28 Yo Chinese Woman With Thinning Hair

[RisingSun]

Hi everyone,

I am a 28 years old Chinese woman living in Hong Kong, and I started losing my hair around 9 months ago to the point that some white scalp patches have now become obvious.

It is also thinning. It used to be full and voluminous, it now drops straight on my face.

I'm estimating my hair fall rate at 100-150 hair/day based on what I find in the shower and on my apartment floor.

I am not following a Peat diet, mostly eating everything except for gluten and dairy. The reason I post on this forum is because members on here seem a LOT more common-sensed, pragmatic and knowledgeable than anywhere else.

My blood test shows:

- estrogens mid range
- testosterone mid range
- thyroid optimal
- vitamin D mid range
- WBC in range - low
- RBC mid range
- Sodium in range - low
- Potassium mid range


I didn't test for iron or ferritin: should I assume they are in range as my RBC is in range?

Started supplementing with Magnesium glycinate and Biotin 8 months ago, drinking mineral water instead of tap water 5 months ago. My hair is still falling at the same rate.

I get adequate sun exposure at least once a week.

My sleep is ok, however I wake up feeling tired most of the time.

My stress level is as low as can be

I exercise moderately 3 times a week, mostly yoga.



I have noticed that it is VERY frequent for Asian women in China and Hong Kong to lose their hair from a young age, to have a visible scalp, and to be severely bald above 50 years old.

None of the Caucasian women living in Hong Kong seem to have this problem.




I don't know where to start to address this issue:

- is it diet related?
- location related?
- genetic?



Please help me explore all avenues, it is really hard for a woman to see her most precious asset disappear.

 

[Blossom]

Welcome @RisingSun.
If you could expand a bit on your diet by including what you typically eat in a day and how much I think that would help members offer suggestions.
On the labs if you could include the actual values that would be good too. Midrange for thyroid may actually not be optimal. Estrogen midrange doesn't tell much without also considering your progesterone level.
Some possibilities (and I'm sure there are more) include:

Thyroid function being impacted by certain foods like large amounts of soy or cruciferous vegetables.

Suboptimal calories keeping metabolism suppressed.

Low progesterone relative to estrogen.

I hope you get more input and are able to sort this out.

 

[Nicole W.]

Hi everyone,

I am a 28 years old Chinese woman living in Hong Kong, and I started losing my hair around 9 months ago to the point that some white scalp patches have now become obvious.

It is also thinning. It used to be full and voluminous, it now drops straight on my face.

I'm estimating my hair fall rate at 100-150 hair/day based on what I find in the shower and on my apartment floor.

I am not following a Peat diet, mostly eating everything except for gluten and dairy. The reason I post on this forum is because members on here seem a LOT more common-sensed, pragmatic and knowledgeable than anywhere else.

My blood test shows:

- estrogens mid range
- testosterone mid range
- thyroid optimal
- vitamin D mid range
- WBC in range - low
- RBC mid range
- Sodium in range - low
- Potassium mid range


I didn't test for iron or ferritin: should I assume they are in range as my RBC is in range?

Started supplementing with Magnesium glycinate and Biotin 8 months ago, drinking mineral water instead of tap water 5 months ago. My hair is still falling at the same rate.

I get adequate sun exposure at least once a week.

My sleep is ok, however I wake up feeling tired most of the time.

My stress level is as low as can be

I exercise moderately 3 times a week, mostly yoga.



I have noticed that it is VERY frequent for Asian women in China and Hong Kong to lose their hair from a young age, to have a visible scalp, and to be severely bald above 50 years old.

None of the Caucasian women living in Hong Kong seem to have this problem.




I don't know where to start to address this issue:

- is it diet related?
- location related?
- genetic?



Please help me explore all avenues, it is really hard for a woman to see her most precious asset disappear.

I have also noticed the same hair loss phenomenon among Asian women and at times, also East Indian women. I have two middle aged Asian girlfriends and they are both struggling with hair loss. I’ve always wondered about it. It’s my suspicion that’s diet related. In both Asian and Indian culinary traditions, there’s a lot of foods used that contain phytoestrogens. Soy, and other legumes are eaten daily, and I suspect this drives a high estrogen state and probably suppresses thyroid function. If you consume lots of soy, or cruciferous vegetables, or beans...I would suggest some dietary changes intially to see if things may improve. With hair it will take a while though, and adapting to a different diet may be challenging. Another consideration would be the soybean (and other industrial seed) oils, which are used widely in Asia. Those are thyroid suppressing as well. I know you remarked that your Thyroid values are optimal, but I would venture to guess that half of us here have “optimal” values and feel pretty hypo. I would take the thyroid labs with a grain of salt. They often don’t tell the whole story.

