I am 35 years old, female, and have been experiencing diffuse hairloss for the past three years. I have been tested for everything and doctors have no explanation. Last year, I was diagnosed with colitis, lyme disease and gallstones. The colits is under control with colazal and the lyme was supposedly cured through a round of doxycycline. I take fish oil, primacare vitamins, colostrum, folic acid. I am losing handfuls of hair daily. What can I do when I am also trying to conceive?

Thanks for your help-

It seems you have been through a lot of stress both medically and emotionally. This can certainly be a cause of hair loss. Unfortunately, there is no cure for hair loss caused by stress without actually addressing the stress. The various diseases and drugs you are dealing with can contribute to hair loss as well. If you get on top of the various problems from a medical point of view and address the stress, as you wait out the hair cycle (1-3 years) you may be surprised that some of the hair could return. Moreover, genetic female hair loss is one of the most difficult conditions to treat, because no one really understands the mechanism. To repeat, the best advice I can offer is to take care of your medical problems and get your body healthy. Regrowth may or many not occur.

With respect to your question on what to do when you are trying to conceive, it is not clear what you are asking. The place for such advise is with your doctor. If your question is based on hair loss and the process of conceiving, I do not think there is a strong correlation unless your partner is causing you to pull your hair out. :)

I am a 22 year old female who has been losing hair since the age of 16. My hair loss has stopped or is constant but there has been no re growth. i have had all blood tests and everything is fine. i have been applying minoxidil for the past 3 years but yet there has not been any re growth. There are some areas on the crown of my scalp which show that i have had severe hair loss. I use nanogen fibres to cover this but this still doesnt cover it entirely. please could you offer me a solution. Can i undergo hair tranplantation , if not, why exactly ?

If you have been evaluated by a medical doctor and cannot find a medical reason for hair loss, your next step may be to make an appointment with a dermatologist or a doctor like me to establish a good working diagnosis. If you are a transplant candidate (a complex analysis for women), one has to make sure that your donor supply and your needs match up. If the donor supply is impacted with diffuse alopecia in significant amounts, then a hair transplant (moving sick hair around) does little to solve the problem you are trying to rectify. Women are generally poor candidates for hair transplantation, because the cause of women’s hair loss is very different than it is for men and the donor supply is often weak. You will not know until you can establish a diagnosis by mapping your scalp for miniaturization and hair loss pattern. Be careful of any doctor who is enthusiastic about transplanting you without answering the mapping diagnosis posed here.

Remember, a hair transplant with a poor donor supply may make you worse off for having it done in the first place.

I am an almost 19 year old female and I have a high forehead. I was coloring my hair the other day and noticed that I have a receding hairline. I also noticed that there is ‘new growth’ but it is very blonde and there is not enough of it to cover the areas. I have also smoked for three years and have been under quite a bit of stress lately. Will it continue to fall out? Is there anything I can do to stop it from doing so? Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

High hairlines in some women are normal genetic patterns, like the size of your nose and other facial proportions. If you really have a high hairline since you were much younger, then there are things you could do for it surgically.

Some women with the genetic hair loss genes can lose their hair in response to stress and when the stress is over, most regrow their hair. What you are describing, however, is not clear for me to make a diagnosis. I always tell women with hair loss to get checked out by a doctor and be sure that there are not medical causes of hair loss. The most common include hypothyroidism, genetics, hormonal imbalance, pregnancy, anemia, crash diet and oral contraception pill. In your case, smoking does not help your situation, but it is not the main reason for your hair loss. Otherwise, every smoker would be bald. Cigarettes have many chemicals which are toxic to your body and may assist other factors to induce your hair loss. Smoking may lead to less blo0d supply to your scalp which may lead to weakened growth of hair. I recommended that you visit a dermatologist and your primary care doctor to evaluate your hair loss and run blood tests to find out the cause of your hair loss.