Gail Porter 'Amused' After Shop Sends Her Hair Care Offer Despite Alopecia

Gail Porter has become a leading role model for women experiencing alopecia, and her bald and beautiful look has become famous due to the former model and TV star refusing to wear wigs or hats to cover up her hair loss. She was therefore rather amused to receive a marketing email from supermarket Waitrose offering her a 3-for-2 offer on hair care products.

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Having lost her hair seven years ago due to alopecia areata, the 42 year old amusingly Tweeted: “Waitrose... thanks for your emails, but I am really not interested in your ‘3 for 2’ hair products on offer.” Her Tweet prompted an apologetic response from the brand, to which she replied that she thought it was amusing, adding: "Fingers crossed I may need those products again in the future!"

Gail's hair loss is not the more common pattern hair loss, which leads to gradual shedding atop the scalp and cannot be 'cured' or recovered from (though it can be treated via a hair loss treatment programme to halt shedding and regrow hair). Instead, alopecia areata involves sudden patchy hair loss, which can be harder to treat.

Glamorous Gail

When the hair loss is patchy, with some hair remaining, a high strength minoxidil cream can be very effective in regrowing hair in certain cases. However, as in Gail's case, more pronounced loss that covers the whole of the scalp, called alopecia totalis, is usually untreatable, though hair can in theory grow back at any time.

Alopecia areata occurs when many hair follicles rapidly and prematurely entering the resting stage of the hair cycle, leading them to shed faster than usual. Alopecia areata is an auto-immune disease, which means that the body rejects the hair in question as if it were a foreign body. The trigger behind this occurring could be any number of things, from sudden shock to long term chronic stress and local injury or bacterial infection.