Hair Savers

Why is There a Rise in the Number of Cases?

The culprits are the progestogens, a synthetic version of the natural hormone testosterone and are components of most versions of both the contraceptive Pill and Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)

It is this progestogen ingredient which can tip a woman's hormonal balance too heavily towards the androgens. One progestogen, norethisterone, contains more tesosterone than any of the other progestogens used in the Pill and HRT.

Like men, many women inherit a genetic prefisposition to alopecia androgenetica- which can lie dormant for years so that many people with that predisposition go through life with a normal head of hair, never knowing they were ever in any danger of hair loss.

The increase is happening as more women routinely take the Pill and HRT, medications unheard of 50 years ago. When the Pil was first put on the market some problems including hair lloss were unspected, as long ago as 1960

But it was hardly a brilliant sales pitch to tell women that, alongside all the benefits of taking the Pill, they could also develop:

• acne vulgaris and come out in skin blemishes
• hirsuities and grow hair on their faces or on other areas of the body where they did not want it!
• baldness due to alopecia androgenetica.

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Thinning Hair (Alopecia Androgenetica) In Women

More women now have the female version of male pattern baldness. Alopecia androgenetica in a man usually appears as receding temples with perhaps a bald patch on the crown; in a woman as diffuse thinning throughout the scalp.

Thinning hair in women is a hormonal, hereditary condition caused by a genetic predisposition and totally different from the scalp disease alopecia areata.

When there is hair loss, there is frequently also a background of illness, weight loss, nutritional deficiency or thyroid problems. Fluctuating levels of the male hormones, the androgens, which women have in their bodies just as men do though in smaller amounts, can act as a trigger to alopecia androgenetica.

Whether the condition shows itself or not is down to the vital triggers in our lifestyle which can kick-start it into action. Medical interference with hormones is frequently to blame. In younger women the culprit is often the progestogen content of the contraceptive pill, or of hormones taken to prevent premenstrual syndrome or to combat infertility.

If the hormonal balance tips too much towards the androgens, women lose their hair.

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