Thinning Hair in Women
Baldness and hair loss in men is very common and almost taken for granted, even if some men do feel self conscious about it and search for a way how to prevent hair loss, however receding or thinning hair does occur in women too, and can be extremely damaging to the self esteem as first of all it is not very common and secondly a womans hair is a large part of how a woman likes to present herself to the world.
If you are a woman that is experiencing quite a lot of hair suddenly starting to fall out, before panicking ask yourself if there is an obvious reason as to why this is happening, such as wearing your hair in a style where the hair is tightly tied back? Are you undergoing a lot of stress in your personal or professional life at present? Has your diet been poorer than normal lately?Now these things may seem trivial, but they can have a huge influence on what is happening with your scalp.
Now of course non of these things may be happening in your life, and you are actually losing more hair than any of the above would warrant, well if that is the case there is a strong possibility it could be a hormonal issue, as changes in hormones can hugely effect the growth of your hair.
Following are some of the common things that can happen to a woman to adjust hormones and interfere with the hair growth.
The first thing to consider is if you are going through the menopause. If you are then there is a high probability that your hormone production is slowing down. Women who are post menopausal and also have bald patches is probably higher than you would imagine, in fact it can occur in up to 2/3rds of the women in that group. The most common way of treating this slow down is with HRT and following is a little explanation of the hormones which slow down, and why it can cause hair loss:-
Normally a woman produces estrogen and testosterone, however estrogen acts like a shield and stops the testosterone moving about the body much. However when a woman goes on to become menopausal, the production of estrogen slows down and this allows testosterone to start moving around the body, and if the production of it is particularly high then this can lead to DHT and DHT is what has been linked as the reason for baldness in men.
Another thing which will change the hormone balance in a woman hugely is if they are forced to undergo a hysterectomy. In a sense this is like being menopausal as estrogen levels plummet and again this can lead to hair loss.
The final big upheaval in a woman which causes massive hormonal change is pregnancy, and this can really play tricks with the hair. When a woman becomes pregnant there are huge amounts of changes that start to occur within the body as you can probably well imagine. It is extremely common during pregnancy for hair to just seemingly take on a life of its own. It can go thinner and fall out, it can become thicker, curly hair can straighten and straight hair can go curly. Some women claim their hair is never the same again after pregnancy and this is all down to their hormones.
This is not an exhaustive list of hormone changes that can cause hair loss in women but it covers the most common, however remember if you are not menopausal, pregnant or had a hysterectomy and are losing hair, then remember to check your lifestyle, particularly your stress levels and diet and you may want to think about having some vitamins for good hair growth.
This entry was posted on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 6:11 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.