 

[lampofred]

Were you raised on a diet of soy/PUFA? Peat says hair shed is caused by cortisol and prolactin. Cortisol is reduced by good thyroid function in the long-term but pregnenolone and aspirin will help greatly in the short-run. Prolactin is reduced in the long-run by gradually depleting your tissues of PUFA but showering in ice-cold water might help to reduce it in the short-term and so will zinc supplements/bromocriptine although I'm not sure how safe zinc/bromocriptine are to take regularly. High dose caffeine helps for male baldness but I'm not sure how much it would help the kind of thinning that you're experiencing.

Building up your tissues with saturated fat instead of PUFA is a very long term process, but at least in my own experience, it works. I used to lose 50-75 hairs every time I showered but now even if I vigorously shampoo, I lose one or two hairs at most, sometimes not even that.

 

[Lilac]

In my observations, I don't see any young people with a good head of hair--thick and glossy. That's the United States. But the foreign tourists I see are not much better in the hair department. You are definitely not alone.

In my 40s, I was losing a lot of hairs every time I dyed my hair. I mistakenly thought the dye was the problem. I finally stopped the shedding after reading Deep Nutrition, by Dr. Cate Shanahan. Some of her advice included eating bone broth, meat on the bone, and liver. After finding Dr. Peat, I self-diagnosed hypothyroidism and fixed it with his principles. My hair is stable. Unfortunately, though, I have yet to regrow what I lost. How I wish it could be as thick as when I was younger. I still try things and hope this can change.

Good luck.

 

[foodandtheworld]

Hi @RisingSun , sorry to hear about the hair loss. I don't want to sound like a broken record to the community because all of my posts are about this topic, but I also had dealt with hair loss a couple of months ago. Fortunately though, after making some major modifications to my life, it has all but stopped. I don't know if your case is the same as mine, but I will share it. I'm not familiar with hormones/blood-work/the details of vitamins and minerals, so I will just relay what I have learned. I am around your age, but male, in case you are wondering.

Basically, I was also losing around 30-50 hairs a day, in a very noticeable fashion. I would have to constantly peel off shed hairs from my shirt. I did a lot of searching on the Internet, and found that it was frequently correlated with malnutrition, or as I call it, under-eating, or as Gwyneth Olwyn calls it, energy-deficiency.

In my case, I had an illness which caused me to lose weight. And then, instead of resting, I continued my highly active lifestyle, but did not increase my calories. This was basically a calorie deficit that went on for months and months, since I was eating way less than I was burning through my basal metabolic rate plus the stress from exercise. Additionally, I was going through higher than average stress for me at my work and my home.

However, once I began eating a lot more calories and more protein, the hair loss dramatically slowed, and now, it seems almost back to normal. I started off eating at least 3000 calories day, but recently I have found at least 5000 calories makes me feel better. As for protein, I try to get at least 80 grams a day. I get a lot of it from milk, cheese, and Greek yogurt (Peat particularly recommends milk and cheese as protein over vegetable sources except potatoes).

I mention those two factors of calories and protein, because coming across a Ray Peat quote opened my eyes to what could have been the cause of my symptoms (I bolded the text):

“Besides fasting, or chronic protein deficiency, the common causes of hypothyroidism are excessive stress or ‘aerobic’ (i.e. anaerobic) exercise, and diets containing beans, lentils, nuts, unsaturated fats (including carotene), and undercooked broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, or mustard greens. Many health conscious people become hypothyroid with a synergistic program of undercooked vegetables, legumes instead of animal proteins, oils instead of butter, carotene instead of vitamin A, and breathless exercise instead of a stimulating life.”
SOURCE: “Besides fasting, or chronic protein... | Ray Peat Forum

My under-eating was akin to fasting, my diet contained little protein, and I was performing excessive exercise. That was a wake up call. Similarly, Dr. Atkins, famous for the Atkins Diet (which is not Peat-y at all), also concedes that “that prolonged dieting [including his own] tends to shut down thyroid function."

And one of the common symptoms of weak thyroid function is hair loss.

