Top 6 Reasons For Your Hair Loss

Each day, we shed about 100 hairs from our head. Find out why women lose hairand what we can do about it.

- Sarah Marinos

Your scalp has around 100,000 hair follicles and every three years, each of those follicles goes through a cycle of hair growth, with the hair resting and falling out, followed by growth of new hair. However, sometimes that pattern is disturbed and either the hair does not grow or it becomes finer, so women get thinning hair, hair loss and patches of baldness.

Just over half of women suffer some hair loss and thinning as they age. In most cases it is not noticeable, but for some of us, the loss can be more obvious and distressing.

“About 50 per cent of women in their 40s suffer some thinning. And now women are experiencing this problem in their 20s and 30s.” says trichologist David Salinger.

From sugar overload to diabetes and crash dieting, we look at some of the reasons behind female hair loss and thinning, and find out what can help.

THE SUGAR EFFECT

“The amount of sugar in our diets has an effect. Hidden sugars are part of the problem,” says David. Sugar causes inflammation and leads to white blood cells attacking the cells that produce hair. Finnish studies found that women with high sugar diets and insulin resistance had a higher risk of hair loss.

“When a woman has a normal level of insulin, that facilitates the conversion of testosterone back to oestrogen,” explains trichologist Anthony Pearce.

Female hormones promote hair growth while male hormones, like testosterone, can aggravate hair loss and thinning.