying the body – two very important processes if you suffer from hair loss!

Another problem is sugar. If you eat lots of simple carbohydrates (sugars) such as sugar, honey, milk, wheat flour and white rice, you encourage your pancreas to go into insulin overdrive. If this happens on a regular basis, the body becomes incapable of utilising the insulin efficiently. The body responds by putting out even more insulin, and this produces a hormonal imbalance which ultimately can have a detrimental effect on hairgrowth in both men and women.

A basic rule of thumb for healthy eating is to eat lean meat for proteins and lots of vegetables. Don’t eat potatoes, pasta and wheat products (bread, pasta, biscuits/cookies, cakes, pasties etc.) on a regular basis, and if you do, only in small quantities. They immediately turn to glucose in your body and kick the insulin levels into overdrive so that your blood sugar rises very quickly. This in turn threatens hormonal functioning. Reduce alcohol consumption to not more than one drink a day, as alcohol robs the body of zinc, folic acid, B vitamins and vitamin C. Alcohol, as well as coffee and tea, act as a diuretic and can cause severe dehydration which directly affects your scalp and hair growth. The same advice applies to nicotine – avoid it if you can as it puts stress on your adrenal glands which makes hair loss worse.

There is an abundance of scientific research that shows how your thoughts can influence body processes. Even though positive thinking alone will not bring back your hair, it will certainly help de-stress your body and mind, and this indirectly helps hairgrowth because it helps all your organs and glands work better. The more unsettled and stressed you are, the harder it is for your body to work efficiently and to produce hair.

There is nothing quite so horrifying than to see handfuls of your hair coming out. I know all about it – I have been there. It is like all your worst nightmares come true. Your self-esteem and confidence are shattered and you think of nothing but the loss of your hair all day long. But if you want your hair back, your body needs to start repairing itself in peace and quiet. It’s a bit like your car engine being faulty – you can’t repair it while you are going down the motorway at 80 miles an hour. You need to stop and let the engine cool down. The same is true with any physical problems. Your body and mind need to calm down first before you can feed positive thoughts into your subconscious mind.

If you would like to learn how to use self-hypnosis to help control your stress and help your hair regrow, order the book Regrowing Hair Naturally with the CD. You can also find out more about positive thinking at www.vera-peiffer.com.

There are a few exercises that we recommend for hair loss clients to increase circulation to the scalp. [Video link coming soon – watch this space!]

Muscle testing is a bio-feedback mechanism that allows the health kinesiologist to access the bio-computer of the body and to assess and upgrade its performance.

In an HK session, you will be asked to lie on a couch fully clothed but without your shoes. The kinesiologist will then use a muscle on your body, usually a lower arm muscle, to test where the weakness in the body lies and exactly what treatment has to be carried out to help your system overcome this weakness so that you can get well again.

The health kinesiologist will then hold various acupuncture points to bring about balance in the body. At other times, your kinesiologist will also apply magnets to various areas or ask you to think a word or sentence while he or she is holding the acupuncture points. In this way, both physical and emotional stresses can be addressed. Sounds weird, but it works!

Vera Peiffer Regrowing Hair Naturally

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Ann Holdway Kinesiology (Vega)

Jane Thurnell Read Health Kinesiology (Life-Work Potential).

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