According to statistics , almost 75% of the population of Russia to one degree or another suffer from illnesses that cause hair loss, and nine out of ten patients who came to see a trichologist complain of hair loss.

Moreover, according to the norm, a healthy person loses up to hundreds of hairs per day, and the loss of a larger amount is a pathology and leads to the development of baldness.

Alopecia is a disease characterized by baldness, that is, partial or complete loss of hair on the head. Alopecia is of several types, but the most common of them are two: focal and androgenetic. Alopecia areata occurs most often in women: hair begins to fall out unevenly in large quantities, and the cause of this disease is unclear and cannot be treated.

There is also androgenetic alopecia (mainly found in men), which is inherited and manifests itself gradually – the hair becomes thinner over the years until it stops growing. Distinguish including total and subtotal alopecia. In the first case, a person loses not only the hair on his head, but also his eyebrows and eyelashes, and in the second – only on his head.

The Village met people who live with alopecia, and found out how they cope with their illness and why they consider alopecia to be the lesser evil that they might face.

ACTIVE HAIR LOSS BEGAN when I was 16 years old – then I did not fully believe that it was for a long time. Of course, I was very worried, I didn’t go to school for six months, she waited for me to make a wig on order. Then you still couldn’t just go to the store and buy a suitable wig, you had to find a “donor” who would donate his hair, and then they made a wig from them.

I was very lucky – I have a loving family that supports me in everything. Alone, in principle, it’s hard to cope with any emergency situation, so when there is a loving “incubator” (as I call all my loved ones) that literally helps to stand up after stress and live on, it is priceless.

Besides, I have amazing friends. By the way, my first official recognition in front of my girlfriends occurred when I was 17 years old. It was a pajama party, well, and during the fight with pillows, my wig flew off. The girls did not know how to react, and I did not know whether to cry or to laugh.

The situation was like in a bad comedy. It all ended up that we finally had a heart-to-heart talk, cried together, laughed. I have a girlfriend who now lives in Italy, she specially grew her hair, probably more than a year, then to cut it and send it to me for a wig. When I found out about it, I burst into tears, it was touching.

I started my project two years ago when I realized that there is no open source where you could learn something about the life of people like me. Not just to learn, but also to be inspired. There are closed communities, women hide and are very much afraid that one of their loved ones will find out about their non-standard appearance.

I was deeply shocked by the stories of women who walked and slept in wigs 24 hours a day, and if you shot them, then only in the bathroom and so as not to see yourself in the mirror.

Women are naturally prone to digging themselves. I call this phenomenon “woman and the mirror.” Give the woman a mirror, and she accumulates a huge number of shortcomings, while it does not matter if she is beautiful or not. Interestingly, women are tougher with other women.

Therefore, of course, when something happens with appearance, for a woman this is number one tragedy. They are very afraid to be unattractive. Although from my own experience I can say that men are much easier to relate to.

I had a funny case, I came to an oriental massage somehow, taking off my cap, I warn the massage therapist so as not to be scared: “You know, I have such a feature – I don’t have hair”, to which the massage therapist replies: “Do not worry, this massage will not affect your beautiful appearance. ” That is, he did not even understand why I told him this. In men, it seems to me, other mechanisms of perception of beauty. They feel female energy.

It is very important for me to convey to women who have experienced sudden extreme hair loss that beauty is our internal state. You can imagine this in the form of a light bulb, and while it is not lit, there is no light, there is no heat, but turn it on – and they will fly into your light.

And now our female community is gradually growing, and among us there are amazing women who are beautiful wives, caring mothers, and active people in all aspects of life. And many admit that they very much regret those moments when, instead of living, they closed and suffered.  

ANDREI (SASHA’S FATHER): I work as a neurologist and physiotherapist in a clinic. In addition, I am engaged in social activities. My daughter Sasha has alopecia. Before this school year, Sasha went to kindergarten, and now she went to first grade.

Sasha was two years old when the first focus appeared on the back of her head. At first, we did not attach any particular importance to it: we thought that this could be a manifestation of rickets when the area on the back of the head is obliterated. In short, we tried to find the simplest and most understandable explanations for this. They passed tests, but everything turned out to be in order.

Then new foci appeared, gradually they began to grow, and hair began to fall out en masse. We began to undergo regular examinations, according to which, however, no one could say anything. We passed both the genetic analysis and the spectral analysis for toxins – in general, everything was in order, and we did not find any problems.

