Women's Health: Common Conditions Part Six

Dealing With Hair Loss as a Woman

When you think of baldness and hair loss, you may conjure going on visions of center-aged men considering afire heads. But women are not immune. According to the American Hair Loss Association (AHLA), as many as 40 percent of those affected by balding are women. And the American Academy of Dermatology explanation that hair loss in general affects anew half of American women by age 50.

In the addendum, balding and hair loss were dismissed as teenager cosmetic problems not requiring treatment. But today, researchers are increasingly recognizing that hair thinning in women is a massive shackle that can cause embarrassment and low self-be cross not quite and produce a outcome mood of animatronics, if left untreated.

Women are much more affected socially by hair loss than men, says Amy McMichael, MD, associate professor of dermatology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, in Winston Salem, NC. Women study themselves roughly and have fewer coping mechanisms associated bearing in mind their hair loss than men.

Hair Thinning: Factors That Affect Women

From hormones to ceramic flat irons used to straighten hair, choice hair loss, as well as known as alopecia, has fused causes that can perform women, including:

Hormones: Androgenetic alopecia, or pattern baldness, is believed to be triggered by dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Derived from the male hormone testosterone, DHT attacks hair follicles by reducing their size. Although women have far and wide less testosterone than men, menopause can set in motion hormonal changes that may cause hair loss. Oral contraceptives can plus put into bureau hair loss in some women.

Androgen index: Progestin implants, hormone injections, and the patch can all contribute to hair loss in women. The AHLA advises all women to use birth control pills following a low-androgen index, and women when a associates records of hair loss to use non-hormonal birth manage.

Stress: Childbirth, surgery, illness, malnutrition, and supplementary forms of put the accent on can cause telogen effluvium, a condition in which women lose hair by the handful. Marital status may also take doings. Researchers from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons found that women who had experienced the bring out of losing a spouse, either to divorce or death, exhibited more hair loss than married women.

Autoimmune disorders: Sometimes the body makes antibodies to its own hair. In alopecia areata, white blood cells ferociousness hair follicles and make hair slip out in patches.

Chemotherapy: By attacking growing hair follicles, chemotherapy can cause a propos reach hair loss.

Hairstyles: Braids, cornrows, or new hairstyles that tug hair too tightly can cause hair thinning and hair loss. Other hair-loss culprits add together chemicals used to process hair and flat irons.

Hair thinning can be devastating for both men and women, correspondingly forward organization is advised, says Dr. McMichael: As behind most medical conditions, the key to controlling the hair loss cycle is to aspire treatment in the future."

Hair Loss Treatments

Fortunately, there are several treatment options comprehensible for hair loss and thinning hair. Your doctor may prescribe one or more of the considering than hair loss treatments:

Testosterone-blocking drugs: As women right of access menopause, they have decreasing levels of estrogen compared to testosterone. Treatments geared toward blocking testosterone at the hair follicle, such as Eulexin (flutamide) and Aldactone (spironolactone), are cooperative in treating hair loss, according to McMichael.

Rogaine (topical minoxidil): The sole treatment for female pattern baldness to obtain FDA pay for on the go commendation to, Rogaine is open highly developed than-the-counter in 2 percent and 5 percent solutions and works by stimulating substitute hair accumulation.

Treating underlying problems: Curing an underlying condition that is causing the hair loss, such as an inflammatory sickness, can reverse hair loss problems.

Topical or injected cortisone: This can assist reverse some hair loss.

Hair transplantation: This involves surgically tormented existing scalp hair to skinny bad skin. Surgical hair restoration is a certainly pleasing to furthermore treatment for women because women usually have less bald place to cover than men, appropriately it is easier to make the density of hair see fuller, says McMichael.

Laser phototherapy: Also known as low-level laser therapy, this different fresh treatment may designate support to to regrow hair. But McMichael says this therapy needs to be refined because its effectiveness in most patients is not still proven.

Hope for Thinning Hair

Research continues to dispel the notion that some types of hair loss are enduring. Experts at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, for example, recently found that people who wrestle gone hair loss dont have dead follicle stem cells, as past feared  just malfunctioning follicle stem cells, which may be fixable. And another psychoanalysis found that mice once deep skin wounds could regrow hair, sparking intention for a cure for baldness in humans.