But also, I encountered a number of people who had recovered from eating disorders/anorexia, and many of them mentioned losing hair during their period of food restriction. Returning to sufficient food intake, though, regrew hair and stopped abnormal hair loss (see Tabitha Farrar's post, "Thinning Hair Is an Eating Disorder Effect That Recovery Can Overcome").

So, I mention this as a possible explanation for your hair loss, although I of course have no idea if it is the main cause. I was also experiencing a number of other low thyroid symptoms, such as low blood pressure (dizzy when standing up quickly), low pulse (around 50), low body temperature, constantly chapped lips, dry skin on my face and legs and feet, constipation. These all disappeared after I began eating again as my body's energy requirements demanded.

Even if you didn't consciously try to restrict food, or consciously tried to follow a diet (e.g., the way people decide to follow a vegan diet, or an intermittent fasting diet, or a 500 calorie deficit a day diet, and so on), is it possible you were not eating to your full energy needs? Gwyneth Olwyn recommends at least 2500 for most women (see her post "I Need How Many Calories?!!") but if you were really active before your period of hair loss, such as having work or family commitments, or lots of exercise, then that could play a part in not getting enough calories, because then your energy demands are higher. Similarly, exercise increases energy demands. Also, even cultural values play a role. For example, thinness being promoted as an ideal, and then people subconsciously restricting themselves from what they really want to eat to achieve that ideal. Or, family members or peers subconsciously pressuring one to not eat as much as one really wants.

If you do try to eat more, and have been eating on the lower range, it is advised to increase your intake gradually at first because of the small risk of something called refeeding syndrome, though I read once you can get to 2000 comfortably, you can significantly increase the number - I can find links to elaborate on this if you like. That usually applies if you had been eating less than 2000 calories a day, and then decide to up your calories, but I just wanted to mention that, so you can do your due diligence.

Have you tracked your pulse and temperature at waking and in the afternoon? If they are both low, that could be a clue, because mine were both low before I began 'refeeding' (I remember taking armpit temperatures of 96 degrees F).

Anyway, I hope this post wasn't too long. Please let me know if there was anything unclear or if you have a question or PM me. I don't know your full health context of course, so I might have been completely off the mark in thinking my observations were relevant to your case. There may be other causes in your case but I just shared the one I am most familiar with.

 

[Blossom]

Hi @RisingSun , sorry to hear about the hair loss. I don't want to sound like a broken record to the community because all of my posts are about this topic, but I also had dealt with hair loss a couple of months ago. Fortunately though, after making some major modifications to my life, it has all but stopped. I don't know if your case is the same as mine, but I will share it. I'm not familiar with hormones/blood-work/the details of vitamins and minerals, so I will just relay what I have learned. I am around your age, but male, in case you are wondering.

Basically, I was also losing around 30-50 hairs a day, in a very noticeable fashion. I would have to constantly peel off shed hairs from my shirt. I did a lot of searching on the Internet, and found that it was frequently correlated with malnutrition, or as I call it, under-eating, or as Gwyneth Olwyn calls it, energy-deficiency.

In my case, I had an illness which caused me to lose weight. And then, instead of resting, I continued my highly active lifestyle, but did not increase my calories. This was basically a calorie deficit that went on for months and months, since I was eating way less than I was burning through my basal metabolic rate plus the stress from exercise. Additionally, I was going through higher than average stress for me at my work and my home.

However, once I began eating a lot more calories and more protein, the hair loss dramatically slowed, and now, it seems almost back to normal. I started off eating at least 3000 calories day, but recently I have found at least 5000 calories makes me feel better. As for protein, I try to get at least 80 grams a day. I get a lot of it from milk, cheese, and Greek yogurt (Peat particularly recommends milk and cheese as protein over vegetable sources except potatoes).

I mention those two factors of calories and protein, because coming across a Ray Peat quote opened my eyes to what could have been the cause of my symptoms (I bolded the text):

“Besides fasting, or chronic protein deficiency, the common causes of hypothyroidism are excessive stress or ‘aerobic’ (i.e. anaerobic) exercise, and diets containing beans, lentils, nuts, unsaturated fats (including carotene), and undercooked broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, or mustard greens. Many health conscious people become hypothyroid with a synergistic program of undercooked vegetables, legumes instead of animal proteins, oils instead of butter, carotene instead of vitamin A, and breathless exercise instead of a stimulating life.”
SOURCE: “Besides fasting, or chronic protein... | Ray Peat Forum

My under-eating was akin to fasting, my diet contained little protein, and I was performing excessive exercise. That was a wake up call. Similarly, Dr. Atkins, famous for the Atkins Diet (which is not Peat-y at all), also concedes that “that prolonged dieting [including his own] tends to shut down thyroid function."

