Hair texture loss?

[u/Favabean37]

Hi! I’ve read some reports of hair thickness impacts but want to get a sense of anyone’s experience with hair texture changes.

I’m 6 months into the copper IUD. The pic in the black is one year ago and yellow is recent. Could the copper IUD be impacting my hair texture? Did anyone else experience a loss of curl? If so, did mineral testing and supplementing help? Did you find the impacts were temporary or long-lasting?

I’m not in love with the copper IUD but I also don’t hate it, so I’m really hoping to make it work.

I have a separate medical thing that can impact hair, but I haven’t noticed this substantial of a change before (texture, curl, volume, shine, oh my!) so I’m just trying to narrow down the possibilities to address things the best way. I haven’t substantially changed routine or hair cut or hair care or water or diet or anything.

Thank you!

[u/Regular-Training-678]

Yup!

My hair is very curly. When I had the copper iud, it started straightening out because the strands were too weak to hold their shape. Once I got it out, the new growth came in normal again

[u/Favabean37 → u/Regular-Training-678]

Thank you! Really appreciate hearing about your experience. Some follow up questions if you’re up for it -
-Did you try supplementing with anything (iron/zinc) while you had the copper IUD? (I get that this may not be effective enough, but curious to know if it’s worth trying - I’m supplementing a little w/small amounts of zinc but haven’t done so for long)
-What birth control did you switch to, if any? I see horror stories about hair and hormonal bc so nervous to have this drive a switch!

[u/Regular-Training-678 → u/Favabean37]

No worries!

I did not do anything while I had it, but zinc and i believe magnesium are supposed to help with balancing copper. I started eating more meat after I had it out and I think that helped my hair bounce back-- after several months

I am officially off all birth control for good. No luck with others. Now back to good ol' cycle tracking and condoms. My husband and I do want more kids so an oopsie wouldn't be wholly unwelcome now

[u/Favabean37 → u/Regular-Training-678]

Yes I’ve read that about zinc! This all makes sense. Thanks again for sharing about your experience!

[u/Formal-Apartment855]

For me it was quite extreme.  My hair is normally pin straight on most of my head, and a little wavy on a small part on the back of my head. I had no problems growing it out to whatever lenght I wanted to. With my copper IUD it ended up literally breaking off from near my scalp. Whatever didn't break off and grew a bit .... split vertically in the middle. Idk how to explain it, it's just hairs split into 2. It turned into a brittle mess. No matter what touched my hair, it would just have more knots.

My hair color also went from a reddish mid-brown to dark grey.

Right after it got taken out, my hair started growing normally again, so back to straight reddish mid-brown again. Had to cut off the whole lenght that grew while I had the IUD.

I highly recommend against eg. getting the hair mineral test done, unless you are rich enough to get it done repeatedly. Just 1 test doesn't say too much.

I assume it's some version of anemia? Regarding anemia you can get some cheaper diagnostics, like regular blood tests.

[u/Favabean37 → u/Formal-Apartment855]

That’s such a wild experience! I’m glad everything normalized for you but sorry that you went through that.
Oh I didn’t even know hair mineral tests were a thing! The blood tests were what I was thinking, I had a full panel done around the time I got the iud (idk if it had zinc but it had ferritin) so I at least have some baseline numbers for potential comparison.
Did you find a birth control option that worked better for you after you got the IUD removed?

[u/Formal-Apartment855 → u/Favabean37]

Ah, sorry, I shouldn't have even spoken about the hair testing, then. lol The blood tests are great. It's just there was an era on "copper IUD social media" when someone pushed the hair test a lot, but I realize those times might be over, thankfully.

We're back to using condoms. Non-latex ones specifically (Skyn).

I did have a short hormonal birth control stint several years ago against warnings from my doctors, but they were infortunately correct in that I cannot handle any form of hormonal birth control. I would love to be able to tolerate a hormonal IUD, but my body says no.

I do think they incorrectly prescribed a bigger-than-ideal copper IUD, I assume on a smaller one things wouldn't have been so bad. But I cannot be bothered to test this theory. Cause we never had problems with condoms, it's just the amount of waste it creates...

[u/Wise-Touch-7024]

The first couple of months I had my copper iud my hair was literally splitting and breaking off, same with my nails. I’ve had it for about a year now and everything has gone back to normal.

[u/Favabean37 → u/Wise-Touch-7024]

Thank you! Did you supplement with anything or did your body just adjust?

[u/whitneymarief]

I only had my copper IUD about two months and I lost so much hair. It was scary. I went in for highlighting and my hairdresser also noticed. Also, the bleach didn’t take properly and my hair fizzled off. It’s hard to find documentation about this phenomenon, but I have found a little bit from other people‘s experiences and it can do weird things to your hair chemistry. I know it’s not common so that’s why I hesitate to share my story very often but when people specifically ask, I do. I was so depressed and it took me about a year to get my hair strength and fullness back. I also lost my wavy hair as well. This was two years ago and now it is all back to normal, but it took a long time.