Proper news from Britain - News from Britain you won’t find anywhere else. Not the tosh the big media force-feed you every day!
A young woman is urging workers to advocate for their health after workplace stress caused her hair to fall out in large clumps, leaving her with no choice but to shave her head.
Lauren Johnson, 23, a trainee veterinary nurse from Newcastle, first noticed her hair beginning to shed in May 2025, but didn't think much of it—putting the tangle of hairs strewn over her pillow each morning down to hormonal changes.
But just two months later, when she was on a girls' holiday in Spain, her best friend Holly Probert-Darkings, 26, noticed a big clump of hair was missing from the nape of Ms Johnson's neck.
'I had my wet hair up in a claw clip and Holly asked me I had accidently razored the back of my hair in the shower,' the 23-year-old recalled.
'The back part of my head, where the hair is supposed to meet the back of my neck was completely gone. But I had no other symptoms at the time or beforehand.'
She added: 'I did notice a couple of months before in the run up to the trip I was shedding hair all over my pillow, but thought it was normal or a case of a heavy period.'
When Ms Johnson realised she was losing her hair in clumps, she suffered 'a full blown breakdown and anxiety attack.'
The young woman then FaceTimed her mother, Margaret, 58, a former hairdresser, for reassurance.
'My mum told me: "Lauren, I think that's alopecia"', she heartbreakingly recalled.
'I cried in the bathroom for hours I had no idea what was happening or what may have caused it.
'I came out later and said to Holly we either make jokes about it the rest of the holiday or we don't talk about it at all.'
When she returned home, she booked an appointment with her GP at Bridges Medical Practice who confirmed her mother's suspicions and diagnosed her with alopecia.
She added that both her uncle and mother had struggled with hair loss, with her uncle similarly being diagnosed with alopecia areata in his twenties as a result of workplace stress.
Her mother, however, believes her patterned baldness was caused by a postpartum blood transfusion, where she lost a significant amount of iron.
Until now, the trainee veterinary nurse has been given no support to help her navigate her hair loss journey as such a young age.
She said: 'Other than the diagnosis, I was given no help from the GP: No counselling, no referral to dermatology, and no non-invasive treatment options.
'I wasn't even given anything to do or use in the meantime. I only managed to get a dermatology referral for November because I complained for months.
'I'm now on a waiting list but I'm not expected to be seen until next August,' she added.
Ms Johnson has been managing by wearing wigs to cover the bald patches, which require her to regularly shave her head for a good fit.
Whilst she has now come to terms with her hair loss, she is doing everything she can to help hair grow back including taking pumpkin oil supplements, using a hair serum and scalp massager and focusing on her diet and gut health.
She said: 'After so long of being in the crisis phase you have no choice but to find your own way of moving forward with a new reality.
'People can't believe how well I'm handling this and the truth is it really is fake it until you make it. There are some days I just wish I was normal, whereby my hair is a last thought.
'I lost my hair but I've gained a whole new life for myself,' she added.
Alopecia is the term used to describe hair loss, which affects roughly 40 per cent of women and 30 per cent of men at some point in their lives, with around 1 in every 4,000 developing alopecia areata each year.
Alopecia areata, is a specific cause of hair loss, where cells in the immune system attack hair follicles, for reasons not yet understood.
It can start at any age but is most common in early adulthood where it usually causes small round patches of baldness on the scalp, although hair elsewhere such as the eyebrows and eyelashes can also be affected.
The Matrix actress Jada Pinkett Smith suffers with the condition, which came to global focus in April when the Oscars host, comedian Chris Rock, made a joke about it and was slapped on stage by her husband, Will Smith.
The condition also leaves people more vulnerable to infections and reduces a person's ability to regulate body temperature.
Hair follicles are not destroyed but lay dormant, making regrowth possible.
Steroid treatments can be prescribed – either in a cream form, as an injection into the scalp or as pills – and are effective in one in five patients.
But taking steroid pills long-term can dramatically increase the risk of serious conditions such as type 2 diabetes, so doctors recommend patients stop taking them after six weeks. Steroid creams can irritate the skin and cause agonising migraines.
Last year, the medicines watchdog approved Ritlecitinib—a drug found to reverse the condition in one in five patients—in what was described as a 'monumental' move for alopecia areata sufferers.