Hair Regrowth Journey Part One: The Epiphany and the Road So Far

Sooo my health has been taking quite the tumble the past few months. If you followed me from my OG blog where I did daily entries about my weight loss journey where I ended up losing over 50 pounds in about 6 months, you saw that it was a tremendous success but it obviously wasn't perfect. It is not a mandatory read that old blog at all so feel free to skip it but the TL;DR of it all was that I lost that weight by eating keto in combination of some form of exercise 5 days a week and drinking 100 of ounces of water daily. I made a lot of hiccups along the way and I remember at times being so stressed about keeping up with not only with my routine to lose the actual weight but to keep up the daily posts in a timely manner in which I somehow was able to keep up about 90% of the time. Not that many people have read my blog. I did it mainly for me. Admittedly, it did cause a lot of stress. However, I am very glad I did all that diligent tracking of everything I did. It made me feel accountable and motivated to continue my weight loss journey. 

I inevitably succumbed to burn out from not only the blog but of life. In my daily entries I did have little anecdotes about my life randomly through the months which implied I was living a horrible home life. In short, I was in an abusive relationship and this blog was my way of escaping that. Things eventually came to a head in late 2024 and I finally got the courage to leave.

From mid December 2024 I started a new life after flying across the US back home. I was finally comfortable in my weight when I was at an low of 130 pounds and in a healthy new relationship but little did I know that it would slowly unravel. 

I was losing hair like crazy!!!!

For the next few months I was hyper fixated on my hair. It was frizzy and dry despite me taking daily showers. It dried weird so I would frequently run my fingers through my hair to detangle but only clumps of hair would continue to fall out. Shower drain would clog with hair every few weeks (and unclogging the drain is straight up traumatizing). It came to a point where I can no longer ignore that my hair is officially at dangerous levels!

How did it get to this point?

My first explanation was a process called telogen effluvium which can happen when you lose weight in a short amount of time. 50 pounds in about 6 months is pretty drastic, huh?So I figured that was it and did what redditors have said and just to ride it out and hair should regrow in another few months. I honestly did not notice how bad it was until about May 2024.

Second explanation was stress. An obvious one. I am just so TMI about stuff but I will try my best to keep it low profile but to put it short...my separation from my abusive relationship to my new relationship did NOT end well. There was admittedly overlap. However, I would like to think I ended the relationship much sooner but the abusive ex simply "rejected" my breakup on multiple occasions. Which that in itself clearly tells you how abusive of a relationship it was. You just cannot "refuse" someone's breakup to you, you know? As much as I tried to end the relationship on civil terms, he just plain did not want it to be civil so I had to make the hardest decision to rip the band aid off and make a drastic exit.  It broke my heart to leave my son behind but he is 17 years old and he definitely understood as he saw first hand how miserable I was. No matter how clear and blunt my intentions were to my ex, he was in denial for a long time which then turned to straight up scorched earth once he realized I was never coming back. He stopped harassing me and my family and resorted to completely throwing away everything I owned there. He stole my luggage so it was impossible to bring more of my things...I barely had any clothes! I only brought like 10% of my clothes. Sad. Now that 10% is all I have. The stress of all this drama weighed heavily on me. All this was happening while I was reeling from my mom's rapidly deteriorating health and ultimately death. I took that really hard.

Third and perhaps the most underrated explanation for my rapid hair loss was anemia. Yes, anemia. Looking back, I wasn't taking care of my health nor eating right since I flew back to to Texas. I was bed bound since the beginning of 2024 averaging around 3k-5k steps a day. My mom died in May 2025 and at her burial is when I felt the most severe symptoms. I literally thought I was going to die. I was drinking a lot of coffee on an empty stomach on many days leading up to it but it all came to a head in mid May. I felt like I was going to pass out. Water helped put off my symptoms severity but it was still present. Unfortunately as my new boyfriend and I left my mom's burial was when we got into a car accident. Someone t-boned us at a red light. 

From that day forward, I wanted to take my health a lot more seriously. I was scared that all those months I not only walked so little steps but was in bed most of my waking days that I would develop blood clots in my leg. I abruptly started walking 20k steps a day. In the first week of July 2025 is when my symptoms started worsening. The worst was probably 2 weeks leading up to it where I felt my chest tightening like heart palpitations and I was very dizzy like my brain was going to shut down. It got to a point where I was scared to fall asleep because I was convinced I would did if I lost consciousness. I definitely didn't die but I knew my body was absolutely in danger of something. 

Off I went into the ER. WITH NO HEALTH INSURANCE. Sad cries.

Glad I did because now I know the cause of my feeling all out of wack. I was mildly anemic and had thrombycytosis I hope I spelled that right. I have a high number of blood platelets which means a high risk for blood clots. While I have no proof but I have a feeling I was severely anemic when I was feeling the worst symptoms 2 weeks ago and at the time of the ER visit I was slowly coming out of anemia. I was low in iron (side eyeing my coffee consumption as the root cause) but I also strongly believe that my abrupt increase of physical activity could also be a strong contributor. Google says this is a possibility. 

Since that day, I bought some generic store brand iron gummies and tried eating more healthier. Could improper keto be the culprit? Maybe. Keto is great for the most part but making sure you get all the proper nutrients and vitamins is all at our own individual discretion. And I wasn't the best at that. That being said, a side effect of anemia is hair loss. I could have always been anemic and not have known until now as I always have a hair loss problem but it was not nearly as prominent until now.

Here I am to hopefully chronicle the journey to get my hair regrowth back now that I know what to work on and hopefully...I am correct in this!!

Here is my starting point. 

And a month later after a trim.

We all know that hair regrowth takes time. Months even up to a year until I see noticeable results but I want to document every step of the way to see what works or doesn't work. Ever since my original picture I have decided to take these supplements. I admittedly have taken these before but I stopped for a few months but recently started taking them again shortly before this picture was taken.

I try my best to be accurate. I brushed my hair and all of my hair is to one side to demonstrate the severity of the state of my hair.

I take 1 biotin capsule, suggested is 2 but I am low on money to buy more so I am trying to stretch it until I run out. I also take 2 omega 3 capsules. I should have narrowed down to 1 but oh well. I have a month of so left of that bottle left. And of course I start my day off with 2 iron gummies before eating breakfast. After breakfast is when I take biotin and omega 3. Nutritional facts for the hell of it:

Around 1pm I take a water bottle and mix these:

1 1/2 tsp of magnesium only to help with constipation and 1 tbsp of collagen as I heard that helps with hair regrowth. Suggested serving is 4 tbsp!! However, I am super low on money so I am trying to stretch this product the best I can. When I buy another canister then I will plan to bump it up to 2 tbsp to ease into it.

Sometimes I take 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of the night time version but it is soooo pricey that I try to use sparingly.

When I shower I take this:

I like the fact that they have no sulfates. However only after I bought it is when I looked up reviews that people have claimed it made them lose hair!!! I am scared. It is pricey as fuck so I am going to finish the bottles and research and buy new ones. I will update on that when I can.