Theresa's Story About Her Vitamin A Deficiency

Before transitioning to a GinaCurl, my hair was always braided as I only wore wigs. I never wore my hair out, so when I finally got my GinaCurl, that was the first time I was wearing my hair out and styling it every day since having a perm when I was younger. While washing and styling my hair after the GinaCurl, I saw a fair amount of hair coming out, but I didn’t think anything of it. When you take your braids out, it's typical to see a fair amount of hair shed, so it wasn’t something I wasn’t used to. Also, I really didn’t have a point of reference in terms of hair shed because what was my normal? I wore wigs for years and never saw how much my hair truly shed on a day-to-day basis.

I started to get a bit concerned when the hair shedding did not stop and remained consistent for months. I do have anemia and finally put two and two together and figured my iron must be low, so I started to take my supplements and the shedding lessened and my hair eventually started to grow back.

Fast forward to a few years later and I’m on my 4th or 5th GinaCurl, and my hair was back to shedding—but more than what I assumed was normal and at times what I considered excessive. At this point, my anemia supplement regimen was no longer curbing the shedding at all, my hair growth really slowed, and my hair was pretty fragile. I really had no idea what was going on, and I was becoming more and more devastated as the months went by. But I was determined not to go back to wigs, and I really wanted to find a way to fix this.

How did I know it wasn’t the GinaCurl? For me, it was rather simple. I watched my hair get more and more fragile as time went by, yet my hair was not breaking! My hair was only coming out from the root. That was actually one of the things that blew me away. I thought to myself, “I’m practically going bald; my hair is the thinnest and most fragile it’s ever been in my life, but it's not breaking,” and that was such a bizarre anomaly. It was the primary reason I knew it wasn’t the GinaCurl that was causing my hair to fall out.

When I had perms, I experienced breakage all the time. My hair would get thin from over-processing and then eventually start to break. My hair with the GinaCurl never broke, and that was the only thing I had going for me at that point. Also, call it what you want, but I really hated having my hair in braids and wigs. I really enjoyed having my hair out and the ease of doing a simple wash-and-go, and although devastated that my hair was falling out, I wasn’t ready to go back to wigs just yet.

About two weeks after my 8th GinaCurl, my hair started to fall out practically in handfuls. I would barely comb my hair and it would just come out. I decided to check every single vitamin associated with hair health, shedding, and growth. The results were in, and I had a pretty bad vitamin A deficiency.

After just a week and a half of supplementing, my hair COMPLETELY stopped falling out. I mean, completely! I could wash my hair, comb and style it, and not even ten strands of hair would come out in the comb. It has now been several months since finding the real source of my hair woes, and my hair is coming back in stronger and healthier than ever.

When our body is lacking what it needs or stressed, our hair will speak to us, and it’s our job to listen. In my case, it was far from obvious what was going on with my hair, and a vitamin A deficiency is really rare. My doctor told me to check my vitamin D, iron, and all of the B vitamins, as those were more likely the source of my hair fall and not a vitamin A deficiency. But in my case, it was!

I’m glad I paid attention to the signs my hair was showing me, as it saved me from more extreme symptoms of vitamin A deficiency. Aside from my hair falling out, the only other thing I noticed was very mild changes in my night vision while driving. Had I simply gone back to wigs thinking my hair just needed a chance to catch itself, and had I just gotten a stronger prescription for glasses, my deficiency would have worsened.

I had the deficiency for years at this point, and my body tried its best to function by pulling back its stores of vitamin A from going to non-essential places like my hair and sending it to vital parts of my body that needed it more. I wish I had caught it sooner; losing your hair for any reason is devastating.

Hair doesn’t just fall out. It speaks, so listen. For me, it was the canary in the coal mine.