On Thu, 29 Oct 1998 15:47:15 -0500, Binnie Betten <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>>Yikes, my hair is falling out. Not in clumps, but kind of like when you are
>>in chemotherapy.
>>
>>The only thing I can think is we had work done in the kitchen where, it
>>turns out, they used a lot of toxic chemicals.
>>
>>Could that do this? Or is it a nutritional deficiency of some kind?
>
>I noticed that I was losing a lot more hair than usual about 9 months after
>starting NeanderThin. After two months of increased hair loss with no sign
>of slowing down, I decided to start taking a mutliple vitamin. After
>another 3 months the hair loss stopped. I am still taking the vitamin just
>as an insurance
policy. I should also tell you that I had steadly been
>losing weight, and I understand that hormones can be released from
>metabolized fat stores which might cause this response.

For your first idea - toxic chemicals. If you have them in the house
the only help may be to move. Especially for long lasting wood "protection"
chemicals. I know a family "protecting" their inhouse (!) woods by
wood protection chemicals. Two of three had cancer after 15 years
(30 and 60 years old).

If someone is loosing it's hair then (apart from genetic determination with men)
it's a rather severe sign of a nutrition deficiency or a disease.
The body will stop the synthesis of the hair substance if some
prerequisite for the production of hair is missing.
This may be protein missing - has been shown in cases of starving after quite
a while. I your cases i bet it's not protein.
Or it may be one of the over 30 remaining
 micronutritients
(vitamins, minerals) missing or low.

If multivitamins did help, then you know it's one of them, missing in your
normal food composition.

I would try the following: get a diet analysis program
(shareware is available at  http://filepile.com/nc/start
then search for nutrition).
There's also an online analysis available (slow alas) at:
 http://www.ag.uiuc.edu/~food-lab/nat/

Write down, or enter into the computer directly,
what you eat for a week of so.
This requires a little weighting of the food-items you take.

Run an analysis for some days, and you'll see what is low!
As paleo you may just ignore all the caloric and fat/carb recommendations.
Look at the vitamins and minerals.
May i take a prediction?
Calcium, folic acid and vitamin b1 and e are low.

Then choose food-items that provide what you need (instead o
f taking pills).

In my opinion, any nutrition that doesn't provide *all* the essentials you need
can never be a nutrition we are adapted to from our anchestors.
If you need pills, you aren't paleo.
CroMagnon didn't take pills, and you should not need them too.

regards and good luck with your hair

Amadeus

(who slowly gets some edges in his hair and many grey ones)