Topknots are a godsend—especially on days when you just don’t have the time to wash your hair. But one young woman’s go-to ballerina bun caused permanent hair loss.
Diva Hollands, a 22-year-old former ballet dancer from the U.K., first started losing hair when she was just 13 years old, reports the Daily Mail.
“I had my hair tied up really tight from when I was really little, and looking back at pictures you can see it started having an effect on my hairline,” said Hollands in a statement put out by Edward Ball, M.D., of the Maitland Clinic, the specialist who treated her hair loss. “Over the course of so many years, it got worse.”
RELATED: 8 Ways to Keep as Much Hair on Your Head as Possible
According to Ball’s statement, Diva had an eight-hour follicular unit transplant in October. During the procedure, a thin strip of skin with hair growing from it is removed from the back of the scalp and transplanted to an area where there’s been hair loss—usually around the hairline, top of the head, or eyebrows. Diva said she saw results a few months after this (the photo below shows the new hair growth).
The technical term for this kind of terrifying hair issue is “chronic traction alopecia,” which can occur when you wear the same style over and over. “The best way to describe traction alopecia is that it’s due to constant pulling,” says Sejal Shah, M.D., a board-certified dermatologist in New York City. “If you wear your hair in a tight style one time, this probably isn’t going to happen. But over time, that sheer force will at some point damage the hair to the point where it stops growing from the follicle.” At that point—which totally varies from person to person—you’re dealing with the kind of irreversible damage that Hollands had.
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Macaela MacKenzie is a journalist who writes about women and power. She covers women’s equality through the lenses of sports, wellness, and the gender gap across industries and is the author of MONEY, POWER, RESPECT: How Women in Sports Are Shaping the Future of Feminism. Mac was most recently a Senior Editor at Glamour where she directed all health and wellness coverage. Her work has appeared in Elle, Glamour, SELF, Bustle, Marie Claire, Allure, Women's Health, and Forbes among other publications.
