Your hair can offer clues about your health. Up to 60 percent of women may experience hair loss at some point or another. One of the focal points of my practice is to help women reverse hypothyroidism, autoimmune issues, and hormone imbalance. Hair loss or thinning hair often accompanies these imbalances, so I am frequently offering tips on how to reverse it and encourage new hair growth. By addressing hormones, diet and lifestyle, you can stop the shedding!
Is this you?
- Noticing clumps of hair coming out in the shower
- Increased shedding
- Thinning hair around hairline
- Easier to see scalp
- Reduction in hair volume
- Changes in hair texture (more coarse, brittle)
Many women spend hundreds of dollars on magic potions to apply topically, but unless you address the underlying imbalance, you’re wasting your money. These conditions can contribute to hair loss:
- hypothyroidism/Hashimoto’s
- hyperthyroidism (contributes to fine hair)
- low iron levels, low B12
- high or low estrogen or low progesterone levels, or dropping hormone levels associated with menopause
- high testosterone
- stressors such as sudden weight loss, post-pregnancy (a happy stress, but a stress nonetheless), surgery or extreme stress
- certain medications: anti-depressants, beta-blockers, or NSAID pain relievers
- PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome)
- scalp conditions, alopecia
- chemical treatments or harsh styling
- chemotherapy
Causes
Hormones
The most common causes of hair loss I see in my practice are due to hypothyroid, hormone imbalance, and PCOS. The good news is that these conditions are completely reversible over time with proper nutrition and a hormone balancing protocol. The body depends on a normal functioning thyroid gland for all metabolic functions, including hair growth and skin regeneration. If the thyroid falters, the body slows down, and weight gain, constipation, fatigue, and lack of hair growth–or hair loss– can result. Dropping female hormone levels (estrogen and progesterone) may cause hair loss, as is the case after menopause in some women, or an increase in androgenic hormones (testosterone or high DHEA) can also cause hair loss. This is typically what happens with PCOS.
Post-pregnancy is another time when hair can start falling out. Typically the thinning will slow and resolve on its own, but make sure and use the natural products I recommend below (especially important for pregnancy and nursing so you don’t introduce chemicals into your body and into fetal tissue or breast milk!). If you continue to experience hair loss after several months, coupled with fatigue and weight gain, have your thyroid checked. Pregnancy can trigger hypothyroid or Hashimoto’s autoimmune hypothyroidism.
Nutrient Deficiencies
Low iron (ferritin) levels or a deficiency in the B vitamins can contribute to hair loss or brittle, breaking hair. It’s easy to get iron levels tested, but it’s also important to determine what’s causing the deficiency. Are you vegetarian/vegan and not getting the iron and B vitamins you need? It’s difficult to find absorbable forms of iron in a vegetarian diet, and B vitamins are richest in animal foods and eggs. Do you have inflammation in the gut that’s preventing you from absorbing nutrients from your food? Inflammation in the GI tract can affect probiotic bacteria levels which can adversely affect B12 synthesis. Are you lacking in high quality protein and the right fats? Make sure you’re getting a variety of proteins such as wild fish, grass fed beef, eggs and lamb, for example, and essential fatty acids from fermented cod liver oil, wild salmon and grass fed beef, for example. These foods are essential for balanced hormones, too.
Other Conditions
Specific autoimmune conditions or severa candida overgrowth can cause hair loss. If you have a diagnosis, you can work with a practitioner to determine how to address the condition and determine the best diet to support hair growth.
Now let’s look at some solutions.
Diet
What you eat matters! As I mentioned above, if you have vitamin and mineral deficiencies because of a poor diet, the health of your skin, hair, and nails will suffer.
- Get at least 15 grams of protein from organic animal sources at each meal.
- Drink Bone Broth for the collagen and gelatin– it’s great for skin and hair!
- Plenty of leafy and starchy veggies will provide minerals.
- You can supplement with floradix,Excellent iron supplment or take a B-complex to boost those levels.
- Try gelatin from grass fed cows in smoothies.
- Get plenty of probiotic foods, such as fermented raw kraut, to boost the good bacteria in your gut so that you’ll digest better and absorb all the nutrients from your food. You can try a probiotic supplement, too.
- I also recommend taking essential fatty acids. You can get them from fermented cod liver oil or fish oil. I only recommend Green Pastures or Nordic Naturals. Adding a biotin supplement can help, too. Other important nutrients are calcium, magnesium, copper and zinc.
I also often recommend Comedix, which can help boost hair growth while you’re addressing the root cause.
It pays to address any digestive issues and fix your gut, because you aren’t only what you eat, but more accurately, what you absorb. If you’re not absorbing all the nutrients from your food because your gut is inflamed or leaky, deficiencies develop.
Help for Hormones
If you suspect hormone balance is the issue, you can do saliva testing to determine if your hormones are out of whack. I offer this in my practice. Once I have the results, I can design a hormone balancing protocol and adjust your diet to support healthy adrenal and female hormones. The saliva testing also checks DHEA and cortisol levels, so if stress is a factor (isn’t it always?), we can rebalance cortisol, too. You can do thyroid testing through your doctor or order testing yourself through Direct Labs. This is a good route if you have trouble requesting the right blood tests from your doctor. See the resource section below for more on hypothyroid issues.
Your Products Matter
Hair loss can result from harsh chemical treatments and styling treatments. Time to detox your cosmetics and shampoos and go au naturel. Which is a good thing anyway, because all those chemicals can build up in your body and cause endocrine disruption and infertility. You can make your own shampoo!You can also use apple cider vinegar as a rinse once weekly to remove build up which can slow hair growth. Also use a good hair mask weekly. I like a mash of avocado, olive oil and egg yolk.
I also really like the Genuine African formulas line of shampoos and conditioners. Check out their “let it grow” formulas. I use the shampoo and conditioner and Spray tonic on my hair every night.
Resources
Supplements I recommend for hair loss/encouraging hair growth:
- Floradix for Iron (important: do NOT take if you have sufficient iron levels. Get tested!)
- Cosmedix
- B-Complex
- Fermented Cod liver oil or Nordic Naturals Fish oils
- Biotin
- Probiotics for a healthy gut
- Gelatin from grass fed cow
*** All this awesome information i got from: http://www.maryvancenc.com/2013/08/solutions-for-hair-loss-in-women/
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