Hair Loss – The Impact On Women Today
By: Vanda McCauley | Vanda Salon | https://www.vandasalon.net When I started going through pre-menopause, I began to notice more than usual hair shedding. Once I began to experience full-on menopause, in a matter of months my changing hormones lead to a noticeable amount of hair thinning from all over my head, it felt as though I lost half my hair strands in a short period, I was devastated, ashamed and scared. I suddenly became a statistic. I joined the 30 million other women in the United States who experience female pattern hair loss, alopecia, and struggle with thinning hair. Hair loss of some sort affects approximately 40% of women by the age of 50. As a licensed hairstylist, I feared that my clients would lose confidence in my ability to care for their hair or provide creditable advice to help maintain and grow their hair.
My experience with thinning hair caused me to study Trichology, which is the Para-medical science of hair loss and associated scalp problems. By integrating the clinical principles of scalp and hair health with hairstyling, I can reasonably assess the hair loss or growth issues and formulate comprehensive customized treatment protocols and hair growth regimens for clients. This spotlight provides the most current thinking about women’s hair loss and thinning in terms of the psychological impacts, primary causes, and treatments. Although it’s not a life-threatening condition, noticeable hair loss has a severe emotional impact on a woman’s self-esteem, body image, and self-confidence. It can also produce other psychological difficulties such as depression and less frequent and enjoyable social engagement. Hair loss for women can be so emotionally devastating that it can trigger diminished work performance, alter healthy living such as avoiding exercise or not treating other health conditions. 16 | Spring 2020 Extended
The bottom line is that society puts excessive pressure on women’s beauty, and a great deal of this comes from the perceptions of hair. For women, hair is the crown and glory, a symbol of beauty and pride. If this sense of beauty and pride starts to diminish, it can shatter a woman’s identity. The topic of women’s hair loss is quite complex, although there are nearly 30 different diagnosed conditions that cause hair loss in women, at the core of these conditions are two main culprits: inflammation and Dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Pregnancy, menopause, stress, lack of sleep, medications, frequently wearing hairstyles that pull the hair too tight, and poor nutrition can all be catalysts for inflammation in the hair follicle, hormonal imbalances that can trigger inflammation in the hair follicles, disruption in the hair growth cycle, and the build-up of DHT that causes hair follicles to shrink. As a result, the hair stand grows thin and brittle.
