Cancer Patients Battle with Hair Loss

Aside from undergoing extreme case of health concerns, losing great amount of hair really affects a cancer patient’s confidence level. One contributing factor for the hair loss is the chemotherapy session, a valuable anti-cancer treatment. But why do cancer patients lose their hair anyway during chemotherapy?

Hair loss during chemotherapy would almost definitely happen to any cancer patient, regardless of what gender they belong to. Men and women will become partially or wholly bald during chemotherapy depending on what type and intensity of chemotherapy drugs the patient has to consume under guidance of the doctor. These chemotherapy drugs are very potent substances designed to target the rapidly growing cancer cells within the body of the cancer patient. Unfortunately, these same life-saving drugs also affect your hair roots, thus causing hair strands to fall out.

Technically speaking, this is an alopecia category. However, the hair loss results of undergoing chemotherapy sessions cannot be compared greatly from the alopecia caused by testosterone build-up in the hair roots. Since chemotherapy sessions for each patient differs from that of other patients, it’s important to understand that there may have one cancer patient consuming mild anti-cancer drugs which only thin out his hair volume while another cancer patient who is consuming pretty strong anti-cancer drugs will be severely distressed by the clumps of hair that will be falling out on a daily basis.

The prospect of losing all the hair on one's head can be said to be more distressing for female patients to accept than for men. The reason is that the ingrained belief that it is okay for men to go bald, sometimes even desirable, while women without hair tend to look ugly. Some women are gifted with a great bone structure so that even when they go bald they still look pretty good anyway, but unfortunately for most women, hair seems to be a necessary part of their self image, a good symbol of beauty. If you have always been told all your life how nice your hair looks and you lose that hair, imagine what kind of a blow to your self image that would be.

The good news is that hair loss from chemotherapy need not be a permanent thing. Chemotherapy will last for a certain period. While under the battle of cancer, patient’s hair loss would soon stop and a start of hair reborn would initiate when your body has recuperated from its healing tendencies. There may be some difference between the new hair that starts to grow and your previous type of hair, but at least it is still hair. You will then have to wait for the doctor to determine whether the chemotherapy was successful and if you need to undergo more chemotherapy afterwards.

Currently, there were yet proven ways to stop hair loss from occurring during chemotherapy. If losing your hair bothers you a lot, you can always get a really nice wig that goes well with your face and body type. Or you can simply wrap your head in a pretty bandana and top that off with a nice sunhat. These are simple ways to assure that other people will not snicker at you for being bald. If you feel shy about being with other people because of your bald head, you may want to go out in the company of people who can provide you moral support then. In fact, all cancer patients require the support of kind people to be able to get through their situation, even when they are not under chemotherapy.