One of my patients wanted me to look at her cholesterol results.

Her doctor told her they were concerning.

But I ended up finding something that was much more concerning to me, and to her.

In examining her, I parted her hair to look at her scalp. I saw a problem I see much more often than I used to. She had very thin, sparse hair with a bald scalp that would remind you of an elder male.

She was embarrassed to admit it, but she had been using hair spray and products that are designed to disguise balding in men – like that paint stuff – for years. And she never thought there was anything she could do about it, so she never mentioned it to me.

I used to see this kind of thing rarely, but now I’m seeing it all the time.

What this does is cause a “feedback inhibition” in your hormone system. It causes you to produce less follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH). They normally stimulate the ovaries to produce both estrogen and progesterone.

Your estrogen is going to be fine, but that decreased production of FSH and LH cause a decrease in progesterone. It has no dietary source, so it then becomes very low.

Here’s where the problems for your hair begin.

Progesterone’s normal role is to give you your sexual features like an hourglass figure, but it also binds to the same receptors as testosterone. It normally blocks the effect of testosterone so it won’t cause masculinization.

When you don’t have progesterone, the testosterone can take its place. So what we have today is a whole generation of women who are getting unwanted facial hair, and they’re getting hair loss in a male pattern from the effect of testosterone, which turns into the hair-blocking hormone DHT.

Normally a woman doesn’t have much DHT because it’s blocked by the progesterone. But with all the estrogen women are getting, progesterone plummets and you have hair loss.

The solution is to stimulate your scalp for healthy blood flow, and block the bad guy that may keep your hair from growing.

The bad guy is DHT (dihydrotestosterone). As DHT forms in your body when you have too much estrogen, it collects in the sebum gland in the scalp and starts to attack your hair follicles. Your strands can shrink and eventually fall out.

So stopping DHT is one effective way to help your hair. But it’s only the first part of hair health. There are also a few other little-known but direct and dynamic ways to get shiny hair that has luster and thickness. You can use them to:

• Stimulate your scalp – Brush your hair with a natural bristle brush gently to simulate your scalp.
  
  
• Enhance thickness – You might think of ginseng as just a feel-good herb, and it is. But when you use it in your hair, it also increases scalp stimulation in a way that gives you healthy hair depth and keeps each strand thick and strong.¹
  
  
• Keep a full mane – Testing your overall hormone levels and correcting imbalances is a start.  This takes time and most likely requires life style changes too.
  
  
• Rescue your hair – Good digestion of proteins, proper protein intake and here's the key, proper absorption are required.  So proper testing for gust issues may be warranted.  Proteins (aka amino acids) are the building blocks of hair structure, so it’s essential to feed your hair with the ones that help the most.  A good hair stylist may be able to recommend a quality product for your hair.
  
• 
  
• Deliver the nutrients – B-vitamins are essential to grow healthy hair and nails, but it’s not easy to get enough from food. Two in particular, biotin and niacinimide, get used up growing and building healthy hair, so it’s important to replace them each day. We can test for these deficiencies and help to correct imbalances.
  
  
• Improve hair growth – B-vitamins perform a dual function for your hair if you use zinc,  they team up to give hair follicles and your scalp with energy and strengthening. Without enough zinc, your hair shafts get weakened, causing hair breakage and very slow re-growth. They work together to decelerate hair loss and improve hair growth.  How can we know?  Test for nutritional deficiencies, using specialized testing. 
  
  
• Promote that shine – I don’t recommend eating soy as many folks have food allergies and or eat genetically modified soy, but it turns out to have great benefit for your hair. (And yes we can test for soy sensitiivites too) Hydrolyzed soy protein can give you shinier, thicker hair that stays moisturized. Again seek out  recommendations from a good hair stylist.

Unfortunately, pattern hair loss is very severe in the women I see. To where if I part the hair, I see bare scalp.

Then they tend to use a lot of cosmetic things to try to hide it...