Thinning Hair in Women
It is common and even accepted for men to be bald. Although it is accepted it does not stop some men feeling embarrassed about their baldness and start looking for a way how to prevent hair loss. So can you imagine how it must be for a woman as their hair is one of the main areas that makes a woman feel attractive, and when it starts to fall out confidence can go with it too.
As a female, if your hair does start to have bald patches in it you should just quickly check a couple of things before coming to the overall conclusion that your hair is actually thinning. You should take time out and think about lifestyle really, are you stressed or is your diet poor? What about your hairstyle have you been wearing a style that pulls on your hair or getting lots of colors done?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.
Lets take a look at some of the things that can change hormone balance and cause you to have problems with your hair.
The first thing to consider is if you are going through the menopause. Menopause has a big impact on hormones and especially in slowing production of them 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. Probably one of the most common ways this is treated by the medical profession is with HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy). The actual hormone imbalance that occurs in the female during menopause which can cause hair loss can be explained as follows:-
Basically, before menopause a women will produce both estrogen and testosterone hormones. But the estrogen will not allow testosterone to be converted and move around the body as it acts in a way like a barrier. When the menopause starts, the production of estrogen diminishes and this can allow testosterone to have a bit more of a free reign. This in turn can turn into DHT which is a high amount of testosterone and if there are areas of the scalp sensitive to this then this can lead to hair loss.
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 third thing that can really mess around with a womans hormones and change the structure of their hair is pregnancy. 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.
These just cover some of the hormonal changes, however if you feel that none of this is applicable to you then, remember to have a little think about stress, hairstyle and food as well. In particular if you feel as if your diet is letting you down then you may want to consider taking some vitamins for good hair growth.
This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 6:49 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.