And one of the common symptoms of weak thyroid function is hair loss.

But also, I encountered a number of people who had recovered from eating disorders/anorexia, and many of them mentioned losing hair during their period of food restriction. Returning to sufficient food intake, though, regrew hair and stopped abnormal hair loss (see Tabitha Farrar's post, "Thinning Hair Is an Eating Disorder Effect That Recovery Can Overcome").

So, I mention this as a possible explanation for your hair loss, although I of course have no idea if it is the main cause. I was also experiencing a number of other low thyroid symptoms, such as low blood pressure (dizzy when standing up quickly), low pulse (around 50), low body temperature, constantly chapped lips, dry skin on my face and legs and feet, constipation. These all disappeared after I began eating again as my body's energy requirements demanded.

Even if you didn't consciously try to restrict food, or consciously tried to follow a diet (e.g., the way people decide to follow a vegan diet, or an intermittent fasting diet, or a 500 calorie deficit a day diet, and so on), is it possible you were not eating to your full energy needs? Gwyneth Olwyn recommends at least 2500 for most women (see her post "I Need How Many Calories?!!") but if you were really active before your period of hair loss, such as having work or family commitments, or lots of exercise, then that could play a part in not getting enough calories, because then your energy demands are higher. Similarly, exercise increases energy demands. Also, even cultural values play a role. For example, thinness being promoted as an ideal, and then people subconsciously restricting themselves from what they really want to eat to achieve that ideal. Or, family members or peers subconsciously pressuring one to not eat as much as one really wants.

If you do try to eat more, and have been eating on the lower range, it is advised to increase your intake gradually at first because of the small risk of something called refeeding syndrome, though I read once you can get to 2000 comfortably, you can significantly increase the number - I can find links to elaborate on this if you like. That usually applies if you had been eating less than 2000 calories a day, and then decide to up your calories, but I just wanted to mention that, so you can do your due diligence.

Have you tracked your pulse and temperature at waking and in the afternoon? If they are both low, that could be a clue, because mine were both low before I began 'refeeding' (I remember taking armpit temperatures of 96 degrees F).

Anyway, I hope this post wasn't too long. Please let me know if there was anything unclear or if you have a question or PM me. I don't know your full health context of course, so I might have been completely off the mark in thinking my observations were relevant to your case. There may be other causes in your case but I just shared the one I am most familiar with.

 

[lvysaur]

I've noticed the exact opposite here in the US, namely that western Eurasians have the highest rates of baldness--East Asians and Africans the least. Both on women and men.

I would say to reduce or cut out Polyunsaturated oils (soy, corn, vegetable), and try to use coconut oil instead.

 

[x-ray peat]

Hairy statistics show Chinese are going bald earlier than ever

The Chinese have certainly undergone an extremely rapid change in lifestyle over the last 50 years. More western style foods, more sedentary jobs, more stress. Maybe there is an epigenetic component to this and that the lifestyle change came on too fast. Western women have had more generations of gradual change to our crazy modern way of life and maybe were able to develop certain gene expressions that were protective against stress and crappy food. just thinking out loud.

 

[Constatine]

Hi @RisingSun , sorry to hear about the hair loss. I don't want to sound like a broken record to the community because all of my posts are about this topic, but I also had dealt with hair loss a couple of months ago. Fortunately though, after making some major modifications to my life, it has all but stopped. I don't know if your case is the same as mine, but I will share it. I'm not familiar with hormones/blood-work/the details of vitamins and minerals, so I will just relay what I have learned. I am around your age, but male, in case you are wondering.

Basically, I was also losing around 30-50 hairs a day, in a very noticeable fashion. I would have to constantly peel off shed hairs from my shirt. I did a lot of searching on the Internet, and found that it was frequently correlated with malnutrition, or as I call it, under-eating, or as Gwyneth Olwyn calls it, energy-deficiency.

