Causes of Hormonal Hair Loss in Women
While it’s slightly less prevalent, hair loss in women does happen to a certain percentage of the population. The very strong societal emphasis on female beauty makes this particular problem even more unbearable for many women. Therefore, it can help to understand the possible root cause of your hair loss in order to come to terms with your condition or to pursue a modern hair-loss solution. One of the most common causes for hair loss in women is actually hormonal.
Many cases of hair loss in women are often linked to dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which is actually a derivative of the male hormone testosterone. Even though it’s predominately a male hormone, it can still be produced in women. DHT is one of the most severe attackers on human hair follicles in your head. It actually kills off hair-producing follicles directly at the sight by shrinking the follicles.
While it was most commonly held that testosterone was the main culprit, it has recently been confirmed that it’s the conversion of testosterone to DHT through an enzyme, type II 5-alpha reductase, located within the oil glands of the hair follicle. Since women have these elements in trace amounts they too are susceptible to androgenetic alopecia, which was once considered to strictly be a form of male pattern baldness. However, the conversion to DHT takes place in both men and women even at lower levels of testosterone. In fact, these levels can be so low that they don’t trigger any warning signs in blood tests. That’s one of the reasons why you shouldn’t hesitate to inform your doctor of your hair loss issue. Once they’ve been informed of that symptom they’ll be able to run some more specific and finite tests to search for DHT-related problems.
And some women will also notice a cyclic behavior in their hair loss. This is because hormonal behavior shifts and changes during different life cycles. For example, female hormone levels decrease at the onset of menopause and then decline significantly during menopause and beyond. This cyclic behavior often causes confusion among women using hair-loss prevention products as they may have been noticing a slowing in hair loss over the long run but then experience occasional severe spikes in hair loss.
And although you’ve most likely heard stress related to just about everything by now, it’s definitely worth mentioning its relation to hair loss. Trauma, extreme or prolonged stress, illness and malnutrition can cause a majority of your growing (anagen phase) or resting (catagen phase) hair to simultaneously change and enter the shedding phase (telogen). This is referred to as the telogen effluvium. One of the reasons why telogen effluvium can often go undetected or why it’s often failed to be named as the cause of hair loss is because it sometimes takes up to six weeks for the shedding phase to kick in. Unless there was one particular traumatic experience such as child birth, invasive surgery or a major accident, this makes identifying the root cause quite difficult. This underlines the importance of reducing stress levels whenever possible.