Hair loss: Understanding hair loss in women
Why is my hair starting to thin?
Did you know that the average woman is born with about 100,000 hair follicles on her head—and she keeps them for the rest of her life? Most women lose between 50 and 100 hairs a day. If your hair is healthy, it will grow back on its own. But if you’re one of the 30 million women in America who experience hereditary hair loss, you may be losing 150 hairs or more a day—hair that doesn’t grow back as thick and healthy as it once was. You may notice more hair on your brush, in your sink, or in the shower drain. As your hair begins to look thinner, it may become a challenge to style your hair. The good news is there are several products on the market like Folligen and Tricomin, that have scientifically been proven to work and help thinning hair loss. Read more about hair loss studies conducted by Loren Pickart, PhD here.
Understanding Female hair loss
Improving Hair Vitality & Scalp Health for Women
Most hair loss in women is normally due to scalp damage due to perms, coloring dyes, relaxers, using too much heat when drying hair, overuse of shampoos, tight buns or pony-tails, and overcutting (long hair is healthier). The chemical salts and dyes in eyebrow and eyelash make ups often produce a severe loss of eyebrows and eyelashes by age 40 in many women. Psychological stress or hormonal shifts such a menopausal changes or stopping the use of birth control pills can also cause temporary hair loss. If you look at old photographs of families from about 1880, you will see that many women of age 60 still had long healthy hair in an era before modern hair care techniques. In poor areas on the world today, most mature women have healthier hair than in U.S. cities.
Recommendations for Female Hair Regrowth
Many hair products for women cause long term damage. Many hair experts think that women's hair was healthier 100 years ago. Old photographs often show women in the 60s with hair down to their shoulders or their waist.
Copper Peptides help supply nutritional copper to the scalp so that the skin can perform its functions. Numerous studies from the US Department of Agriculture Nutrition Laboratories indicate that most persons have an inadequate intake of copper for optimal health.
1. If your scalp is irritated, then to calm your scalp and help hair growth, the best would be to use the emu oil. Emu Oil for Hair on your scalp in the morning and copper peptides at night in denser hair areas. Start with a very light amount of each. You do not need to wash it out in the morning.
2. If there is no irritation, then use copper peptides on your scalp - a small amount. Let it dry a little, then apply a light amount of Emu Oil-S for Hair. You do not need to wash it out in the morning.
3. If you have very blonde hair, then use products built around tin peptides that have no color. In experimental studies, tin-peptides help hair growth.
4. Also take daily supplements of MSM - 2 to 4 grams - and 1 gram each of flaxseed oil and borage oil.
5. To increase your hair's natural pigmentation, take an additional 2 mgs of copper daily. Hair pigments are made from the amino acid tyrosine by a copper-dependent enzyme call tyrosinase and copper is often in short supply in the human body.
6. Always use a minimum of shampoo and conditioner. Folligen Shampoo and Folligen Conditioner are very mild shampoos that help thicken and keep more moisture on the hair shafts.
7. Keep heat off your head - blow dryers can boil follicles. Hot oil treatments also damage hair follicles.
8. Stress can cause hair loss. Blood cortisol levels are raised and this inhibits skin repair. Often temporarily taking a daily supplement of 75 to 100 mgs of DHEA for a few months will block the damaging actions of cortisol.
9. Tight bindings, buns, braids, and so on, can cause hair loss. Keep your hair loose and fluffy.
10. Sometimes new hair growth can push out older hair shafts and there may be a brief period of hair shedding as the new hair shafts push out the old dormant hair shafts. Old, non-growing hair is held in the hair follicle for about four months before falling out.
FDA Approved for female hair loss
There are two products approved by the Food and Drug Administration to have a positive effect on female balding -- minoxidil and the HairMax LaserComb®. The minoxidil foam has had better results as it tends to stay where it has been applied, unlike the liquid form that may drip down to another area of the scalp.
Minoxidil (Rogaine) is found to be effective in women with baldness on the crown. Applied twice a day in a cream, foam, or liquid, the hair growth only occurs as long as it is used. Minoxidil was originally approved to treat high blood pressure. Side effects are uncommon, but Rogaine® should not be used by people with a history of heart problems, sudden weight gain, chest pains, fainting, or rapid heartbeat.
The HairMax LaserComb® laser hair treatment is a breakthrough in hair growth technology. FDA Cleared*, Clinically Proven and Doctor Recommended, the HairMax LaserComb® hair loss treatment makes baldness and thinning hair an option rather than an unavoidable reality.
Dr. Michael Holick (Boston University Medical Center) reported a clinical study that found emu oil accelerated skin regeneration and also stimulated hair growth.
He wrote -"The hair follicles were more robust, the skin thickness was remarkably increased...Also, we discovered in the same test that over 80 percent of hair follicles that had been 'asleep' were awakened, and began growing hair."
For More Hair Growth Add in Minoxidil (2%)
For more hair stimulation, add in 2% Minoxidil. The manufactors recommend a maxium of 2% for women. Sometimes minoxidil produces scalp irritation.
If this happens, stop the minoxidil and use only Copper Peptides until your scalp health is restored. Then reuse the 2% minoxidil if your scalp remains healthy.
Prof. Hedio Uno, one of the world's top scientists on hair growth and who wrote the textbook on Rogaine, found copper peptides and minoxidil work together to produce better looking hair.
Minoxidil is FDA approved that is proven safe and effective for women:
- The #1 dermatologist-recommended brand for hair regrowth is available without a prescription.
- Women's ROGAINE® Topical Solution and generic minoxidil helps reverse the progression of hereditary hair loss.
- The ingredient minoxidil, the only FDA-approved ingredient clinically proven to regrow hair in women.
Important facts we've learned:
- Emu oil accelerated skin regeneration and also stimulated hair growth.
- Minoxidil reinvigorates shrunken hair follicles, which increases their size and helps to regrow thicker-looking hair over time.
- Copper Peptides help supply nutritional copper to the scalp so that the skin can perform its functions.
Menopause, Estrogen, and Hair Thinning
Estrogens, the feminizing hormones, can inhibit or counteract the follicle-shrinking effect of the androgens. Women have more estrogens circulating in their blood than men. As a result of this higher level of estrogens, even women having a genetic predisposition for pattern hair loss are protected from losing their hair because of the high level of estrogens in their blood. When these women reach menopause however, their estrogen level may decrease sufficiently, and the protective effect of the estrogen may be overridden by the DHT message. Then hair can begin to thin, sometimes rapidly. Some women are genetically pre-disposed to have pattern hair loss. Estrogen supplementation can often raise are estrogen levels, and help restore the emotional and physical condition of the patient to the pre-menopause states.
