VIDEO: ‘Very limited’ non-pharmaceutical options for alopecia areata

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Non-pharmaceutical options for alopecia areata are very limited. There's the truth of it is there's really nothing that works super well for alopecia areata. Like once somebody's suffering from it, that isn't a medication. I mean, other than time. So, we do know that time works really well. Like the disease tends to be kind of cyclical. And so, patients, if they have very limited alopecia areata, their, their, their bodies will recognize that it's, it's, it's incorrect reaction and they'll fix it. The body will fix it. And the hair will start to regrow the areas that are lost. But besides time there's nothing really that's non-pharmacologic that works really consistently. Now, there are things that can help prevent alopecia areata, so we know that alopecia areata is very often triggered by stress. So, it's really common that patients have told me, oh yeah, I lost my job. I'm going through a divorce and that's when my alopecia areata started. That's a really common story. So, minimizing stress in people's lives is, is helpful to kind of prevent onset. Probably there could be ways of like minimizing inflammation in the body. So, you know, right now, I feel like we all have excessive inflammation in our bodies because we're not getting enough sleep. We're not eating, we're not eating well. Like, so, you know, too much processed foods, not enough fiber in our diets, not enough fruits and vegetables, too many like processed foods, obesity, lack of exercise, a lot of things this add to like the inflammatory milieu in our body. And that might also predispose people, but that's all just prevention. Once somebody gets alopecia areata, really, besides time, the only thing that helps are really physician interventions. I should also add there there's some emerging research that's being, actively being pursued. That I was also wondering if our gut microbiome might be changing alopecia areata. So, we know that if you count up the number of bacteria in your body, you are more bacteria than you are human. And so, we've evolved with these, we've co-evolved these bacteria for millennia and the relationships are very intricate and it's possible that our gut microbiome might influence a disease like alopecia areata, just like it influences a lot of diseases. And so having a healthy gut microbiome kind of consistent with a healthy diet and a very kind of diverse well-balanced diet heavy in fiber with fruits and vegetables and low animal protein like that, that might also decrease inflammation that might also help because of the microbiome. So that's another small thing.