There are doctors that recommend trichoscopies in order to check the toxins, such as mercury, aluminium, cadmium, and arsenic, which have accumulated in the body. This seems theoretically correct, but in reality, it will cause some problems. In most cases, if, for example, the doctor found that you had high levels of cadmium, he or she would pressure patients to buy many supplements as part of a detoxification program. In addition, you do not need to be a doctor to administer a trichoscopy, and sellers of food health products have capitalized on this loophole and use it as a strategy to get sales. They will make people buy supplement packs that cost several hundred thousand yen.

I’d like to mention that, in any kind of disease, it is rare to find an abnormality through a trichoscopy. Conversely, it could also show that a perfectly healthy person has high levels of mercury or arsenic. From my experience, I can say that this is a rather arbitrary test. It is something that should be used when doctors don’t know a cause to a problem and have exhausted all other testing options, and should not be used for something as common as testing for AD since the test has no clinical value. Above all, be careful of doctors and food health product sellers who try to sell expensive supplements using these test results.

It is true that mercury can be found from anywhere in our surroundings, starging from filters in air conditioners, auto emissions, or agrichemicals, but this is inevitable. This could be one of the reasons why trichoscopies show abnormalities. Instead of spending money on expensive supplement packs, try NAC(N-acetylcysteine), α-lipoic acid, and Vitamin B5 (and if you can afford it, Chinese parsley and zinc) for 3 months, and then get a second trichoscopy.