Cancer Is An Asshole: what the HAIR??

Chemotherapy drugs are powerful medications that attack rapidly growing cancer cells. Unfortunately, these drugs also attack other rapidly growing cells in your body — including those in your hair roots. Chemotherapy may cause hair loss all over yourbody — not just on your scalp. Web Source

Sometimes your eyelash, eyebrow, armpit, pubic and other body hair also falls out. Some chemotherapy drugs are more likely than others to cause hair loss, and different doses can cause anything from a mere thinning to complete baldness.

What should you expect? (Web Source)

Hair usually begins falling out two to four weeks after you start treatment. It could fall out very quickly in clumps or gradually. You'll likely notice accumulations of loose hair on your pillow, in your hairbrush or comb, or in your sink or shower drain. Your scalp may feel tender. Your hair loss will continue throughout your treatment and up to a few weeks afterward. Whether your hair thins or you become completely bald will depend on your treatment.

Hair loss (alopecia) is a much feared side effect of chemotherapy and is one of the most psychologically devastating aspects of cancer treatment. More than 80% of patients who receive chemotherapy consider hair loss the most distressing aspect of their treatment.Web Source

Can hair loss be prevented?

No treatment exists that can guarantee your hair won't fall out during or after chemotherapy. Several treatments have been investigated as possible ways to prevent hair loss, but none has been absolutely effective, including:

Scalp cooling caps (scalp hypothermia). During your chemotherapy infusions, a closely fitted cap that's cooled by chilled liquid can be placed on your head to slow blood flow to your scalp. This way, chemotherapy drugs are less likely to have an effect on your hair.

Studies of scalp cooling caps and other forms of scalp hypothermia have found they work somewhat in the majority of people who have tried them. However, the procedure also results in a very small risk of cancer recurring in your scalp, as this area doesn't receive the same dose of chemotherapy as the rest of your body. People undergoing scalp hypothermia report feeling uncomfortably cold and having headaches.

Ask your doctor before using a cool cap as they can cause hypothermia.

How to make the best of it

Your hair loss generally can't be prevented or controlled, but it can be managed. Take the following steps throughout your treatment to minimize the frustration and anxiety associated with hair loss.

During treatment

Baby your remaining hair. Continue your gentle hair strategies throughout your chemotherapy treatment. Use a soft brush. Wash your hair only as often as necessary. Consider using a gentle shampoo.
Consider shaving your head. Some people report that their scalps feel itchy, sensitive and irritated during their treatments and while their hair is falling out. Shaving your head can reduce the irritation and save the embarrassment of shedding.
Protect your scalp. If your head is going to be exposed to the sun or to cold air, protect it with sunscreen or a head covering. Your scalp may be sensitive as you go through treatment, so extreme cold or sunshine can easily irritate it. Having no hair or having less hair can make you feel cold, so a head covering may make you more comfortable.

After treatment

Continue gentle hair care. Your new hair growth will be especially fragile and vulnerable to the damage caused by styling products and heating devices. Hold off on coloring or bleaching your new hair until it grows stronger. Processing could damage your new hair and irritate your sensitive scalp.
Be patient. It's likely that your hair will come back slowly and that it might not look normal right away. But growth takes time, and it also takes time to repair the damage caused by your cancer treatment.

Look Good Feel Better is a free program that provides hair and beauty makeovers and tips to women with cancer. These classes are offered throughout the United States and in several other countries. Many classes are offered through local chapters of the American Cancer Society.

Look Good Feel Better also offers classes and a website for teens with cancer, as well as a website and a guide with information for men with cancer.

