Where on Your Head the Hair Loss is Can Point to Proper Treatment
Hair loss, forehead balding, and hair thinning may all be related to each other, and they all have similar treatment strategies.
If your forehead is balding you may actually have a hormone disorder than can be diagnosed and tracked.
Regardless of the reason for hair loss PRP treatments can be one of the best solutions we have.
Newly they are calling forehead balding Female pattern hair loss (FPHL) and female androgenetic alopecia are two terms that are very much related. They are commonly used synonymously to refer to women with progressive thinning of scalp hair that follows a pattern distribution.
Women with the androgenic hormonal balding usually have excess male hormones, or at least excess male hormones relative to female hormones.
Other hormones can also influence hair loss and those too should be checked to see if this is the reason, adrenal hormones, growth hormone, thyroid hormones can all contribute to hair issues.
Typically women with hormonal hair loss will come in complaining of relatively new onset hair loss…days, weeks or perhaps months.Usually this type of hair loss is the so called nonscarring type, meaning that there is hope for the recovery of this hair lost once the problem is treated. Medically this is alopecia refers to hair loss without permanent destruction of the hair follicle, although we can’t be sure hair follicles are not being destroyed.
Hormonal hair loss often is accompanied by other symptoms of hormone imbalance. How is the rest of your skin? Dry, flaky, itchy, or pimply scalp? Symptoms of the male hormone excess in women can also be chin or upper lip hair, deepening voice, bigger Adam’s apple and acne, but blood testing is the way to sort out the real cause.
The hair grows from follicles in healthy scalp and it cycles though growth of the hair from a follicle, then a period when the follicle withers or involutes and when that happens to that follicle with shedding of hair, and finally a rest period or the follicles hibernate. This is a very slow, three step process of anagen, catagen, and telogen. An imbalance of which hair follicles are resting, and which follicles are growing will produce what you see as sudden shedding. If this imbalance goes on for years, you’ll have very scant hair.
Most of our gyno patients with new onset of hair loss present with this sort of simple alopecia: hair loss without permanent destruction of the hair follicle. This has newly been termed With care and attention, the hair follicle can awake Stress, either physical exertion, mental exertion, or stress on the hair from treatments is the most common problem of this hair cycle problem. It is naturally seen briefly seasonal loss (warm months), or most commonly just normal loss with exaggeration due to poor treatment of the hair.
Those hair things that cause what is called traumatic alopecia (not just tearing our own hair out, there are other ways we hurt our hair)! Pulling, tugging, brushing, braiding, too vigorous toweling, hot iron, Brazilian blowouts, perms, coloration, tight ponytails…pretty much all touching will cause us to shed hairs. System infections, some medications (chemotherapy is mot notable), and even vaccinations can cause hair loss. Unfortunately it can be your genetics, and about a fifth of the patients seeking care for hair loss have at least one relative with extremely thin hair. If your identical twin has hair loss, you have a 50-50 chance of having hair loss. Autoimmune dysfunction will exaggerate the problem and cause immune cells to attack the growing hair follicles and thus make them either wither prematurely (this is the catagen stage), or in some cases completely die.
Voluminizing shampoos and wearing hair curly can help the fuller look, but getting to the bottom of this is important. First just be nice to your hair, then get in there and see if the scalp is healthy, finally, get some quick nutritional and hormone checks like a basic thyroid and menopause check. Both zinc and biotin will help your hair grow. If none of those are yielding any answers it’s time to go in for the full differential diagnosis. In the differential diagnoses are some fairly intimidating conditions: anagen effluvium, androgenetic alopecia, chemical alopecia, folliculitis (mild), inherited disorders of the hair shaft, telogen effluvium, alopecia areata, and traumatic alopecia. Some might just be aging and an actual decrease in each hair’s thickness can be seen. Hairs go from nice round, all alike strands, to irregular and inconsistent shapes and contours. Some follicles just quit producing hair, like your eye lash hairs (yeah Latissecan wake that up)!
The hormonal work up will be important: what are your levels and do they need to be back in balance. Some women will gain hair from suppression of their male hormones, and some will gain from treatment with male hormones. Some times experimentation is necessary, but it’s a frustratingly slow process.
Your gyno might be able to help, or your dermatologist. Don’t just “brush” it off to no big deal, hair loss can actually be a symptom of other underlying issues and if it goes on long enough, everyone deserves at least a brief check up.