Baldness and hair loss in men is very common and almost taken for granted, even if some men do feel self conscious about it and search for a way how to prevent hair loss, however receding or thinning hair does occur in women too, and can be extremely damaging to the self esteem as first of all it is not very common and secondly a womans hair is a large part of how a woman likes to present herself to the world.
As a female, if your hair does start to have bald patches in it you should just quickly check a couple of things before coming to the overall conclusion that your hair is actually thinning. You should take time out and think about lifestyle really, are you stressed or is your diet poor? What about your hairstyle have you been wearing a style that pulls on your hair or getting lots of colors done? Although things like this may not seem relevant, they are and can have an effect on your hair.
Of course, these things may not apply to you, so in that case there could be something hormonal happening within your body as hormones have a huge effect on many things within the body and one of them being hair.
Following are some of the common things that can happen to a woman to adjust hormones and interfere with the hair growth.
The first thing to consider is if you are going through the menopause. Menopause has a big impact on hormones and especially in slowing production of them down. This is probably more common than you would imagine and can effect up to about two thirds of women and leave them with bald patches of some degree in their post menopausal stages. Probably one of the most common ways this is treated by the medical profession is with HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy). The actual hormone imbalance that occurs in the female during menopause which can cause hair loss can be explained as follows:-
Normally a woman produces estrogen and testosterone, however estrogen acts like a shield and stops the testosterone moving about the body much. However when a woman goes on to become menopausal, the production of estrogen slows down and this allows testosterone to start moving around the body, and if the production of it is particularly high then this can lead to DHT and DHT is what has been linked as the reason for baldness in men.
Another thing which will change the hormone balance in a woman hugely is if they are forced to undergo a hysterectomy. In a sense this is like being menopausal as estrogen levels plummet and again this can lead to hair loss.
The final big upheaval in a woman which causes massive hormonal change is pregnancy, and this can really play tricks with the hair. When a woman becomes pregnant there are huge amounts of changes that start to occur within the body as you can probably well imagine. It is extremely common during pregnancy for hair to just seemingly take on a life of its own. It can go thinner and fall out, it can become thicker, curly hair can straighten and straight hair can go curly. Some women claim their hair is never the same again after pregnancy and this is all down to their hormones.
These just cover some of the hormonal changes, however if you feel that none of this is applicable to you then, remember to have a little think about stress, hairstyle and food as well. In particular if you feel as if your diet is letting you down then you may want to consider taking some vitamins for good hair growth.
