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Hair Loss can Affect Women Far More than Men (Contd)
Health
Healthy diet, enough time of sleep, regular exercise, and not worrying too much can prevent hair loss, whereas problems such as lupus, thyroid condition, and diabetes can cause hair loss. Eating habits vary from healthy eating habits on one end of the scale, to serious eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia on the other end. While hair loss is more harmful to the psyche than anything else, some of the causes of baldness may represent serious health problems.
Certainly a good healthy diet will tend to reduce hair loss and it is important to keep your health good, but hair loss can affect the emotional health of both men and particularly women and it can be a rather glib statement to tell people not to worry about their looks. Coping with hair loss depends a lot on your attitude and the support of your friends and family.
Hormones
The thyroid gland is in the front of the lower neck and makes important hormones that keep the body healthy. Hormones called androgens, commonly testosterone, can cause hair follicles to shrink, causing thinning of hair or eventual hair loss. In pregnancy, hormone levels increase in the early stages of pregnancy and cause the hair growth cycle to slow down.
Doctors refer to common baldness as "androegentic alopecia" which implies that a combination of hormones and heredity (genetics) is needed to develop the condition. The hormone imbalance that occurs in polycystic ovary syndrome can cause hair loss in teenage girls as well as in adult women.
Female-pattern androegenetic alopecia is a common condition, its treatment includes minoxidil 2% and antiandrogens (cyproterone acetate) in case of obvious hyperandrogenism; finasteride, not currently approved for women, is however being tested in postmenopausal women.
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