If you are one of the millions of women who suffer from thinning hair, you understand that it can be devastating to find loose strands of hair on the floor or tangled in your brush. After all, a stylish do is often the crowning glory of a woman’s appearance.
Never fear; this can still be the case, even if your hair is thinning.
I was at the bank yesterday and couldn’t help but notice that I could see right through my teller’s hair, it was like looking through the trees in the winter.
Now Mary is an attractive middle aged woman, immaculately dressed with beautiful make-up and her hair, what was left of it, was impeccably styled. She was obviously a professional woman who cared about her looks – why would she endure that? She obviously didn’t realize that she has cosmetic options and didn’t have to suffer.
It is because of women like Mary that I wrote the book “10 Styling Secrets for Women with Thinning Hair” because women, regardless of the reason and the degree of their hair loss, have many cosmetic and styling options to help them look great and feel more confident about their looks.
When my banking was done, I thanked her and gave her my business card and told her she might find my free e-book helpful. The look in her eyes seemed to vary between suspicion and hope.
Now, with on-line banking, I don’t get into the branch much any more but I’ll be back to see if she’s taken my advice – it’ll be obvious.
Look Good, Feel Great!
Recently a young woman, still in her teens, asked what she could do to stop losing her hair and re-grow it. She explained that she noticed thinning at her temples at the hairline mostly when she wore a pony tail. She didn’t have health insurance and couldn’t afford a doctor’s visit yet she was ready to start spending money on treatment!
I wondered to myself how she could justify trying to treat something she didn’t understand. Taking action is great but, consulting with experts, creating a plan and sticking with it is an even better solution. Ah, the impatience of youth!
I explained that the causes of hair loss for women are many and varied and that if her thinning hairline was simply the result of a regular, tightly pulled hairstyle (traction alopecia), then wearing her hair loose for a while could reverse the problem and allow a full, natural recovery.
I further explained that the abundance and quality of hair is an indicator of overall health and that only a doctor could truly determine the underlying reason for her specific situation, possible spotting something more serious. The cause could be relatively simple and resolvable over time, like diet, stress and medications but could also be more complex like heredity (androgenetic alopecia), hormonal fluctuation and disease or even some combination. Undiagnosed, her hair problem and potentially her health, could deteriorate further.
I asked her if she wouldn’t feel better knowing what the cause was and she agreed she couldn’t afford not to go.
Look Good, Feel Great!
In addition to genetic hair conditions (androgenetic alopecia) and hormone fluctuations, add the physical stress of surgery and chronic unresolved emotional stress to the long list of things that negatively impact our crowning glory—our hair!
Telogen Effluvium is the second most common reason for hair loss and is usually caused by severe physical or emotional stress and sometimes due to the lack of dietary iron or protein. In this condition, an abnormally high percentage of hair enters the resting, or telogen phase, and often falls out in clumps. The reaction can be sudden or delayed and accompanied by “painful hair” but is fairly common and will usually resolve itself over time.
Crash dieters or inexperienced vegetarians can experience hair loss. For either, the intake of iron and protein should be examined and adjusted as necessary. The good news is that hair loss associated with either deficiency is reversible with corrective action.
Surgery places physical stress on our minds and our bodies regardless of whether the surgery is minor or major. As if nine months of the discomfort of pregnancy and the pain of labor was not enough, many women also experience hair loss! The shock, including the effects of the anesthesia, places our bodies under a great deal of stress that it may take several months to recover from. In recovery, the body uses all of its resources and energy to recover from physical trauma and some of that energy is diverted away from hair growth and other less necessary bodily functions. Consequently, our hair may stop growing and begin to fall out during the recovery period. This type of hair loss is usually temporary and the hair will begin to grow back once the body has completely healed.
The mental stress of losing a friend or loved one, a marriage or even a job are some of the greatest mental stresses that we face in life. Additionally, facing an economic crisis may put us in panic mode and worrying about how we will support ourselves and our families also creates considerable stress. Economic crises are often accompanied by a job loss, a family medical emergency or accident, a double whammy which adds even more stress to the situation. Under these circumstances our bodies go into survival mode, marshaling all energy for recovery at the expense of those functions that are not vital to life. Hair growth may cease or slow and hair strands may fall out until our hearts and minds begin to heal.
If you have faced a mental or physical trauma like the ones mentioned above or something similar, the first thing you need to do is to take care of yourself. Adjust your diet, allow yourself time to heal physically, get emotional help from a professional or cry on the shoulder of a friend. Do whatever it takes to ensure your own mental and physical well-being. If you begin losing hair during times like these, try a hair thickening cosmetic to help you feel better about yourself and take heart, your hair will inevitably grow back once the trauma subsides. Treat your body and mind kindly keeping friends and family close to help you on the road to recovery.
As a woman with thinning hair, do you find yourself comparing the thick luxurious locks you had in old photos with what you have now? What has happened? As women with thinning hair, we can think of our lives in two stages: “before” and “after” hair loss. “Before” were those (now) seemingly blissful days when our concerns were more about making our hair do what we wanted it to, and the “after” was the horrible realization of our new situation. We of course held strongly to the hopes that “no one would notice” and “it would eventually grow back.”
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