In my case, I had an illness which caused me to lose weight. And then, instead of resting, I continued my highly active lifestyle, but did not increase my calories. This was basically a calorie deficit that went on for months and months, since I was eating way less than I was burning through my basal metabolic rate plus the stress from exercise. Additionally, I was going through higher than average stress for me at my work and my home.

However, once I began eating a lot more calories and more protein, the hair loss dramatically slowed, and now, it seems almost back to normal. I started off eating at least 3000 calories day, but recently I have found at least 5000 calories makes me feel better. As for protein, I try to get at least 80 grams a day. I get a lot of it from milk, cheese, and Greek yogurt (Peat particularly recommends milk and cheese as protein over vegetable sources except potatoes).

I mention those two factors of calories and protein, because coming across a Ray Peat quote opened my eyes to what could have been the cause of my symptoms (I bolded the text):

“Besides fasting, or chronic protein deficiency, the common causes of hypothyroidism are excessive stress or ‘aerobic’ (i.e. anaerobic) exercise, and diets containing beans, lentils, nuts, unsaturated fats (including carotene), and undercooked broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, or mustard greens. Many health conscious people become hypothyroid with a synergistic program of undercooked vegetables, legumes instead of animal proteins, oils instead of butter, carotene instead of vitamin A, and breathless exercise instead of a stimulating life.”
SOURCE: “Besides fasting, or chronic protein... | Ray Peat Forum

My under-eating was akin to fasting, my diet contained little protein, and I was performing excessive exercise. That was a wake up call. Similarly, Dr. Atkins, famous for the Atkins Diet (which is not Peat-y at all), also concedes that “that prolonged dieting [including his own] tends to shut down thyroid function."

And one of the common symptoms of weak thyroid function is hair loss.

But also, I encountered a number of people who had recovered from eating disorders/anorexia, and many of them mentioned losing hair during their period of food restriction. Returning to sufficient food intake, though, regrew hair and stopped abnormal hair loss (see Tabitha Farrar's post, "Thinning Hair Is an Eating Disorder Effect That Recovery Can Overcome").

So, I mention this as a possible explanation for your hair loss, although I of course have no idea if it is the main cause. I was also experiencing a number of other low thyroid symptoms, such as low blood pressure (dizzy when standing up quickly), low pulse (around 50), low body temperature, constantly chapped lips, dry skin on my face and legs and feet, constipation. These all disappeared after I began eating again as my body's energy requirements demanded.

Even if you didn't consciously try to restrict food, or consciously tried to follow a diet (e.g., the way people decide to follow a vegan diet, or an intermittent fasting diet, or a 500 calorie deficit a day diet, and so on), is it possible you were not eating to your full energy needs? Gwyneth Olwyn recommends at least 2500 for most women (see her post "I Need How Many Calories?!!") but if you were really active before your period of hair loss, such as having work or family commitments, or lots of exercise, then that could play a part in not getting enough calories, because then your energy demands are higher. Similarly, exercise increases energy demands. Also, even cultural values play a role. For example, thinness being promoted as an ideal, and then people subconsciously restricting themselves from what they really want to eat to achieve that ideal. Or, family members or peers subconsciously pressuring one to not eat as much as one really wants.

If you do try to eat more, and have been eating on the lower range, it is advised to increase your intake gradually at first because of the small risk of something called refeeding syndrome, though I read once you can get to 2000 comfortably, you can significantly increase the number - I can find links to elaborate on this if you like. That usually applies if you had been eating less than 2000 calories a day, and then decide to up your calories, but I just wanted to mention that, so you can do your due diligence.

Have you tracked your pulse and temperature at waking and in the afternoon? If they are both low, that could be a clue, because mine were both low before I began 'refeeding' (I remember taking armpit temperatures of 96 degrees F).

Anyway, I hope this post wasn't too long. Please let me know if there was anything unclear or if you have a question or PM me. I don't know your full health context of course, so I might have been completely off the mark in thinking my observations were relevant to your case. There may be other causes in your case but I just shared the one I am most familiar with.

^^^
Very good advice.
Increase your sun exposure a little. Once a week is probably not enough. Sun early in the day and sunset are the times when red light and infrared light is high in comparison to UV and blue light, this is beneficial for mitochondria respiration (which is very important in hair loss) so try to get sun at these times.

 

[yerrag]

I get adequate sun exposure at least once a week.

None of the Caucasian women living in Hong Kong seem to have this problem.

May be lack of sunlight.

The darker the skin, the more sunlight exposure needed to get adequate vitamin D production.

