Hair Growth, Texture, Quantity, and Color Relate to Your Hormones

When women come in to talk about changes in their hair, they often request hormone testing. As ubiquitous as hormonal effects on our body are, it surprises some women to know that hair growth on your head is often the least responsive to hormones in your system. This is not true of the hair that is specifically responsive to your hormones estrogen and testosterone, known as sexual hair. That hair is on your face, the lower abdomen, your thighs, the chest, your breasts, the pubic area, and under your arms. Here’s what you need to know.

1. Progesterone has minimal hair effects. Birth control pills do have some compounds in contraceptives called progesterones, those are testosterone derivatives, and behave differently, and may affect hair growth.

2. Testosterone determined the thickness and color of your hair during puberty, and those characteristics are set from that time forward. For guys the amount of testosterone at puberty determines their beard characteristics.

3. Estrogen and testosterone work opposite on hair follicles, so balance is important for women.

4. Testosterone initiates hair growth, thickens the hair, darkens the hair, and speeds the growth of hair, remember this is not really the effect on the scalp, it’s for all those other areas of the body’s ‘sexual’ hair mentioned above!

5. Estrogens will lead to slower growing hair finer hair.

6. Hair shedding is when natural hair loss and growth cycles synchronize up and suddenly produce a mass lost. That sudden loss is more common in pregnancy when estrogen and progesterone levels are very high.

If you have questions regarding your hormones or your hair, call for an appointment.