// Sunday + Monday Recap//

Day 7: 3 hairs pulled (Sunday 3/25)

1. Started mymorning with cross-crawl exercises
2. took 1800mg of NAC
3. Walked to yoga (1.5 miles)
4. one hour yoga class
5. Walked home
6. Cross crawl exercises - 100 reps, before going to sleep

Day 8: 3-5 hairs pulled (Monday 3/26)

1. Started my morning with 100 cross-crawl exercises
2. Took 1800 mg of NAC
3. Walked to work (1.3 miles - about 150 calories)
4. Cross Crawl exercises 100 reps, before going to sleep

Sometimes I go out for happy hour after work with friends, so I am beat by the time I get home. I try my best to be diligent about my cross-crawl exercises, so I’ve been doing well. It’s been almost a month since I increased my level of NAC. It takes about 3 months to really see the results, and I am hoping the urges subsides at least a little. Trying to stay positive. Yoga really helps me with the urges.

Tomorrow is a new day. 

// Relapse.//

Found out some people were talking badly about me behind my back at work last night. Woke up this morning, feeling like shit, and had a relapse and pulled 30 hairs. I wish I didn’t care about what others think, but I do. The people at my work are very judgmental and shallow, and I should just ignore them, but sometimes it’s so hard to do that.

It is only 1:35 in the afternoon, but I already pulled about 30 hairs. I wish so hard that I didn’t. I wish so hard that it didn’t feel good.

I was doing so well the past five days. Yesterday, I pulled zero hairs! Now I feel like I’m back to square one.

// Get your hair ‘did.//

Day 5.

Hairs pulled: 2

1. Started my day with 100 reps of cross crawl exercises
2. Took 1800 mg of NAC.
3. Got my hair color done. Feels so good to get rid of those roots!

I’m still having difficulty keeping my hands away from my head. I guess I need to replace that action with something else. I think I need to go look for some stress balls or something. I recently bought a head massager from amazon.com, and I’m hoping that will create a good distraction and at least I’m still touching my head. Hoping that will help a little. They’re relatively cheap, they were 2 for $8.

// Experimental.//

Day four.

Hair pulled: 5

Routine:

1. Woke up and did cross-crawl exercises. 100 reps
2. Ate breakfast and took 1800 mg of NAC
3. No exercise today

I think there may be a correlation between not exercising and the amount of hair pulled. I’m not sure yet, since it’s only been day 4 of starting the cross crawl exercise. Today I didn’t do the minimum of 200 reps, and it is my day of rest of exercise. We’ll see within the course of the next few weeks if it really does affect my urges. 

If I get up early enough, I will try to go running in the morning. 

Good night, fellow trichsters.

// Keeping a close eye.//

Day 2.

Hair pulled: 1

Routine:

1. Cross crawl exercise, 100 reps, first thing in the morning
2. Ate oatmeal, half an apple, and hard boiled egg
3. Yoga after work
4. Cross crawl exercise 100 reps.

If I don’t make myself aware of my actions, my hand slowly migrates to my head and I pulled one hair today. 

I found an amazing blog by this man that has been pull-free for two years. I learned a great deal of information how to deal with, and fight trich. This is a paragraph from his blog:

“Rather than looking at this information as a diet or inconvenience, try to see it as a journey leading to optimal health and happiness. If you’re going to minimize chemical, physical and emotional stress you must start with things you know you can control. A diet supporting normal cell function, daily exercise and minimizing environmental toxins are three aspects of life that you have control over. To overcome dysfunction, you must think about Trichotillomania, Impulse Control Disorder or Sensory Processing Disorder not as “your disease” but as an expression of a larger problem. Through our consciousness, as humans, we see bad diet, toxic intake and lack of exercise as unrelated to our stress level; but to our body, Stress is Stress! The body does not share our consciousness. To our body, our emotional state, our toxic exposure and the foods we eat all cause our cellular environment to be significantly altered. (We’re living in a state of adaptive physiology rather than normal physiology.) Look at it this way: Think about your body as a bucket and think about these stressors as rocks that slowly fill that bucket. The bucket is pretty big and it can hold a lot of rocks but eventually these rocks accumulate and the bucket overflows leaving us with a serious dysfunction to deal with. You might be asking yourself, why does partial lifestyle change work for some people and not for others? This is because everyone’s bucket is a different size and everyone responds differently to lifestyle change. In many cases just changing diet or even adding an antioxidant supplement like NAC will lower “cellular stress” enough for people to experience significant or even complete relief. “

You can find his blog here:

http://kickthetrich.blogspot.com/2010/11/action-steps-to-overcoming-sensory.html

Let me know what you guys think! Message me at any time! I love getting messages, it gives me hope and motivation every day. 

Good night!

// Finding that routine.//

Day 2. 

Hair pulled: 1

Routine:

1. Started my day with cross-crawl exercise. 100 times (you’re supposed to do 200-300 per day). I did this lying down, and it seems to be a great way to wake my muscles up in the morning.

2. Took NAC before I ate my breakfast, and it upset my stomach. Never doing that again. 

3. Got home, went running and also did interval training.

4. After running, I did 100 more cross crawl exercises. This time while standing up.

5. Cooked a healthy dinner and drank lots of water.

Hopefully tomorrow I will not pull any hair. I had a few stressful moments at work today, and I think that made me pull that one hair. I have to be more careful, but I’m hoping to find a good life-time routine so that I can be pull-free!

Now it’s time to get some rest, and start again tomorrow. Fellow trichsters, lets stay positive and focused to our roads of recovery!

// New routine, new game plan.//

OK, so today marks a new routine/game plan to fight trich.

Here is my plan:

1. Wake up every morning, and do “cross-crawl” exercises. I will explain what this is in a bit.
2. Take 1800 MG of NAC (N-Acetylcysteine)
3. Exercise more: go running at least 3-4 times a week, yoga 2 times a week
4. Go to sleep earlier so that I can wake up to do my cross-crawl exercises. 
5. Drink more water, and eat more organic veggies!

I just heard about “cross-crawl” exercises from a fellow tumblr user. Most of us that suffer from trichotillomania have dysfunction in the part of the brain that allows for “crossover”. (Your left brain controls your right body and your right brain controls your left body.) You can use proprioceptive retraining to help restore proper function to that area; it supposedly helps a lot.

You do this by marching in place, lifting an arm and the opposite leg as high as possible TOGETHER. Speed is not as important as full range of motion. In fact the slower this exercise is performed the greater the control necessary and the greater the benefits.  The more range of motion you achieve, the more stimulus your brain receives and the greater the incentive the brain has to establish its new pattern. Again, stop at early signs of fatigue. Ideally, you should perform between 200-500 marches a day. If you manage to do the exercise very slowly, do 200 marches. Otherwise do the 500. The slower you do this exercise the greater the level of balance and control that you need to acquire and the greater the benefits to you as you master the exercise.

WISH ME LUCK! One thing at a time, taking it day by day, little by little.

// Wednesday blues.//

Pulled 24 hairs today.

Increased my NAC intake to 1800 from 1200. Hope it helps…