Should I Start Using Rogaine for Women?

I am a 27 year old, female of indian ethnicity. I always had extremely thick hair, but have noticed over the last 5-7 years, a dramatic reduction in my thickness (probably half the thickness it used to be). Admittedly my hair is probably still considered thick, but I am concerned that at the rate of my hair loss it could become dramatically worse, and want to prevent this from happening. My mother’s hair has dramatically thinned (you can see her scalp visibly) and I am hoping that is not what I am getting. I do notice slight regrowth but this does not seem sufficient to be replacing all my lost hair.

I notice that I lose a lot of hair in the shower, when I style my hair, and anytime I just pull my hair together, and also see that I lose strands of hair throughout the day (my floor perpetually has a lot of hair on it and my clothes usually grab a fair number of hairs as well). I have been perpetually on different antibiotics for acne for about the last 10 years (not sure if this is an influence).

I want to start using Rogaine for Women but am not sure if I am too young for this, and also dont want to use this unnecessarily. Can you please tell me if I can/should be using a product like this? Also, should I see a doctor regarding this (what type of doctor is best), and what tests should I be asking for? Any feedback you have would be appreciated.

Self-diagnosis is difficult for me to recommend, because if you have a medical condition causing the hair loss, then you will not get a proper diagnosis. As I’ve said before, there many reasons for hair loss in women, including hypothyroidism, ezcema, alopecia areata, telogen effluvium, lupus, drugs, stress, crash diet, and infections. As you will see when reviewing the list of problems, hair loss in women is not as straight forward as in most men. Before starting more medications, you should get a metric (measurement) to get your scalp mapped out for miniaturization to determine if you have premature genetic balding for women.

A good dermatologist or family doctor can perform the basic blood tests and a dermatologist will be able to do biopsies when appropriate. Rogaine for Women may work if you do not have one of the medical conditions listed above.