Caucasian women also like to get sunlight, and like going outdoors. Caucasians want to improve their pale complexion. Chinese women like to have white complexion, and avoid getting tanned. And many are afraid to go out and get sunshine. It doesn't help also Hongkong's sun is competing with the many skyscrapers around it.

Many Asians use sun screen and wear UV-blocking clothing, copying the practice of Caucasians, who need them when going to the beach or playing a round of golf, or hiking. Darker-skinned people don't need it. How many Asians or Africans get cases of skin cancer or melanoma? I think it's zero.

Are you getting direct sun exposure? You're not getting any UVB rays when you're getting sun through windows, as windows filter the UVB rays.

There's also the matter of when the best time is to get sun exposure. It's when the azimuth (the angle of the horizon to the sun) is 50 degrees and above. If you use the Sun Surveyor app, you will know when the ideal time is. It varies by season. Unless you are living in the extreme latitudes, which isn't the case with you, you're safe if you go get your dose of sunshine noon time, when the sun is blistering hot. Many people will say the morning sun is best, but that's not true as far as getting UVB rays are concerned. Morning sun only gives you UVA rays, which are harmful. It's best you get both the UVA and UVB rays, at least you're getting some benefit and not the harm only.

You would need to spend time outdoors, at the right time, and with enough time. I'm not sure, but Caucasians need to spend about 15 minutes a day with the sun at our tropical location, but we need to spend about double that time.

Remember that the sun is crucial to your metabolism. How would you describe your metabolism? Are you sure your thyroid is fine? What is your temperature and heart rate upon waking, after lunch, and around 5 pm? Do you have an ECG printout? What does it say about your Qtc value?

 

[tara]

Hi RisingSun,

If you want to post actual (or approximate) thyroid lab results, you may get opinions on them that differ from or are more nuanced than your doctors.

You can also measure your body temperature and resting heart rate a few times - this can give you more information about your base metabolism, and is something you can monitor easily yourself without having to go to medical professionals.

I too think seeing what and how much you are eating is relevant.

Sunshine daily would probably be a lot better than weekly, even if it is sometimes only a short time.

Do you know if you sleep with your mouth shut? Open mouth can be one way to wake up tired. (This can be changed with a chin strap or a little tape - I find either comfortable and soothing.)

Have you seen Peat's articles and interviews on his site or this one?
raypeat.com/articles
Ray Peat Resources & Quotes | Ray Peat Forum

Good luck

 

[Spokey]

Have you considered moving out of Hong Kong?

 

[goodandevil]

It's good to consider epigenetic factors as well, i see a lot of newborn animal deformities in southeast asia, unfortunately probably resulting from agent orange and severe pollution.

 

[RisingSun]

Wow

It’s overwhelming to see how many comments popped up as helping hands to my question, you guys truly form a helpful community.

On a given week, my diet typically consists of the following meals:


Pork chops
Steamed kale
White rice

Wild salmon
Steamed broccoli
White rice

Rice cake
Cabbage
Fried eggs

Steak
Steamed beans
White rice

Eat out at a restaurant once or twice a week

Fruit once a day (berries, pommegranate, grapefruit)

When I get out in the sun it’s at its peak, anywhere between 10am and 4pm


My thyroid is as follows:

T4: 92nmol/L (63-151)
T3 uptake: 30% (23-40)
FTI: 6.8 (5.06-9.42
TSH: 0.72mIU/L (0.35-4.94)


I eat a LOT for a girl my build (I’m 5’5 - 116lbs), around 2500-2800 calories/day


I don’t drink or eat anything that contains refined sugar, except for some gelatin candies binges once a week


Thanks so much for your help!!

I feel we are going somewhere :)

 

[Nicole W.]

Do you have energy low points during the day? Or are you mostly energized and ready to take on the world?

You say that you often wake up tired. Does that persist through out the morning? Do you consume a lot of tea? Tea has quite a bit of fluoride in it, that can suppress thyroid function as well if you have many cups a day. Also, I would minimize the role of crucifer’s in your diet, at least temporarily, to see if there is a change in the hair shedding.

If you do tend to feel low level tired all the time, it may be your thyroid that is at issue. However, hormonal imbalances can certainly impact hair as well. You can only really assess your estrogen levels in relationship to your progesterone levels. Examined together they reveal the bigger picture of your hormone status. Did you happen to get your progesterone levels checked?

