NFL player Jack Crawford, ex-NBA player Charlie Villanueva, national ice hockey player Denis Reul, young ice hockey talent player Niklas Hane. Athletes who have something in common. But what do these athletes have in common? They all had to deal with a rare disease: alopecia areata.
Alopecia areata is an autoimmune disease in which the body identifies its own hair as a foreign body and begins to fight it. The result is round or oval hair loss. For some affected people, the onset of inflammatory hair loss is limited to a few areas. However, further bald spots can appear, until eventually there is a risk of extensive hair loss.
In the case of alopecia totalis, a special form of the autoimmune disease, sufferers not only lose their hair, but also their beard, eyebrows and eyelashes. Although the disease has been known for a long time, it is largely unexplored. According to Alopecia Areata Deutschland eV, over 1,5 million people in the German population are affected by various forms of the disease. One of them is Niklas Hane, a native of Düsseldorf. He has been battling the effects of alopecia totalis since he was six years old. During a match in the German Young Talent League between the Jungadler Mannheim and the U20 team of the Düsseldorfer EG There were unpleasant scenes last month in which the captain of the DEG's Young Talent Team had to deal with insults due to the consequences of his illness. This incident was immediately reported to the Deutscher Eishockey-Bund. The Jungadler Mannheim player who triggered this conflict was subsequently banned from all games for the duration of six championship games. Of this ban, two championship games will be suspended until October 01.10.2022, XNUMX.
In conversation with the DEB Niklas Hane emphasized that his primary concern is to protect other young victims from such verbal attacks in the future and to let them know that they must not allow themselves to be intimidated by any kind of discrimination. Not everyone has the self-confidence to deal openly with such experiences, which is precisely why it was particularly important to him to act as a kind of ambassador and work together with them DEB as well as Hockey is Diversity to talk about his situation.
A well-known face in the PENNY DEL, our national player Denis Reul, is also affected by the autoimmune disease. "Stupid comments were always the fuel in the engine for me," Denis Reul says when asked. The defender, who played for the Jungadler Mannheim from 2004 to 2007 and has been a permanent member of the Mannheim professional team since 2009, first showed signs of the disease when he was 12 years old. At that time, the Marktredwitz native only lost his hair in a few places. "It always looked a bit like a moonscape," Reul reveals. But even then, good friends and family always supported him. However, he himself says that he has now become resistant to insults because of his appearance.
“Niklas must know that, in principle, such discrimination is not against him. The opponent on the ice wants to hurt him in order to weaken him. Of course, that in no way justifies such discrimination. I always saw it as an incentive to be better than my opponent. Of course, this is always easier said than done. But maybe this will also help Niklas and other affected people in the future. I definitely wish him all the best in this journey!”
The organization Alopecia Areata Germany e. V. (AAD e. V.) offers help, advice and moral support to those affected in the Federal Republic. You can find further information about this at www.kreisrunderhaarlaufen.de