An experienced hairdresser has told of her shock after realising her own hair was falling out – leading to a bald patch the size of her palm.

Hediye Garcia – who has now launched a business to help others with hair loss – discovered a bald spot on the side of her head when checking her extensions.

Six weeks later, the Ashford resident found it had grown to the size of a 50p piece and she also discovered a second, much larger patch on the back of her head.

When it grew to the size of her palm, she took her hair extensions out and went to the doctor. She discovered she had alopecia areata, an auto-immune disease that occurs when your immune system mistakenly attacks hair follicles and causes hair loss in small, round patches.

She was also diagnosed with a second condition called telogen effluvium, a scalp disorder that causes excess shedding of hair.

Mum-of-two Miss Garcia, who has worked in the industry for 16 years, specialising in hair extensions for the past eight, said: “I was completely shocked.

“I thought ‘Why haven’t I spotted this? This is my profession, this is what I do all the time’, but obviously I wouldn’t have noticed anything at the back of my own head.”

Miss Garcia, 37, found solace in documenting her hair loss journey through videos on her mobile phone, some of which she shared on social media but many of which she kept private for her own records, as it helped her to voice how she felt on camera.

But she also fell into a bad habit of obsessively watching videos about people with severe alopecia online – something she ended up regretting.

She said: “By watching so many videos, I convinced myself I was going to lose all my hair and then I convinced myself I would need a wig.

“It affected me a lot. I didn’t really want to go out, I had a lot of anxiety and I was still doing people’s hair every day so I couldn’t escape from thoughts about hair – I was surrounded by it.

“My hair was constantly falling out. It was all over the floor everywhere I went.

“I’d find hair on my pillow, on the car seat. I was just covered in hair all the time and it felt like it was never going to stop, so that’s why I felt I was going to end up needing a wig.”

Despite her expertise in hair extensions, Miss Garcia had not worked with wigs before, so she sought advice from a friend in the industry and taught herself how to make one.

Her first hand-sewn wig took her a whole day, and she made countless mistakes along the way, but she learnt as she went and created several of her own wigs, which she also coloured and styled.

But in December 2022, Miss Garcia was rushed into hospital with stomach pains, a fever and a low blood count. She was diagnosed with an infection and colitis, an inflammation of the colon, which can cause further episodes of hair loss each time she has a flare-up.

Following her experiences, last summer Miss Garcia changed the focus of her business from Hediye’s Hair Extensions to Wigs and Weaves By Hediye Garcia.

She now supports others going through hair loss, including those experiencing alopecia, cancer patients going through chemotherapy, clients with scalp burns from chemical treatments and women who have female pattern baldness, where their hairline recedes.

She said: “I got to the point where I accepted ‘it is what it is’ and I named my bald patches ‘my little mates’ just to try to make light of it really.

“I thought: ‘If this is the way it’s going to be, I’m in the right industry and I know how to get hold of hair pieces’. So I turned it around and realised I was actually in quite a fortunate position.”

Miss Garcia, who works from her Kingsnorth home in a converted garage, now focuses on helping her clients, one of whom is a 12-year-old girl with alopecia who was suffering with her self-confidence.

“Your hair is such a big part of you that you don’t really realise how important it is to you until it’s gone,” she said.

“It really makes up a lot of your image – not just how you look, but how you feel about yourself and your confidence.

“Although I was able to hide my patches, hair loss is hair loss no matter how much of it you experience – you still go through the same feelings so, because I’ve dealt with it, I can relate to what my clients are feeling.

“It’s an amazing feeling to be able to help others.

“It can get heavy, as I feel every second of it with them, but it’s very rewarding seeing someone being transformed – I get such a buzz from it.

“I still have hair and I’m grateful for that – I chose to be positive about what happened and even if I had lost it all, I know I would have been wearing pink and blue wigs and having fun with it.”