Could alopecia be as simple as a zinc deficiency?

[Aidan Walsh]

Another success story, has this person recovered fully? Who knows

 

[Baz493]

Another success story, has this person recovered fully? Who knows

Actually, I have moved on slightly after trying to help someone with schizophrenia. My focus is still on amyloids but I have been looking at the role of p53 amyloid in causing apoptosis (cell death) of diseased cells. Gene variants affecting production of this amyloid cause issues with repair of damaged tissues around the body causing a range of different diseases. I began looking at it for urinary protein loss after reading this article. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9043292/ If it wasn't for p53 people who undergo chemotherapy wouldn't lose their hair. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11016618/ That leads me to suspect a role in other types of hair loss, particularly now I know about the coating of the pilosebaceous glands with amyloid.

 

[Baz493]

I have been getting down to some very specific details regarding hair loss which may help some people to better understand their other health conditions. What I learnt is that the reason amyloids are formed, causing conditions like hair loss, nephrotic syndromes, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, and so on, is because of a battle going on in our bodies between forces trying to kill cancerous/diseased cells and those trying to prevent an excessive reaction which might result in death. The inflammatory pathway involved in both of these reactions is the mTOR pathway. It stimulates p53 proteins to kill diseased cells, MDM2 proteins to activate or inhibit the p53, and HSP70 heat shock proteins to try to keep diseased cells alive despite the stresses trying to kill them. When levels of these proteins become sufficiently high they can bind together to form the amyloids. These amyloids then bind to phospholipid surfaces, leading to things like autoimmune attack on the phospholipids. mTOR is the commonality between all of the causes of hair loss. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10506410/ It may help some people here to know that mTOR is also involved in metabolic stress, likely resulting in some people's experience of chronic fatigue. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8147357/ That was where I was eventually able to backtrack my own chronic fatigue which resulted from exposure to trichloroethylene, and why it caused a major exacerbation of urinary protein losses and antiphospholipid blood clotting. Factors like heavy metals, microbiome, allergies, infections, and so on, can all induce dysregulation of mTOR. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29548696/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67889-4