Some helpful tips that can be of use to you: Web Source

If you think you might want a wig, buy it before treatment begins or at the very start of treatment. Ask if the wig can be adjusted – you might need a smaller wig as you lose hair.
If you buy a wig before hair loss begins, the wig shop can better match your hair color and texture. Or you can cut a swatch of hair from the top front of your head, where hair is lightest, to use for matching.
Wigs may be partially or fully covered by your health insurance. If so, ask for a prescription for a “cranial prosthesis.” Do not use the word “wig” on the prescription.
Get a list of wig shops in your area from your cancer team, other patients, or from the phone book. You can also order the American Cancer Society’s “tlc” Tender Loving Care®catalog (for women with hair loss due to cancer treatment) by visiting www.tlcdirect.org or by calling 1-800-850-9445.
If you’re going to buy a wig, try on different styles until you find one you really like. Consider buying 2 wigs, one for everyday use and one for special occasions.
Synthetic wigs need less care and styling than human hair wigs. They also cost less and may be easier if you have low energy during cancer treatment.
Some people find wigs are hot or itchy, and use turbans or scarves instead. Cotton fabrics tend to stay on a smooth scalp better than nylon or polyester. Wear a hat or scarf in cold weather to cover and stay warm.
Use a broad-spectrum sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of 30 or higher and a hat to protect your scalp from the sun.
Be gentle when brushing and washing your hair. Use a wide-toothed comb.
Hair loss might be somewhat reduced by avoiding too much brushing or pulling (which can happen while making braids or ponytails, using rollers, blow drying, or using curling or flat irons).
Wear a hair net at night, or sleep on a satin pillowcase to keep hair from coming out in clumps. Be gentle with eyelashes and eyebrows, which might also be affected.
If the thought of losing your hair bothers you, you might choose to cut your hair very short or even shave your head before it starts falling out.
When new hair starts to grow, it may break easily at first. Avoid perms and dyes for the first few months. Keep hair short and easy to style.

Me in my wig↑↑

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/bald-and-beautiful-cancer-patients-inspiring-stories/

My hair is coming back and it's way different... what the hair??

This texture change – called “chemo curls” -- is pretty universal among cancer patients who've undergone chemotherapy, explains Dr. Jyoti Patel, an associate professor of hematology and oncology at Northwestern University.“All my patients say they got the permanent they never wanted,” she said. “The texture is often difficult to manage, and tends to be really wiry and difficult to style.”

Chemotherapy is very effective at killing rapidly dividing cells -- but it can’t tell the difference between cancer cells and normal cells, such as hair follicles. That’s why so many cancer patients lose their hair during chemotherapy, among other side effects.

Chemo also causes hair to grow more slowly after treatment is finished, and patients can pick up extra pigment when that happens, Patel said. But doctors aren’t totally sure what causes the change in hair texture post-chemo. “We think that it has to do with chemotherapy effects getting out of the system,” Patel wrote in an e-mail. Hair that was deep in the follicle takes a while to grow out, so that initial growth post-treatment will look pretty wacky for most people.

Patel tells her patients that their initial hair growth after chemotherapy is unlikely to feel like their own, and that “to populate your head and get your own hair back is usually a six to nine month process.” Web Source

Here, in a general way, is how your hair grows: The hair comes from follicles, vase-shaped structures in the “basal” layer of your skin. This is the part of the skin that produces new cells and skin “products,” things like saliva, sweat, and hair. The follicle houses special cells called stem cells.

Some stem cells can turn into any kind of cell in the body. Others can turn into various kinds of one type, say different types of muscle cells, or nerve cells, or skin cells.

So the skin stem cells, which can turn into any kind of skin cell, migrate down into the follicle, and here’s where the mystery comes in: By some as-yet-undiscovered, cellular or genetic process, the stem cells help the follicle to create a hair bud. The bud starts to create “hair product,” a strand of proteins. As it does so, the protein—that is, your hair—grows.

All this hair growing involves cells dividing quickly, and that’s why about 70 percent of chemotherapy drugs will cause hair follicles to go haywire.

“Hair follicle stem cells are very fast-cycling cells, with significant numbers cycling all the time,” explains Dr. Amy McMichael, professor at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “Chemotherapy agents are knocking off all the cells with fast cycles.”

In other words, your locks end up as collateral damage in the war on your cancer. During normal life, about 90 percent of your hair is in a growth phase and 10 percent is in a resting phase or in the process of falling out. Chemo pushes all your hair cells into this resting phase: the hair stops growing; the strands narrow and then break off.

When chemo ends, experts say, it’s very common for the hair to grow back differently.

“We don’t know how chemo affects the cell cycle,” says Dr. Doris Day, an attending dermatologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan and author of Forget the Facelift (Avery Penguin 2008). “But the thing is that chemo does seem to affect the hair cycle. After chemo, the hair may start cycling differently.”

Radical color changes—brown hair turning red, for instance—don’t seem to happen, doctors say. But straight hair may go curly, or curly hair straight. White hair may go dark again, or dark hair go white. Hair may grow back thicker. In rare cases, it may not grow back at all. Sometimes, the hair reverts to its original color and texture after a year or two. Sometimes, it doesn’t.

And often, as a recent New York Times article chronicled, patients choose to change their hair color after chemo.

But except for those artificial salon dyes, the whys and wherefores of these hair changes remain unexplained. Maybe it’s just one more way that cancer is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: You never know what you’re going to get. Or why. Web Source - Wendy Baer, MD