 

[yerrag]

Wow

It’s overwhelming to see how many comments popped up as helping hands to my question, you guys truly form a helpful community.

On a given week, my diet typically consists of the following meals:


Pork chops
Steamed kale
White rice

Wild salmon
Steamed broccoli
White rice

Rice cake
Cabbage
Fried eggs

Steak
Steamed beans
White rice

Eat out at a restaurant once or twice a week

Fruit once a day (berries, pommegranate, grapefruit)

When I get out in the sun it’s at its peak, anywhere between 10am and 4pm


My thyroid is as follows:

T4: 92nmol/L (63-151)
T3 uptake: 30% (23-40)
FTI: 6.8 (5.06-9.42
TSH: 0.72mIU/L (0.35-4.94)


I eat a LOT for a girl my build (I’m 5’5 - 116lbs), around 2500-2800 calories/day


I don’t drink or eat anything that contains refined sugar, except for some gelatin candies binges once a week


Thanks so much for your help!!

I feel we are going somewhere :)

Hi RisingSun,

You do get a lot of sunshine!

On what you eat, rice is good. Are you eating with lots of rice and some meat, or are you eating with a small scoop of rice and a large steak?

You mentioned broccoli and cauliflower, but you haven't mentioned leaves such as kaylan or chinese broccoli. Green leaves provide plenty of calcium and magnesium. Eating plenty, not just a minimum morsel, of cooked green leaves provide you with a large part of your daily calcium and magnesium needs. You need to have about 1600mg of elemental calcium and 400 mg of elemental magnesium daily. You can also drink milk (hope you're not lactose-intolerant) to help meet your calcium requirements.

Your mentioned some fruits. I have a feeling that you're not eating enough of them to meet your daily potassium requirements. You need 4700mg of potassium per day. Sweet potatoes and bananas are rich in it. Meat also has plenty of potassium. Add in freshly juiced fruit and have 2 cups a day. All added up you could meet your daily potassium needs (Better to juice the fruits as that takes away the fiber which favors endotoxin growth in your gut). Tropical fruits I drink are watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, papaya etc., and they are high in fructose as well).

I hope you are seeing how much you lack on minerals with the foods you currently eat. Having enough of these minerals makes a big difference as far as providing balance between your cells and its surrounding environment. It gives your heart the ability to pump well, for example. It also helps with maximizing tissue oxygenation (no oxygen, poor energy production). Most of all, these minerals help with putting your blood pH at an optimal level and context. Anyone can have blood pH at a tolerable range, but not everyone can have an optimum pH of 7.4 and having plenty of CO2 in blood, and having much less of acid metabolites in it. On the subject of these minerals, the minerals alkalize blood by helping lower the acid load of these metabolites.

Your protein intake can be improved by including more gelatin. Above age 25, your protein sources can be less of the sulfur-based amino acids such as cysteine and methionine. Steak and pork chop are high in these amino acids. You can increase gelatin intake by eating more of pork skin, chicken legs, and fish head, which are easy to find in Chinese dishes. Eat also the internal organs such as tripe, intestines, kidneys, and liver. Do not be concerned of the trope that they are high in uric acid. They aren't high in uric acid; they are high in purines, which can turn into uric acid when the body needs it as an antioxidant to counter oxidative stresses. Ray Peat says that glycine, an amino acid that's part of gelatin, can comprise as much as 50% of your amino acid intake.

That said, hair growth still requires sulfur-based amino acid intake as keratin, a protein in hair, is composed of those amino acids. Since your diet is not lacking in these amino acids, the focus needs to be on providing conditions that allow good hair growth. Hair growth requires a lot of energy. If the body has excess energy, it can spend its energy on non-essential items, such as hair.

Help me get an idea of where your energy state is at. I need to know your temperature and heart rate. If you have an ECG, the QTc value. I don't know how to use your thyroid markers are they cannot provide a full picture of your thyroid health. That being the case, I am asking these questions.

There is still other topics to discuss such as deficiencies. But one step at a time. Large steps first. The details can wait.

 

[Lin Amy]

I am 55 and also lost a lot of hair two years ago, such that I shaved my head bald. I wore a wig thereafter. I reckoned a couple of things caused the hair loss - hormonal changes (menopause), stress (both physical and mental), and poor diet.

My hair is slowly growing back now after learning about Peat. It takes time but it’s worth it.

