WAILUA — When 10-year-old Larry Brown started losing patches of his hair in January 2018, he thought someone at school was playing a mean joke and cutting it when he wasn’t looking.
As the months wore on, though, more dime-sized patches of hair started falling out, and Larry’s parents wondered if something else was going on.
A visit to the doctor revealed it wasn’t a prank — their son has alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that causes hair to fall out in round patches on the scalp and sometimes other areas of the body.
The hair loss continued through August, and now Larry is bald.
At first, it wasn’t easy for any of them to understand.
“He couldn’t figure out why and we didn’t know enough (about it),” said Larry’s dad, Paka Brown. “My wife did a lot of research and went around talking to people to get more information.”
Larry would come home from school sad because kids would pick on him, and still gets annoyed when people approach at the gas station or the grocery store and ask about his condition, or to touch his head.
“Some people think I have cancer,” Larry said. “They don’t understand.”
A little more than a year later, the family is gaining a better grasp of the condition, and the spunky fourth-grader has adjusted to life without hair.
“I mostly attract the ladies,” he said as he was tearing around the Wailua Homesteads Park playground on a cloudy Wednesday. “I want to stay bald forever. I don’t have to worry about ukus (head lice).”
Larry’s mom, Desaray Brown, said he still deals with bullies and questions, but the tide is slowly turning as more and more people learn about alopecia.
It’s not contagious, and the National Alopecia Areata Foundation estimates about 6.8 million people have the condition in the U.S. It’s a condition with no known cure and multiple trigger variables that range from genetics to environment.
For Larry, one of those variables is the August 2017 death of his older brother, Keanu Shannon Lawai‘a “Anu” Saito. Saito was 20 years old when he passed.
“The doctor said it could be a factor,” Desaray said. “There’s no definite answer.”
Larry is the youngest son of the family. Keanu was the oldest. Their middle son, Ali‘i, was recently homecoming king at Kapaa High School, and says he sometimes talks with his classmates and friends about Larry’s condition.
“A lot of times it’s just explaining what he has,” Ali‘i said. “Not too much people bother (him about it).”
Larry spends a lot of time with older kids anyway — Paka coaches football and often has Larry with him during practice, where teammates treat him like their own brother.
“I’m really the coach,” Larry joked. “(But) mostly, I’m a big fan of light-saber fights, and I’m into (the videogames) ‘Halo’ and ‘Destiny.’”
Now that the family has a better understanding of alopecia, and Larry’s gotten more comfortable with the condition, they’re looking to connect with people going through the same thing — but they haven’t heard of another alopecia case like Larry’s on the island.
“We’d like to see if there’s anyone else out there and connect, support each other,” Desaray said.
Working with Kapaa Elementary School, the family has set up a May 21 presentation for Larry’s school with Jeff Woytovich of the Children’s Alopecia Project Inc. to help generate more understanding of alopecia.
Larry also has the dream of starting a line of trucker-style hats and using them to generate awareness of alopecia, as well as a way to encourage those with the condition.
He also wants to find a way to raise enough money to tuck a little cash into the hats he hands out to alopecia patients.
“Just to help them (know) you’re not alone,” Larry said. “It’s OK to not have hair. You can still be your own you.”
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Jessica Else, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0452 or jelse@thegardenisland.com.
Aloha Larry,
Dwain, the “ROCK”, he don’t need no haír, and how many other famous and accomplished people no need either.
Scientists know that the development of our hair, and every other part of our bodies, is reliant on the Nervous System, and the daily lifelong control and coordination of our cells, tissues, organs, and functions is the job of of a part of our Nervous System in our brain stem called the reticular system.
In fact all the vertebrate animals have a reticular system helping them to continue as they do every day. And in the animals, with hair, the reticuar system plays a part in the health of their hair too. In fact animals that live exclusively outdoors, in the ice and snow especially, hair isobviously is extremely important for warmth and so is their Nervous System.
There should be a few doctors on island that can check ones brain stem’s functionality and doing that non-invasively.
And Larry this modern world that you young people take for granted is that your lives are much infiltrated by these “screens” that the human beings have not physically and mentally totally adapted to as it can take more than many generations, until then it is a health risk if not downright danger.
They’re are silent side effects that psychologist and the various doctors could speak to, but while it is OK in young people’s minds to overuse or be addicted to screens and video games, the amount of time seems disruptive to a normal life for youth.
No one knows he Cause of this form of Alopecia, but scientists know that those screens are causing something aberrant in people who use them too much. Besides doctors claim they do not know the cause of most diseases and instead only know treatments to hide the symptoms while the disease runs wild in the body.
And scientists know that the good function of your brain stem has a lot to do about your hair, and less than good function of your brain stem may play a part in your hair (no pun intended).
In addition to the above, no on has a clue to the total terrible massive amount of different side effects that can be caused by food and drug chemicals and the effect of the thousands if not 100’s of 1,000’s of negative side effects from the chemicals in the foods you may be or probably are eating.
If TV ADs show many dangerous side effects from the chemical medical drugs, the chemicals in the food are dangerous in the combinations eaten daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and per decade as those effects accumulate in your body..
Has your doctor asked about your diet or is your doctor eating the same foods you are.
This is just food for thought and a serious pun intended for this sentence , but. No puns for the seriousness of this comment on mysteries of Alopecia and food, chemicals, screens, etc.
Read the labels of your food, look how many chemicals are in the food. Just Google them…!
Keep searching as you may help find the cause of this alopecia.
Charles