On 27th October 2021 I had booked an appointment at the hairdressers to have a treatment and a TRIM…a couple hours later and I had chopped all (well not quite all) my hair off. This was not planned and was quite unexpected. The thing is, the hairdresser who had styled my natural hair a number of times over the years had advised me that it was best on this occasion to cut my hair off. I was quite surprised because there had been previous occasions when I had actually suggested to the Hairdresser that I should cut my hair and she was of the view that my hair “would bounce back” without the need to cut it, if I took good care of it…so it was completely unexpected when she advised me on this occasion to cut my hair.

The reason behind her suggestion was because I had bald patches especially in the middle of my hair and I had different length of hair around my head, which were very noticeable. I had been wearing my hair in a high puff for months prior to my cut and had not even noticed myself that in the very middle of my head, my hair was falling out. The joke is I had actually planned to braid my hair the following week. However the Hairdresser told me not to even bother with braids because my hair will just drop out (lol).

Why was my hair falling out? Some may automatically think, perhaps it was due to stress, not looking after my hair properly..maybe even the way I was styling my hair. However, I know the main reason was due to low iron.

Some time in 2019, I had booked myself in with my GP to complete some routine blood checks. I didn’t think any of it and thought the GP will get back to me some days later to inform me that my results were all fine. However, I got a call back from my GP that same day whilst I was still at work. I missed the call and managed to call the GP back on my way home. The GP told me that I may have to go into A & E immediately that evening to get a blood transfusion because my hameoglobin was low. I was thinking to myself, can you just talk simple English because I do not know what you are talking about? As you can imagine, I was also quite shocked that I was being told that I urgently need to go to Hospital and I actually thought that there had been a mistake with the results (maybe my results had been mixed up with someone else’s?). I managed to see the GP that same day and they explained to me that my iron levels were extremely low (I could have collapsed if left undiagnosed) and due to that I may need an urgent blood transfusion to bring my iron levels back up.

To cut a long story short, I didn’t get a blood transfusion but ended up getting an iron transfusion about a month later and I was prescribed x 3 iron tablets a day. After some time of being on the iron tablets, I was then told by my GP that my iron levels were getting too high and I should stop taking the iron levels straight away! Big mistake number 1! As soon as I came off the iron tablets, my hair started falling out bit by bit, then as time went on, in clumps. It got so bad that one time I had washed and conditioned my hair and as I was combing it out, large balls of my hair were falling out in my hands and into the comb. To say the least, it was quite distressing!

I eventually got myself back on the iron tablets but it has been a struggle to get my hair back to the condition that it was before, due to my iron levels, which is why I agreed to cut my hair.

Anyway…..thankfully, the Hairdresser cut my hair into style that I quickly got used to and I was grateful that people were actually complimenting my hairstyle (that helps right? lol). So….at the moment I’m still wearing my hair short and I don’t have any plans to try to grow it back quite yet..but we will see..

However, I do have plans to continue working on improving my iron levels to get them back to normal..because its annoying to have to deal with the symptoms of low iron.

Low iron…low cut…