Can Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) Worsen Androgenic Alopecia?

Can Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) Worsen Androgenic Alopecia?

I've been taking it for six weeks and I've had some great benefits from it already, however, my shedding has drastically increased since taking LDN and I was hoping it would help the hair loss.  Thank you. So this is a really quite a question and I actually think Michelle might be better at answering this one than me, but I'll give it a go and if I don't quite get there then she can step in at the end.  But there area couple of things.  So alopecia isn't always just androgenic.  There can be an autoimmune effect for everybody even if he’s displaying his male pattern baldness.  You might have been diagnosed with androgenic alopecia, but it may also have an autoimmune component. If there is, then absolutely it may have some benefit.  But you're seeing that you found some great benefits from it already, clearly, that's for another condition so you already have some sort of autoimmune disease going on.  Therefore, you know improving that is going to improve your overall health.  It's going to reduce your inflammation and it may well improve your hair growth in the long term but even when you're treating androgenic alopecia with the specific medications that target testosterone in the scalp you do initially get a shedding increase because it interrupts the way that this hair follicles grow and there's a hair follicle cycle.  

I could probably drag out of my memory from a million years ago but I know that it takes quite a long time and in order for new follicles to grow back then the old ones have to fall out.  I think maybe, if I've missed something, Michelle might need to fill in the gaps.  That was well done, and as Stephen even pointed out, the hair follicle takes about 90 days before you actually see much of it.  You may actually see some shedding of older hair but that doesn't mean that there isn't somewhere in the process where it's actually starting to develop and perhaps new hair is growing up and it does take some time, and sometimes it takes several cycles to see that so I wouldn't give up hope. 

I would never give up hope on that but again, sometimes LDN is not necessarily the only therapy that we use especially for alopecia.  Alopecia is not an easy disease, it's just not an easy disease because it's so different in so many different people.  The other thing that we're finding is that sometimes there's a toxin load that we have to identify and also detox from before we can really get a handle on helping those hairs to grow.  I will add that it's also a genetic component and there is a new genetic test out. It's called the Tricho test and it's a swab in your mouth and so LDN is great but also there are a lot of other components and usually another treatment you might need as well.