4 year old thinning hair & bald patches

[rebeccaturnquist]

About a month ago I noticed a bald spot on my sons head. Now, he's always had fairly thin hair. We actually joke about him having old man hair syndrome. But the bald patches are definitely new & there are 3 now. He's always had some issues that I wasn't quite sure about, but the doctor always reassured me he's fine & healthy. I've never felt 100% about this, but what do I know, I'm not a doctor. Maybe I was just acting like an overprotective mom. That was how I thought until his hair started falling out. Then I knew I needed to investigate some more. His blood test came back normal last week, as far as the typical things they look for...anemia, diabetes, etc. So I was left with the doctor telling me it was Alapecia (balding), but he had it for no reason. Again, I went along with what the doctor told me, but then I realized she had never addressed his other symptoms. His frequent stomachache, overly tired, cranky, itchy skin, & the never ending "cold". I started to realize, maybe he has food allergies. I started doing more research & sure enough all of these can be related to food allergies, especially that of gluten or wheat. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Am I crazy, or wouldn't his doctor have thought of this?

[Mark]

About a month ago I noticed a bald spot on my sons head. Now, he's always had fairly thin hair. We actually joke about him having old man hair syndrome. But the bald patches are definitely new & there are 3 now. He's always had some issues that I wasn't quite sure about, but the doctor always reassured me he's fine & healthy. I've never felt 100% about this, but what do I know, I'm not a doctor. Maybe I was just acting like an overprotective mom. That was how I thought until his hair started falling out. Then I knew I needed to investigate some more. His blood test came back normal last week, as far as the typical things they look for...anemia, diabetes, etc. So I was left with the doctor telling me it was Alapecia (balding), but he had it for no reason. Again, I went along with what the doctor told me, but then I realized she had never addressed his other symptoms. His frequent stomachache, overly tired, cranky, itchy skin, & the never ending "cold". I started to realize, maybe he has food allergies. I started doing more research & sure enough all of these can be related to food allergies, especially that of gluten or wheat. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Am I crazy, or wouldn't his doctor have thought of this?

Hi Rebecca,

I just ran these symptoms by Dr Rassman and he said that for children that age, hair loss is typically caused by ringworm. That's probably the first thing to be ruled out.

Anecdotally, I got a weird rash of red dots all over my body a few years ago and went to the doctor about it. I had always thought that modern medical science had everything figured out. I could just go in, they might do a little biopsy or something, and they'd come back and say "AH HA! We determined that the new cologne you bought is causing this!"

Much to my disappointment, my doctor basically said "hey, we have no idea what might be causing this." Literally no help at all.

One thing I do know, your doctor can do an allergy test on your son. They basically get a bunch of different known allergens and scratch the skin with them or something like that, and they can tell if he has a reaction. That might be something to try. But first things first, check out the ringworm angle.

-Mark