Female Hair Loss – A Short Review
Men think that balding is a male problem, but women have it too and it is even more devastating when they are young and they often feel that they are looking old as a result of it. Believe it or not, almost 50% of women who go through menopause develop generalized thinning and often force them to make lifestyle adjustments. If you don’t believe it, look to your mom, aunts and grandmothers and many of you will see a ‘see-through scalp’. Post menopausal women get their genes for hair loss and express the balding when they lose their estrogen support at menopause. Then, without adequate amounts of estrogen, their androgens (e.g. testosterone) has no counter balance, so the genes for hair loss express themselves without estrogen protection. Many women go to the beauty parlor and dye their hair blonde or lighten their hair color to reduce the color/contrast between their skin and hair color making the thinning less obvious. We offer Scalp Micropigmentation for many of these women (see here: https://scalpmicropigmentation.com/).
Some young women also have genetic hair loss and it can express itself in two manners (1) by recession like a man can have where the hairline goes up or with a slightly different type of hair thinning pattern and (2) generalized thinning impacting the hair everywhere on their head. When recession occurs, a hair transplant can work well, but when generalized thinning occurs, we often just do Scalp Micropigmentation for them (see 33 year old female with photo here: https://baldingblog.com/i-am-a-33-year-old-famale-can-anyone-help-me-photo/). Some women will respond to finasteride (less than 50% for post menopausal women and even less for pre-menopausal women who must be very careful not to get pregnant because pregnancy and finasteride causes birth defects in the baby).
Women have hair loss from many causes including: Birth Control pills, all sorts of medications, thyroid, anemia, low Vitamin D levels, low Zinc Levels, and other endocrine problems. I often order a battery of blood tests for women (https://baldingblog.com/common-blood-tests-for-female-hair-loss/) when they come to me for evaluation to see if there is something wrong that should be fixed first.
Women have other problems including a variety of autoimmune diseases of the scalp (frontal fibrosing alopecia, Lichen Pilanoplaris, scarring alopecias from other causes) so women should see a good dermatologist to make sure that these diseases are not present. Getting a hair transplant while these diseases are present will fail.
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