Hi all, I'm 48 and about six weeks ago discovered a whack (and by this I mean four inches!) of missing hair at the back of my head. Basically it's missing from the top of the ears down at the back. I don't know how long the shedding process took but as soon as I discovered it I went to my doctor. My GP diagnosed alopecia ophiasis, warning the prognosis wasn't good. Unfortunately, where I am in Southern Ontario there's a long wait list for dermatologists so my appointment isn’t until near the end of July. Next week I’m planning to hit a dermatology walk in clinic I found out about to see if there’s anything they can do sooner.

In the meantime I have a betaderm prescription I’ve been using for the past four weeks. So far that hasn’t accomplished anything. My entire scalp has been burning and itching like crazy. I’ve been using Allegra to tone down the symptoms but it doesn't stop the itch entirely.

Anyway, I'm very curious whether anyone with alopecia has underlying health issues that may have triggered the hair loss? For the past three years I've had health struggles that have affected my mobility. I was diagnosed with polyneuropathy but after years under investigation by various medical professionals including three neurologists, two rheumatologists, and a sports doctor, the cause of the neuropathy can’t be determined so can't be reversed. All of the neurologists tell me that the constant stiffness and pain I feel in my feet, knees and calves is not from the neuropathy; various other doctors have said it could be from some autoimmune condition which they are not able to categorize/detect with current medical technology.

I seem to be having one inflammation issue after another in recent years. Only months before the hair loss I had two weeks of tooth pain that was so bad I thought it must mean an abcess only to be told by my dentist that he couldn't find anything on the X-rays and that it must be inflammation. Shortly after that I also had terrible stomach pain that shot through to my back so that I could hardly stand and which left me unable to eat for five days. I feel as it all these issues can't be separate entities and all must go back to the same root cause. So I'm curious to know if anyone else with sudden hair loss also has other inflammation issues. As far as autoimmune conditions go, I do have extensive allergies, asthma and IBS too but these are all much more longstanding.

I know supposedly alopecia areata often happens in otherwise healthy people but is there sometimes a link between it and more serious health problems?