Some Chinese philosopher once said: 不管白头发还是黑头发，只要肯长出来就是好头发 (Whether white hair or black hair, as long as it’s willing to grow, it’s good hair).
Just kidding. The real quote is 不管白猫黑猫，会抓老鼠就是好猫 (Whether a white cat or a black cat, as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat).
It’s a quote from Deng Xiaoping, an important Chinese leader in the post-Mao era, used during the 1960s–1970s to explain his economic and political philosophy. The point is: don’t cling to ideology or pure theory, but focus on actual results. Whatever policy makes the country better, keeps people fed, and keeps the economy running, that policy “works.” Simply put: doesn’t matter how, doesn’t matter what label, only matters whether it actually works.
I don’t know if you can truly relate to the quote above (I mean the one that says ‘Whether white hair or black hair, as long as it’s willing to grow, it’s good hair’). But for me, having experienced both gray hair and hair loss at the same time, I’ve only just come to truly appreciate the value of gray hair.
Back when I was young, the problem of hair loss seemed completely ridiculous to me. Because no matter how much hair fell out, it would just grow back in no time anyway.
Especially back when I was still in school, the girls at my school had this weird trend. They would pull out their kinky hair (the ones that grow out all curly) from the middle of their heads. But once they started pulling, they couldn’t stop, and it became so addictive that eventually the middle of their heads went bald enough to see their scalps.
And not long after that, I would see those girls’ hair growing back. But it looked like the fuzz on a newborn chick.
And that image has stayed burned in my mind ever since.
Now, as I got older, the gray hair started showing up. When I first spotted my first few gray hairs, I almost screamed out loud. Because I couldn’t accept that I was entering the age called ‘old.’
And I kept not being able to accept it, until one day, which was this day last year. I washed my hair as usual, but after I finished, I saw a pile of fallen hair on the floor in an amount so shocking it was alarming.
I freaked out, because I’d never experienced hair loss before. When I saw that clump of hair that looked like it could be several hundred strands, my heart sank straight down to my ankles.
After the initial shock wore off, I had to quickly find out what was causing the heavy hair loss before it got any worse. I mean, my hair wasn’t even thick to begin with, and if it thinned out any more, it would be in a terrifying state, right?
After digging around, I found that it was probably caused by a sudden lifestyle change during the time I had just gone through major dental treatment about a year earlier.
Here’s the thing: I had multiple cavities, and one tooth needed a root canal plus a crown. (I talked about this in a previous post, in case anyone’s interested, you can click to read it here.) And the treatment cost was absolute insanity.
From that point on, I changed my diet and lifestyle cold turkey, all at once.
From eating snacks, both salty and sweet, every day, multiple times a day, I quit all of it. I quit sugar completely (meaning all sweet-flavored foods and snacks of every kind), and also cut down on foods containing flour (because in the end, flour just turns into sugar and hurts my teeth anyway).
On top of that, I also quit eating crispy fried foods (because they’re too hard, and the dentist told me to stop eating hard foods to preserve both my real teeth and the crown that cost me a fortune). I also cut down on salty foods, because the elderly at home were starting to have kidney problems, and I was getting scared I might end up sick too.
And I also reduced my meals from three a day to two. Because I have to brush my teeth after every meal to prevent more cavities. So eating more than two meals would mean brushing more than three times a day, since I also have to brush before bed. The reason is that brushing too much can wear down your teeth… and treating worn teeth isn’t any cheaper than treating cavities.
And I also started paying attention to other aspects of my health. Like exercise, which I’d never done before. I used to just sit around and lie around all day without moving my body. But then I switched to walking ten thousand steps a day.
And because of all those reasons combined, my body went into stress mode, or couldn’t adapt fast enough, which led to a condition called Telogen Effluvium.
Telogen Effluvium is a temporary hair loss condition caused by severe physical or emotional stress, which causes a large amount of hair to enter the resting phase at the same time and fall out abnormally fast. It usually occurs after triggering events such as childbirth, severe illness, surgery, or intense emotional stress. The symptom is hair falling out all over the scalp more than normal (over 100 strands per day), but it generally recovers on its own within 6 to 9 months once the cause has been addressed.
This heavy hair loss happened about three months after I made that 180-degree lifestyle change. And by the time I realized what was happening, the hair loss was already severe.
Every time I washed my hair, it broke my heart to see that big clump of hair sitting on the drain. There was so much it looked scary. I wondered, if it keeps falling out this much continuously for another 6-9 months, will I even have any hair left on my head by then?!
But since it had already happened, there was nothing I could do except accept it and wait for it to recover on schedule.
In the meantime, what I could do was try to eat foods that would help nourish my hair and make it grow back faster. Especially protein-rich foods like meat, eggs, milk, and various beans and legumes.
Speaking of eating eggs, I once read on a forum where a guy shared that his sister had some illness and the doctor told her to eat lots of eggs. So he ended up eating eggs along with her. After eating 1-2 eggs every day, the result was that his front hairline, which had been pretty much gone for a long time, miraculously started growing back.
Some people also shared that they had to stop eating eggs every day, because eating eggs daily made their hair grow too fast and they had to go to the barber more often. (Oh… what a problem to have. People with hair loss don’t just feel jealous reading this, they feel annoyed too. 🤣)
So what happened after I tried eating more protein?
For the first three months, I didn’t see any results. It kept falling out just the same, along with my anxiety growing more and more.
But around the 4th month, it seemed like my hair was gradually falling out less. And it finally stopped falling out by the 5th and 6th months. But even then, the new hair still hadn’t grown in yet. (Or maybe it had grown but I just couldn’t see it, I wasn’t sure.)
But after almost a year had passed, I started noticing tiny little hairs (and I mean super tiny, short, and wispy) growing in. And after waiting a while longer, I could see that they were actually growing back for real.
But what I saw left me a little disappointed.
Why?
Well, because…
I forgot that I’m no longer a kid or a teenager whose hair would race to grow four strands per follicle anymore. At my age, if just one strand is willing to grow out of four follicles, I’d already be over the moon. And that’s when the gray hair I used to hate so much suddenly became precious.
Who cares what color the hair that grows out is? As long as it’s willing to grow, I’m so happy I could almost cry!
And that concludes my hair loss problem at an age that’s no longer young. And I hope we never meet again. (I mean the hair loss, not you. 😆)