LIFE & CULTURE

Jada Pinkett Smith Reveals She’s Losing Her Hair To Alopecia

"It was terrifying when it first started"

Jada Pinkett Smith has revealed the reason behind the turbans she’s been sporting on her head in recent months, saying when she first found out she was losing her hair she was “terrified.”

 

The 46-year-old actress said that though she loves the way she looks in a turban (and feels like a “queen”), her hair became one of her biggest insecurities after it started falling out in large clumps. 

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“A lot of people have been asking why I’ve been wearing this turban,” Pinkett Smith said on the latest episode of her Facebook Watch show, Red Table Talk

“I haven’t talked about it, it’s not easy to talk about,” she continued.

“I’ve been having issues with hair loss,” she revealed. “It was terrifying when it first started. I was in the shower one day and then… just handfuls of hair, just in my hands.”

She says the first thing she thought was: “OMG, am I going bald?”

jada pinkett smith

“It was one of those times in my life where I was literally shaking with fear,” Pinkett Smith said, with her mother and daughter sitting beside her. “That’s why I cut my hair and continued to cut it.”

Even though she’s tried to figure out the reason behind her hair loss, the mother-of-two says she still isn’t sure why she’s losing her hair.

“I’ve gotten every kind of test there is to have,” she explained. “They don’t know why.”

Pinkett Smith did say that alopecia could be a possibility, a condition in which your immune system mistakenly attacks your hair follicles, causing them to become smaller or stunt hair growth.

Alopecia can cause hair to fall out on your scalp, face, or other parts of the body – including cases where people have no hair at all.

Pinkett Smith finished the segment by saying that she had to put everything into a “spiritual perspective” and is lucky to only lose her hair, when others lose bigger things, such as loved ones, every day.

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