Hi Rfael,
When the SD on my scalp was at it’s worst I had a tiny bit of hair loss at most. Personally my hair loss didn’t seem as bad as it seems others experience. Perhaps I was lucky with this. Additionally I did use Head and Shoulders previously and it has been documented to improve hair growth, so maybe that’s why my issues were not too bad.
The biggest issue I had with hairloss was probably my eyebrows. When I was using the honey treatment for my face I found that the stickiness of it would force eye-brow hair to easily be pulled out (it was likely week due to the SD to begin with). However, even then I was not able to visually see much difference. Whatever hairs did fall out seemed to grow back rather quickly.
A friend of mine had pre-mature balding and he used Castor oil and regular massaging to get it under control. Not sure how the seborrheic dermatitis would react to the castor oil though. From what I remember, castor oil has a long fatty acid structure which prevents the malassezia yeast from feeding on it (as opposed to most fats). However, you may want to double check this, as this is just from memory. Personally have never tried using castor oil though, so can’t help much in that area.
It seems that social anxiety may be a common factor. I experience a bit of this as well. But I’m not really sure if this was just a result of having seborrheic dermatitis on my face. Hard to remember which one came first at the time. Throughout my life though I have never really had much social anxiety, so for me the two came as a package.
Social anxiety as a whole, is just a mental attitude. Like everything else in life, it can change over time. I think the best approach is just practicing being more care-free. Don’t let things cycle in your head and just focus on life as it is without trying to control it.
It seems that in the modern world social anxiety and depression are rising in general. Perhaps the overload of information is a contributing factor. The media (movies, advertisements, magazines, television) tends to portray things in ways that differ from reality. They selectively chose what they show and we rarely see the more boring aspects of day to day life. Thus it can be easy to believe that it is only our lives which are boring and uneventful, when in reality it is like this for practically everyone.
As far as gluten goes, I went down this path before as well. Overall going gluten free does seem to give more energy, but I think it’s partially placebo and partially increased digestion speed. Simply by eating less I can experience the same results. However, I’ve went back to training and currently a big part of my diet consists of macaroni, bread and oats.
One thing to note though, is whatever food I read could be bad for my seborrheic dermatitis, seemed to be bad for my seborrheic dermatitis. Just having the idea in my mind created some type of reaction. When I ate the particular food I read was bad for me, the stress and negative association alone seemed to trigger the inflammation.
As for the oils and moisturizers, personally I found that heavy oils on my skin would always cause some kind of issues. Even if the flakes would go away, the inflammation and grease would stick around.
Not sure if they have Cetaphil products where you live, but the Restoraderm products they make have been very good for me. I use very tiny amounts of both the wash and the moisturizer. It helps me clean my skin and has never caused any issues. Here is the regimen I used which finally allowed me to return to normal. I’m going to expand this sometime soon to try and include the mental attitude changes and other factors which I believe played a role as well. Lot’s of stuff can be found in the comments though.
Raw honey worked really well for me as well, but the treatment was quite time intensive. The general procedure was quite frustrating over time as well. I’m a male and it just did not feel right sitting for 3 hours every other day with my face covered in honey. It just kind of made me feel like something is wrong with me. I think this was my biggest issue with this treatment.
The MANUP approach is definitely in the right direction as well. It kind of relates to the care-free attitude I mentioned earlier. With many skin conditions, it seems like the more attention you give to it, the worse off things become. I’ve never had problems with acne, but I know friends who have. The story seems to be always the same. The more complex and demanding the approach, the worse the results seem to be.
Other things that help is just spending less time looking at your skin the mirror. Try to leave it alone and let it heal. When washing or cleaning, try not to lean in and look really close. If you try to find something you probably will. Everyone has small imperfections, it’s just that we pay the most attention to our own.
Good luck and let me know if I’ve missed anything.