In the News – Female Hair Loss Causes

Snippet from the article:

In most cases, the cause is a genetic condition called androgenic alopecia, which is when hair follicles shrink because of a loss of estrogen and/or increased sensitivity to testosterone. Unlike men, who tend to experience androgenic alopecia as receding hairlines, women generally get thinning at the temples and the tops of their heads.

Once it starts, it usually gets worse, so it’s best to seek treatment earlier on when there’s more hair to save, Redmond said. Androgenic alopecia strikes some 25 percent of women in their 20s and 30s, and more than half of women over 45, when estrogen levels fall, he said.

Other possible, though rarer, causes of hair loss include alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks the hair follicles, causing patchy round bald spots. It affects less than 1 percent of the population and typically appears in the teen or young adult years.

Read the full text at Chicago Tribune — Why do women sometimes lose their hair?

These types of articles get published by a major newspaper every other month or so, and while they’re good reminders about the causes of female hair loss, they don’t offer any new solutions. There are so many possible causes of hair loss in women that it’s difficult to determine why you’re thinning at first glance (unlike men, which have genetics to thank in the great majority of cases). There’s a partial list of those possible causes here.