Bizarre extensive hair loss. Please advise.

Readers, please bear with me as I tell this frustrating tale.  I’m a 35-year-old African American woman.  For the past couple of years I’ve been experiencing transient hair loss mostly from the back and right side of my head.  The hair seems to break off about half an inch from the root, and then grows about to about an inch (never more in that area), before breaking off, almost at the root yet again.  When it first started, I went to several doctors and dermatologists, all telling me that there was nothing truly wrong with my hair, and that it would grow back.  

So I tried braids for a while, and after several months, most of it did fill in and grow back except for one area in the back about the size of my hand which continued to do pretty much the same thing.  

I took out the braids this past December, not wanting to set off some kind of traction alopecia.  Except for the area in the back, my hair had grown tremendously.  One month later, the whole process started again.  Ridiculously brittle, dry hair, and the expansion of that spot to almost the entire right side of my head.  It doesn’t look like classic alopecia because the spot never actually goes completely bald, but d*** close to it.

When it originally began, my scalp was constantly burning or I’d get weird crawling sensations.  When it started up again recently, the burning/crawling stopped, and the mad itchiness began.  But no flakes, bumps or anything like that.

I stopped perming my hair when this mess began a couple of years back, and only use no-sulfate shampoos.  My family, friends and I are at a complete loss.  Now that my hair loss is so extensive, I’ve made an appt with another derm, but don’t hold out much faith on them finding the root (no pun intended) of the problem.

My question to the forum, has anyone experienced anything similar, and what, if anything, helped?  I’m so desperate, I’d try anything at this point (above and beyond muffling my tears in my pillow at night).  Any words of advice are more than welcome.

[happiness75]

You are not alone.  I've had hair troubles for 15 years now, luckily I started out with a lot of hair.  The cause of my hair loss and extreme dry hair is a mystery but after years of trying many things I can tell you that the dryness is related to the level of progesterone in my body.   I can also tie it, the dry hair, to extreme dieting, it began to feel like hay after I did a prolonged no-carb diet.  Zinc has helped a little but not completely.  I've yet to figure out what causes the continuous hair shedding but I have a feeling it might be related to metal toxicity, perhaps some dental work I had done 16 yrs ago right before my hair began its departure.  Lots of luck 2 u, hope this helps some.