There can be many different reasons why a woman’s hair starts falling out. Yet although some women do suffer from hair loss, it is not to the extent that men do. In this article, we will take a look at one such reason that causes hair loss in women and the most common ones.
Yet even though we still think that hair loss is primarily a male problem, some women today are likely to suffer from severe forms of hair loss. In fact, according to the American Academy of Dermatology, approximately 30 million women in the United States alone suffer from some form of hair loss.
Some women’s hair loss is due to their genetics. All women have hormones called androgens in their bodies, but for some, these can actually interfere with the way their hair normally grows. The main hormone of this group, which causes such a problem, is testosterone.
Normally it sits quite happily in the female body but unfortunately due to genetic makeup of some women it gets converted into DHT. Now DHT or Dihydrotestosterone binds to the receptors found within your hair follicles and prevents messages from reaching the hair follicles that tell it to grow. Hence, this in turn inhibits normal growth and re-growth and this is when women start to notice that they are losing more hair than usual.
Normally, this build up of DHT on the hair follicles takes some time so a woman will only see a gradual increase in her hair loss. The build-up also causes the hair follicles to shrink and therefore the natural growth pattern in a person begins to change. Often when this happens, a woman is likely to notice that they are starting to suffer from female pattern baldness or androgenetic alopecia if you want to use its medical name.
Even though the cause of this form of baldness in women is the same as in men, the pattern of baldness is different. With females their baldness will be somewhat diffuse and usually in the form of a thinning of the hair on the top of the scalp. Men on the other hand will usually start losing it completely from specific areas of the head, namely at the crown or around or behind the temple.
The other main difference between the female version of pattern baldness and the male version is that men usually start suffering from it when they are older. However, for women they can suffer from this type of hair loss at any stage of their life. In some cases it may well be that the damage was caused by some other underlying medical condition.
Apart from the above, there are other reasons why a woman may suffer from it. Certainly, when it comes to deciding what is causing hair loss in a particular woman it may come down to many different factors. With some women, the cause may be a traumatic event in their lives, while for others it may be due to some sort of medical condition or treatment.
Source by Jason L Smith