After this there were periods when the hair fell out and then grew back, but at one fine moment they all fell out and did not appear again. Sasha was then about four years old.

The diagnosis of focal alopecia was made at the pediatric academy and did not raise any doubts. I don’t remember any particularly difficult period in our life in connection with Sasha’s disease. In the kindergarten, children are still small and do not pay attention to anything because they do not know the concepts of “good / bad” and “beautiful / ugly”. It begins with age, when children begin to measure themselves: I have such a jacket, I have such a toy.

Around the same time, they adopt from their parents and society the concepts of what is beautiful and what is not. But they need to explain a lot. If not explained, they begin to invent something of their own. So explaining to a child why someone doesn’t have hair is the primary task of their parents. The most terrible enemies for a child are parents who, because of their ignorance and illiteracy, do unacceptable things.

We began to search for treatment methods – we contacted Germany, we even wrote to the States. In America, there is such an organization for the Children’s Alopecia Project – they are engaged specifically in working with children who are faced with alopecia.

We wrote them a letter, explained the problem and asked for advice. In fact, they replied that there was no cure. Hair can come back, then disappear on its own, but this has nothing to do with the potential use of any drugs.

There are hormonal drugs that can somehow slow down the process of loss. But they have their unpleasant side effects, and no one guarantees the effect of taking such a remedy – it can be at first, but in the future, if the process is started, no one guarantees that the hair will not fall out completely again.

After we realized that there was no effect, and psychologically for the child it only gets worse, we just decided not to use any drugs.

We never tried to hide Sasha’s illness – both relatives and all relatives were calmly told about the problem. Perhaps it’s easier for us, because my wife and I are doctors and, due to greater awareness, we are simply calm about everything. It takes a lot of energy to hide, and the child, meanwhile, feels everything and receives a certain psychological trauma.

So, parents, hiding the disease, do this not for the child, but for themselves – simply because they are afraid of unnecessary questions, afraid that their child is not like the others. But there is no benefit to the child from their secrecy.

What could be worse than closing a person in itself through isolation from others? And other children will always find a reason for bullying: someone wears glasses, someone full, someone has leg problems, someone has squint

We even had no idea to isolate Sasha and go to home schooling. The child is absolutely healthy: he is engaged in sports, and he has no physical abnormalities. There are psychological difficulties. But what could be worse than closing a person in yourself through isolation from others? And other children will always find a reason for bullying: someone wears glasses, someone full, someone has leg problems, someone has strabismus.

Moreover, if the child has a core inside and he can fight back, then everything is quite easily overcome. And if he stumbles into a corner, not finding support in the family, and considers himself flawed, because his parents constantly hide him from everyone – a person grows up with very big psychological problems and complexes that prevent him from fully living and developing.

If the family does not perceive and does not accept, then what is there to talk about? They say that we have a cruel society, but it all starts with the family.

Somehow I had an idea – why not try to get together and communicate with other people with a similar problem. First, we created a group on VKontakte, began to get acquainted, add to each other as friends.

The appearance of our community on Facebook was a very big step – if on VKontakte the circle of people is limited by the Russian-speaking contingent, then Facebook is the whole world.

There are various closed groups there – you are added and you see that there are a lot of people with alopecia and such people live quite calmly, like any others, without restricting themselves to anything. You take a positive example from them.

Plus, meeting offline is really great when hundreds of children with alopecia gather to talk to each other and listen to adults with the same disease. After all, there are Olympic champions with alopecia, there are also famous artists who are not shy to appear in public without wigs – they share their experiences and experiences with children, and, in principle, this is all very powerful psychological support. I can’t imagine any more.

By the arrival of Mary Marshall (a public figure involved in the problems of alopecia and herself suffering from alopecia since she was 40 years old. – Ed.), We had arranged a meeting in Moscow in advance, at which Russian national dishes were prepared, – we arranged a culinary master class.

And then in St. Petersburg, already with the support of an international clinic, we were allocated a large conference room to meet with her.

Friends and relatives also help us. For example, they helped organize a photo shoot with makeup artists, stylists and fashionable clothes. Plus now we are planning to create a team to participate in competitions.

And it’s not necessarily something sports, it could be the game “What? Where? When? ”Or something similar. Just continuing to communicate is really very important – for the first time in life many girls and women take off their wigs, for many of them a new world opens.

It is difficult to imagine, for example, that you have been living for 20 years, putting on a wig every morning since childhood, and constantly afraid that it will fly off or get wet – for a person this is constant stress, one that I don’t know what to compare with.