Accutane And Premature Gray Hair

Hey everybody leslie here and today i want to talk to you about a really common anti-acne prescription, medication, known as tretinoin accutane, rho, accutane claris, and how it actually can lead to premature gray, hair and hair loss and up to 13 of all patients so um. What is tretinoin or trentinoic acid? It'S actually a derivative of vitamin a and the reason why it is so popular is because it causes excessive shedding of skin cells. So why is that important? Well, if you have severe cystic acne, you are trying to get the inflamed layers off to reveal new, healthier skin. There are two ways to take: tretinoin, you can take it topically like benzoyl peroxide, and that is perfectly seems to be perfectly fine, but if you take it orally, that is where the problems seem to occur, and there are some that take it. Sublingually underneath the tongue, where it goes into a very a main vein underneath the tongue gets into the body right away and bypasses the gi tract, no matter how it gets in the body, though, once it is in the body, it has global or systemic effects everywhere. On the skin and it can even have effects on the mucosa, where some patients will experience gastrointestinal or gi upset, because the mucosa is drying out. So i mentioned that the shedding of skin will happen. But what happens? Is this severe drying from the scalp down to the toes everywhere? You might experience itchy skin, you might experience burning eyes around eight to nine percent of patients have reported um very sore eyes because, of course, the eyes get very dry. You can experience exceedingly dry lips. As a matter of fact, a number of studies that i looked at a hundred percent of patients taking it said that their lips were so excessively dry that they had to wear a special lip self. So, with regard to hair, what it will do is it will actually take hair from the growth phase, known as the anagen phase and put it into the telogen or shedding phase. And i it is going to take that hair follicle and it's going to just sort of propel it out, not literally propel it out, but it will cause it to just loosen up and men who take accutane report say a month later that they notice that. Then the hair comes out, so it won't happen immediately. The hair has to go from the growth phase to a sort of resting phase before it gets to that shedding phase. So why did i look into this? Well, a number of men have gotten in touch with me. I haven't had any women yet, but a number of men have gotten in touch with me to say that they can't figure out why they are getting premature, gray, hair and hair loss. At the same time, it's not something that they see in their siblings or in their male relatives, and, as you know, whenever people ask me about what could be causing what the root cause of their gray hair is, i will usually ask them to talk to their Doctor about getting some blood panels urine panels done just to see what's going on in the body to see if there are any vitamin mineral or antioxidant deficiencies. If there are any underlying chronic infections like h, pylori or candida or strep um, or if there are hormonal imbalances like thyroid issues that could be leading to this and with all of these men, i couldn't figure it out. Until i asked, are you on any medications and then one by one? They all said yes in the last year or the last two years, i've been on trenton owen or accutane roaccutane. However, you have it so one of these one of these nice people has allowed me to to show you some of our conversation and in the first one um. This individual says i first noticed a few grays when i was 18 so about three to four years ago and i'm 22 now. He also says that he began taking isotretinoin for three years between the ages of 16 and 19, and then he did a six month course of accutane when he was 20.. He noticed a few gray hairs on the isotretinoin, but after he finished that course of accutane. At age 20 he says he started to get loads, and it was something that in particular, he said that his barber happened to notice this, that he was getting so many and i've got a photo of what he looked like um beforehand, and you can see his Hair is quite dark brown and then afterwards uh. This is after this is before the accutane uh in the la at age 20, and then afterwards he was getting some hair loss here and getting gray, hair and so he's cut it very short to basically um. You know sort of obscure the fact that this is happening, but he also says like so many of these individuals on this - that there were quite a lot of side effects and i think, as a mother, i really would like individuals to know about this. It'S i want other mothers and other young people who are considering this. Please please, please think about what your root causes rather than trying to just treat the acne. The acne is there for a reason: it's a red flag and it's saying something internally is wrong and if we can determine what that something is it's better for your body, because if you take roaccutane 13 of patients saying that they have hair loss, that's a high Proportion a high proportion of individuals and if you are self-conscious because of the cystic acne, i wonder if also hair loss will just compound your problems. So this individual says he talks about the side effects and his own advice to viewers. The side effects of me being on accutane were actually quite horrible. I would definitely advise people to avoid it at all cost. I had extremely dry lips so dry that i'd have to layer my lips with prescription cream every night so that they wouldn't crack. My eyes were constantly sore where they were so dry. I had no energy at the gym. My joints felt very painful and that led to me, injuring myself, my scalp was constantly sore. My skin was so dry. Obviously, the problems with my hair as well and to top it all off my skin, cleared up a lot quicker from changing my diet than actually being on accutane. I finished the course of accutane about a year ago now, and my skin has been good ever since, but solely down to the diet change rather than the accutane itself. Now, in that individual's case, he discovered that his root cause problem was that he was on these whey protein shakes and having a lot of dairy, and he had seemed to have an allergy to dairy, so accutane can be life-changing for individuals. There is no question and there will be appropriate times to use it, but please go in knowing exactly what the risks are 13 in one monograph, which was for the prescription, drug clarisse and in other studies. Um. I'Ve got one study here, it's a meta-analysis, which means that they looked at all the studies done on tretinoin clarisse, accutane, rho accutane, and they specifically were looking for hair loss across all of these drugs, and they discovered in this study that um. Whereas claire said it was 13, they found a slightly lower amount, but this had to do with the dose. So, as you recall the individual in the photos that i showed you he said he had been on it for three years. That'S actually a very very long time now, vitamin a is a fat soluble vitamin, which means it will build up in your fat tissues and you can't excrete it easily. So what they generally try to do is they give you a prescription and they start you low, and then they titrate you up and you're going to build up a certain amount of vitamin a in the tissues to help with the skin um what they discovered in This study called comparing the frequency of isotretinoin induced hair loss was that at the um, the sort of lower doses which were less than half a milligram per kilo of body weight per day, that the percentage of hair loss was two was two sorry 3.2 percent. And when you increased it above the half a milligram per kilo of body weight per day, then that rate went up to 5.7, given that there are a million prescriptions of this drug given out every single year in the united states alone. I'M thinking these are high percentages, so um, you know 13 percent, with the claris monograph, that is 130 000 men. Women who are experiencing this hair loss um. The meta-analysis is showing at the higher dose that it would be around 57 000 people who are experiencing this kind of hair loss. So please do think carefully before you decide to resort to this. I know it's very painful, but there are other therapies that can be done and always look for the root cause and remove that root cause then work on seal healing the skin and healing the body as a whole system. I hope that this video has been helpful. If you liked it, please consider giving it the thumbs up if you'd like more like it, please hit the subscribe button and, as ever, thank you so much for viewing. I really appreciate all of you guys and uh see you next time.