Trichotillomania is an impulse control or OCD-like brain disease or addiction in which the person pulls out their hair. Hair can be located anywhere. Trichotillomania can be caused by trauma, rape, physical violence, torture, child abuse, and very severe emotional abuse. It can be minor and easy to manage or serious. This disease can overwhelm the person. It is very important for the person with this disease to eliminate or minimize exposure to any severely negative people in their life who are abusive or exploitative. It is an emotional disorder that usually needs several therapies to be successfully managed. There are many alternative therapies that have not been tested for this disease, but can be successful due to the large emotional component of the disease. Trichotillomania seems similar to addiction, OCD, and a bad habit. Quieting the mind should be one of the goals of any therapy. Alternative therapies that calm the mind include yoga, scalp acupuncture, auricular acupuncture, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), botanical extracts, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and orthomolecular medicine.
This person should be evaluated by a medical professional. A complete physical and diagnostic test for hormones and neurotransmitters should be performed. This patient needs to be evaluated for AIDS and a brain tumor. There are several diseases that are serious enough to cause very irregular symptoms. It is extremely important to be very aggressive in treating this disease. Amino acid therapy for this may be helpful and could include 5-HTP, theanine, GABA, and phenylalanine. Chinese herbal proprietary formulas can be considered along with Chinese liquid herbal extracts. Scalp acupuncture can be very successful in treating these types of diseases. It must be done with larger needles for this type of pathology. Scalp acupuncture treatments last between thirty minutes and one hour. It may take nine treatments to see results. Laser therapy using a medical grade cold laser may work well in this patient. He may need several sessions of medical grade cold laser therapy before he sees any significant change.
It is important that this person get plenty of sleep and eat a well-balanced diet free of nitrates, amines, and food colors. This person should avoid genetically modified foods, food additives, monosodium glutamate, turmeric, and drink plenty of pure water to stay fully hydrated. The diet should allow for Swiss method decaffeinated coffee or organic coffee and tea. This person should consider trying the Rotation Diet in which each food can be eaten once over a four day period. It’s also a good idea to identify and reduce exposure to all allergens. You may want to consider some form of allergy treatment. Conventional allergy treatments with injections are an alternative. NAET is a painless alternative that incorporates chiropractic and acupuncture with a special diet to treat allergens. This person should consider a form of regular exercise such as walking, gymnastics, biking, Bikram yoga, walking, and dancing.
©Dr R Stone, MD-India
