Hair Loss Alert: Mercury poisoning

Many times, patients experiencing some hair loss may go helter skelter trying to determine what is causing their hair to break or fall out to an alarming degree. In fact, even their doctor may be bewildered as to what is causing the patient to experience hair loss when she has been doing everything possible to live a healthy life. One possible suspect that is causing your hair loss though is mercury poisoning.

Why mercury poisoning? Mercury poisoning is probably more widely prevalent in our society than we realize. There is one case of mercury poisoning of a five-year-old girl (the daughter of mystery writer Ayelet Waldman) who became a victim because she loved to eat tuna. Mercury is considered a neurotoxin that can cause brain damage, and to a certain extent, hair loss (among a host of other problems.)

The National Academy of Sciences believes that mercury poisoning is caused by society dumping its pollution into the earth's bodies of water. In turn, fish consume the mercury simply because they have no choice, since they live in the polluted water all the time. The Academy recommends that if you have to eat fish, choose those varieties which tend to have low mercury levels. Note that the Academy did not say zero mercury levels – perhaps that is not possible due to the level of pollution of our earthly habitats at present. The fish that are at the highest point of the earthly food chain (meaning, the big fish like tuna or swordfish) are the ones that generally have the greatest accumulation of mercury in their bodies because they eat more of the smaller fish that are first exposed to mercury as a pollutant.

Another way you can get mercury poisoning is by having a dental amalgam implanted into your defective teeth, which contains mercury. The mercury becomes processed over time in your mouth into a vapor (gas) so that you have no choice but to inhale it everyday. As much as 50% of the dental amalgam which a dentist may use for your teeth could be made up of mercury actually.

If mercury toxicity or mercury poisoning is really the culprit, you may experience hair loss regardless of whether you are male or female.

Should you feel alarmed by the possibility that you or someone you know is undergoing mercury poisoning, you can always have a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis done. This means that the minerals that make up your hair will be examined closely to find out what minerals seem to be present and in what volumes. There are many illnesses that could be caused by a surplus or a deficiency of certain minerals so a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis could be useful to find any underlying yet hidden medical conditions as well in the patient. The Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis becomes even more important if you have so many strange symptoms, and other tests and check ups cannot reveal what is the cause. Hair loss can also be indicative of the existence of other types of illnesses as well.