Hair Loss? Hair Fantastique Natural Hair Growth Solutions For All Types of hair

My heavenly hair! 
Six year old baldie's dream comes true: to have hair again on her first day  at school.

Like most other Grade 1 school kids, she's proud of her shiny new school  shoes, satchel and uniform.

But Farzaana Diedricks' most treasured possession is something other kids  take for granted - her hair.

Farzaana lost her precious hair because of a stress-related skin condition  two years ago. But now, thanks to a miracle treatment discovered by a  Cape Town hairdresser almost by accident, the six-year old is no longer bald.

"It's cute having hair again," she says with a smile. Having hair again is  a dream come true for Farzaana, whose baldness had made her life a nightmare  of teasing and tears during which the scarf she wore to school to cover her  condition was often snatched from her head by laughing children.

And she owes her recovery to a concoction of natural oils and plant extracts  developed by Lucille Pegg while she was working as a hairdresser in Rhodesia  during the sanctions era.

Lucille was searching for a really good hair conditioner to use on her  clients and asked a Chinese customer who had beautiful, waist-length hair  for advice.

"She brought me a book about Oriental beauty secrets that her grandmother  had given her," says Lucille. "It recommended the use of four natural  oils."

Lucille mixed the oils, added plant extracts, vitamins and amino acids,  tried it on a few clients with hair loss - and was amazed by the results.

Today Hair Fantastique is exported to America and 17 other countries and  Lucille claims it has a 96 per cent success rate when used on people with  male pattern baldness, cancer patients who've lost their hair during  chemotherapy and sufferers of stress-related alopecia (baldness).

It is recommended by doctors and cancer specialists and Lucille has won  several awards from cancer associations for her role in improving the  quality of sufferers lives.

The product certainly worked for Farzaana. After trying almost everything  her parents could lay their hands on - and notching up R17 000 worth of  visits to skin specialists - her hair began to grow again after just 10  weeks of using the treatment.

On a display cabinet in her Brooklyn, Cape Town, home is a framed photograph  of Farzaana with a ponytail and hair cascading over one shoulder.

"It was taken four years ago," says dad Mogamat (38).  At the time Farzaana used to love sitting in front of a mirror brushing her  lush locks.

But one day, a hairdresser doing her hair for a wedding where she was to be  a flowergirl noticed a bald spot. She advised her parents to take her to a  doctor.

The doctor diagnosed ringworm and prescribed an ointment, which didn't help.  Farzaana had to wait two months for an appointment with a dermatologist at  the Red Cross Children's Hospital, but by that time she was bald.

He prescribed another ointment, but it burnt her scalp and left blisters.  Some mornings Farzaana was so depressed she didn't want to attend her  playgroup.

"She was listless, interested in nothing," says her dad.  "We were very worried," says her mom Galiema (40). "We took her for all  sorts of tests; we thought we were going to lose her."

One doctor thought she had a kidney problem; another was convinced she'd  picked up some sort of bacterium and yet another thought she had a fungal  infection.  In desperation the family consulted a herbalist. He recommended  preparations which cost them R1 400 a month, but three months later there  was still no improvement.

Galiema tried scrubbing Farzaana's head with dishwashing liquid, but this  failed to make any difference.  Within a year the family had visited seven dermatologists and spent R17 000  trying to find a cure. Galiema sells clothes at a fleamarket and Mogamat  owns two taxis, and they don't belong to a medical aid fund.  But during their move from doctor to doctor they discovered Farzaana was  probably suffering from alopaecia, hair loss as a result of stress. Galiema  says her daughter is excitable. "She bites her nails and stresses all the  time like an old woman."

Each time Farzaana was about to see another doctor her hopes soared, but her  parents told her not to be too optimistic as a cure could take a long time.  "Don't worry," she told them. "I will have hair down to my bum again."  With her nose crinkled in concentration, she prayed to Allah to make her  hair grow.

Eventually a friend showed Farzaana's parents an advertisement for Hair  Fantastique. They felt they had nothing to lose and bought some. Three  times a week they rubbed the preparation into their daughter's head. And  every morning they applied a special spray on her head and shampooed it  regularly. Farzaana also took a half a vitamin pill daily to counter  stress.

Then, 10 weeks after starting the treatment, while she sat in front of the  mirror, she saw the first signs of hair.

"She pinched some hair and pulled it up, and it actually lifted her scalp,"  says Mogamat.

Eventually she was able to go to school without a scarf on, although a small  patch on top of her head remains bald.

The neighbourhood kids still tease her but she gives as good as she gets. The most common cause of hair loss in children is a fungal condition, tinea  capitis, which is easy to treat. The next most common cause is hair loss  resulting from medication or chemotherapy, says Dr Chris van Zyl, a  Pietersburg GP.  But stress-related hair loss is difficult to treat. He has prescribed the  remedy that worked wonders for Farzaana for some of his patients, and within  two to three weeks there has been an improvement.

"Medically I can't explain why it works, but the difference is amazing."  Dr Van Zyl stresses that in cases such as Farzaana's the hair sometimes  grows back spontaneously, even without treatment. Doctors have yet to do a  study in which one group of baldies receives the remedy and the other group  doesn't.

In the cases Dr Van Zyl has dealt with the medication has helped and there  have been no side-effects.  Dr Marita Malan, a Sutherland GP, used the remedy herself when she started  losing hair after a patient had recommended it.  For 22 years he'd had no hair on his head or body and used  cortisone-containing products unsuccessfully. After using the set of  natural products his hair began to grow again.

Dr Malan feels the products feed the hair follicles and thereby stimulate  growth. She says good results are obtained where the hair loss is not the  result of disease.

You, 24 February 2000, pp116-117