One of my clients and her mother just completed a seminar with Christina Pearson and mentioned our approach of using amino acid therapy to correct the underlying biochemical imbalances that leads to the urges to pull/pick in many people. For those of you that don’t know Christina, she is one of the foremost advocates for people with trichotillomania and started the Trichotillomania Learning Center back in 1991 (for more info see www.trich.org).
My client’s mother told the group briefly about our approach as each of the participants shared what they had done/were doing to try to overcome trich. She said several people expressed interest, while others were looking for more data. As far as I know, there haven’t been any official clinical trials or studies done yet using amino acid therapy for trich. I believe the key word in that last sentence is “yet” as I believe that research is coming.
We, as well as other health care providers that use this approach, have had far too great of success with trich not to draw more and more attention with time. No, amino acid therapy may not be the answer for everyone with trich; however, it has been our experience that it can be incredibly effective for most people with trichotillomania and it has a far greater success rate than anything else that is currently in use.
Christina and her group at TLC have done wonderful things for those suffering with trich. TLC helps those with trich get connected and learn more as a collective group how they can live with and possibly beat trich. TLC also sponsors research to help determine ways to combat this disorder. Who knows – maybe someday in the not-so-distant future, that research will include amino acid therapy? What a great day that will be!