 

[RisingSun]

Hi RisingSun,

You do get a lot of sunshine!

On what you eat, rice is good. Are you eating with lots of rice and some meat, or are you eating with a small scoop of rice and a large steak?

You mentioned broccoli and cauliflower, but you haven't mentioned leaves such as kaylan or chinese broccoli. Green leaves provide plenty of calcium and magnesium. Eating plenty, not just a minimum morsel, of cooked green leaves provide you with a large part of your daily calcium and magnesium needs. You need to have about 1600mg of elemental calcium and 400 mg of elemental magnesium daily. You can also drink milk (hope you're not lactose-intolerant) to help meet your calcium requirements.

Your mentioned some fruits. I have a feeling that you're not eating enough of them to meet your daily potassium requirements. You need 4700mg of potassium per day. Sweet potatoes and bananas are rich in it. Meat also has plenty of potassium. Add in freshly juiced fruit and have 2 cups a day. All added up you could meet your daily potassium needs (Better to juice the fruits as that takes away the fiber which favors endotoxin growth in your gut). Tropical fruits I drink are watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, papaya etc., and they are high in fructose as well).

I hope you are seeing how much you lack on minerals with the foods you currently eat. Having enough of these minerals makes a big difference as far as providing balance between your cells and its surrounding environment. It gives your heart the ability to pump well, for example. It also helps with maximizing tissue oxygenation (no oxygen, poor energy production). Most of all, these minerals help with putting your blood pH at an optimal level and context. Anyone can have blood pH at a tolerable range, but not everyone can have an optimum pH of 7.4 and having plenty of CO2 in blood, and having much less of acid metabolites in it. On the subject of these minerals, the minerals alkalize blood by helping lower the acid load of these metabolites.

Your protein intake can be improved by including more gelatin. Above age 25, your protein sources can be less of the sulfur-based amino acids such as cysteine and methionine. Steak and pork chop are high in these amino acids. You can increase gelatin intake by eating more of pork skin, chicken legs, and fish head, which are easy to find in Chinese dishes. Eat also the internal organs such as tripe, intestines, kidneys, and liver. Do not be concerned of the trope that they are high in uric acid. They aren't high in uric acid; they are high in purines, which can turn into uric acid when the body needs it as an antioxidant to counter oxidative stresses. Ray Peat says that glycine, an amino acid that's part of gelatin, can comprise as much as 50% of your amino acid intake.

That said, hair growth still requires sulfur-based amino acid intake as keratin, a protein in hair, is composed of those amino acids. Since your diet is not lacking in these amino acids, the focus needs to be on providing conditions that allow good hair growth. Hair growth requires a lot of energy. If the body has excess energy, it can spend its energy on non-essential items, such as hair.

Help me get an idea of where your energy state is at. I need to know your temperature and heart rate. If you have an ECG, the QTc value. I don't know how to use your thyroid markers are they cannot provide a full picture of your thyroid health. That being the case, I am asking these questions.

There is still other topics to discuss such as deficiencies. But one step at a time. Large steps first. The details can wait.

Thank you so much for taking the time!

I eat some rice with more meat than rice, and more veggies than rice.

Most of the veggies I eat are kale and cabbage, steamed.

Unlike most Asians I am not lactose intolerant, but I rarely eat or drink any dairy, only for some goat's milk yoghurt and some Jersey cows whole milk once in a while.

The fruits I eat on a regular basis consist of citrus (grapefruit, clementines, oranges, lemon) and pommegranate depending on the season. Mangos are widely available here but I only eat them infrequently.

I do get pork chops and steak at least 3 times a week.

I think I am starting to see how I may be deficient in major minerals and nutrient eventhough the big picture of my diet seems good compared to average Joe here in Asia.

Are you saying Keratin is the missing cornerstone of my hairgrowth as I already get plenty of amino acids? If so, where to get it in food?


As far as energy, I understand your theory of having enough of it for the unnecessary body functions like hair growth. I am quite physically and mentally tired on a daily basis. My instants of brain fog are happening quite often.

My resting heart beat is around 60 bpm and my temperature is at a constant 36,9 Celcius.

I understand from this forum that active metabolism is important and that my values may be indicative of too slow a metabolism?

 

[foodandtheworld]

Hi RisingSun. Have you tried experimenting with your protein intake? Do you know your average daily intake? I didn't see you mention it in your posts.