If you want to know why you are losing your hair and how your hormones are affecting that, this article tackles those issues. Welcome back to my blog. Today, I’m going to show you what is happening with your hormones that are affecting hormonal hair loss.
First of all, both men and women lose their hair because of their hormones.
We also grow our hair because of our hormones. Alopecia, which is the word for hair loss or balding, affects males about 50% of the time. 50% of males will have alopecia in their lifetime, they will lose some hair and approximately about 25% of women will have some hair loss or thinning in their lifetime. By the time a woman reaches menopause, about four out of ten women will experience some thinning of their hair. Most women who experience alopecia, it is usually androgenic or male pattern alopecia. What that means is, is that it is the male hormone causing the alopecia, testosterone, but not actually testosterone. It is dihydrotestosterone or DHT, the more active version of testosterone, that can cause male pattern balding or hair loss.
Now, that balding is very specific. I am not talking about the entire head. I am not talking about patches of hair that you are losing and I am not talking about thinning everywhere. What I am talking about is that pattern that is up in the front of your head, frontal pattern, it goes across the top of the head and then back at the crown. That male pattern alopecia, the androgenic alopecia, is what we are going to focus on today.
So, the first thing you need to understand is how hair grows.
You do have growth hair hormones and they are estrogen and T3. So, estrogen actually stimulates hair growth and T3 does as well. It actually stimulates this hair follicle to go into its growing phase. Now, the growing phase actually lasts two to six years. So the hair on your head, some of that hair is two to six years old. Then there is kind of a resting phase in the hair that is anywhere from one to six weeks and at that point at the end of the resting phase, you start shedding some hair. That hair could have been two to six years old. So this is a long phase of hair growth and hair loss and we all go through a shedding phase. We shed pretty much everyday, about 50 to 100 hairs a day. That seems like a lot, but if you actually count the hairs, it is not that much.
The other issue is that we tend to shed with the seasons like animals do.
So you will see a little more shedding in the spring, a little more shedding in the fall. That is not uncommon. But, we need to know how to control this and we need to know how to control the hair loss hormones. We need to learn how to control dihydrotestosterone. Dihydrotestosterone is actually created from testosterone. 5-alpha reductase is an enzyme that actually converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone, which blocks hair growth. Cortisol can also be a huge issue. And what cortisol can do is stimulate you to make more dihydrotestosterone. You can also lose hair because of too much stress hormone cortisol. It is a different kind of hair loss. It comes out in patches, usually rings of hair loss and it can be complete balding. But, it is completely correctable and you can get all your hair back after a stress related hair loss.
Hormone Healing Tip 1: Control Hair Loss Hormones
So, let us talk about how we are going to do this. Number one, you are going to control your hair loss hormones.
How are you going to do that? How are you going to keep from converting testosterone to dihydrotestosterone? Saw palmetto. Saw palmetto is an herb that actually helps to block dihydrotestosterone. You have probably heard it from men to use to shrink their prostates, but it actually helps with hair loss as well. It is one of the factors, actually with dihydrotestosterone, where chemicals like minoxidil that you put topically on your scalp, actually block dihydrotestosterone. We want to prevent from converting it in the first place and you can use Saw palmetto to do that.
Another hormone that you naturally make that actually reduces dihydrotestosterone production is aldosterone. It is a hormone produced by the adrenal glands. It controls your saltwater balance and actually controls how much urine you make from your kidneys. How much volume is within your blood so your heart can pump your blood throughout your entire body. It is an incredibly important hormone and it acts to block 5-alpha reductase, that enzyme that converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone. There is a drug called spirolactone, which is a synthetic derivative of aldosterone, that can also block dihydrotestosterone conversion.
Hormone Healing Tip 2: Boost Hair Growth Hormones
Number two, you want to boost your hair growth hormones.
So for females, we want more estrogen in order to grow hair. We want more T3 for both males and females and for males too, they need some estrogen in there in order to grow hair and their testosterone will naturally be converted over to estrogen. So getting your hormones in balance is incredibly important to growing healthy hair. One of the biggest things that I see with my patients and my customers who are using Genesis Gold is their hair becomes much healthier and that is because their hormones become in balance. We are actually increasing those growth hormones that are related to growing hair. We are actually balancing those out and getting more of those hormones to the hair follicle. It also helps to increase the cell receptivity for T3, as well as estrogen, so the hair follicle will actually open up and accept those growth hormones to actually promote the hair growth.
Hormone Healing Tip 3: Light Therapy
So number three, light therapy.
You know about light, not just the light that we are seeing, but light waves. You have heard about ultraviolet, you know about blue light, but also ultrared light, both near ultrared and far ultrared, and what that means is how long the wavelength is. That particular light has been shown to actually prevent hair loss and increase hair growth in male pattern baldness. They have done most of the research on men and they have actually seen an increase in hair growth. It takes time, about four months, with daily exposure, about 10 minutes on the scalp with ultrared light. This is a low-level laser light therapy. You can find different devices that are sold over the counter. You want to look for FDA approved devices. It is another option if you have alopecia that is caused by high levels of male hormones, particularly DHT, to help to stimulate the hair growth. It may also help just theoretically stimulate hair growth from other hair loss processes but definitely consult with your health care provider.
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