Wig Styling Service for People With Medical Hair Loss

A mum from Sunderland whose hair loss has been caused by the autoimmune disorder Alopecia Areata has been talking to her local newspaper about a national charity designed to help those in a similar situation.

Kay Fisher, from Red House in the north east of the city, wears a wig that has been fitted by a stylist with decade-long links to mynewhair, an initiative set up by celebrity stylist Trevor Sorbie MBE.

Wigs an option when hair loss is extreme

Many people whose shedding is caused by Alopecia Areata will experience it as small bald patches which will clear up in a matter of months in some cases although it can linger/recur, which is why some seek out specialist Alopecia Areata treatment. However, some people's hair loss is so extreme that they feel a wig would enable them to better function in everyday life. In fact, two severe forms of the disease Alopecia Totalis and Alopecia Universalis lead to complete baldness on the head (body hair is also shed in the case of the latter).

For Fisher, a mother of one, the disease has manifested itself as near total baldness, meaning that she has come to rely immensely on her local hairstylist and the national charity for whom he is a lead educator.

Fisher lost almost all of her hair when she was just nine years old and tells her local newspaper, the Sunderland Echo, that she was made to feel like something of a guinea pig when she was encouraged to try out different medications in her youth. None appear to have been a great success, and for the last decade she has been a regular at East Boldon's Tribeca Hair Design where Darren Stewart - no relation to Belgravia Male Pattern Hair Loss treatment client Darren Stewart who has featured in our advertising campaigns! - has been styling her wigs.

Not every hairdresser is well equipped to fit a wig or indeed style one, which is something that Sorbie set out to address when he started the charity. There are now hundreds of independent salons and professionals across the country who have been trained to fit wigs to people whose hair loss has been caused by cancer drugs and other medical issues. They are collectively known as "Salons that care".

It's fair to say that Fisher feels that mynewhair has been a godsend. "Darren made me feel at home and as though he actually cared about what he was doing,” she said of her stylist. "I can just get on with Darren as though he were a relative or a really good friend. He was able to offer me something that was actually to my style and my standard that I was expecting. It made me feel more confident," she added.

Some forms of Alopecia can be treated

While breakthroughs in potential new treatment options for extreme cases of Alopecia Areata are being made all the time (new treatment could be on the market in as little as a few years), the current choices for people affected in this way are very limited. Significantly easier to deal with is the mild, scalp-only, patchy form of the disease which Belgravia's hair loss experts have found in many cases to respond well to formulations of high-strength minoxidil from those available at the clinics' in-house pharmacies.

Working in tandem with this to help nourish the follicles from within is a highly-targeted food supplement named Hair Vitalics, a blend of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and botanicals that have been singled out for their hair friendliness by Belgravia's specialists. They are available in both For Men and For Women formulations.