Women’s Baldness
“I used to have such a full head of hair. It’s thinned out so much my husband’s starting to notice.”
“Look at these fingernails! They won’t grow, they crack, they split, and they peel and layer back. Gelatin and calcium don’t help.”
“I feel like a television commercial: dull, lifeless hair. It’s breaking a lot more than it used to”
“I am only 57 and my hairs so thin on top you can see wide open spaces each hair. I don’t want to be a bald granny!”
These are the miserable dialogues of various women suffering from various problems, we know that fingernails and hair are common problem areas, there’s not much “priority research” being done. Trying to find answers to hair and fingernail problems isn’t always easy.
What do you do when the bottles of “hair vitamins” don’t work, and your skin specialist says you don’t really have a problem, although you know better? You say you’ve taken enough calcium to turn to store, but your nails are as bad as ever? Nail hardener, or silk or acrylic nails may cover up the problem, but wouldn’t it be nicer, not to mention healthier, to grow your own?
What follows may give you further clues. Some items may be self help, but others require some assistance from a nutritionally oriented doctor. Sorry, men, but there are no answers here for hereditary male pattern baldness. When something found for bald men that’s nonsurgical, inexpensive, and free of possible long-term side effects about, if this cause very few men ever say anything to doctors about fingernails or hair, even when there’s an obvious problem, whether that’s due to hormones or cultural conditioning.
One of the most common causes of excess hair loss and cracking, splitting, or chipping fingernails is a malfunctioning stomach. When our stomachs don’t make enough acid and pepsin, a major protein digesting enzyme, a wide variety of nutrients are “lost.” With such a variety of nutrients impaired by a malfunctioning stomach, it’s not a surprise that something has to give and the hair and nails, being presumably less essential to health, are often the first to go.
How to know if your hair or nail difficulty may be due to an unsuspected stomach problem? It’s best to have your nutritionally oriented doctor’s help on this one. Symptoms are frequently subtle, and self-treatment has occasionally resulted in a visit to the emergency room. If present, symptoms may include upper abdominal bloating and gas, mostly after meals. Constipation is common, but a few people have diarrhea instead. Heartburn can occur.
“My hair got really thin during my last pregnancy. It has never come back!”
“About six months after the baby was born, I started noticing lots more hair in the tub and sink!”
“Could it be birth control pills?”
“What about the estrogen I’ve been taking?”
These are the other four problems told by the housewives, we suggest that if you’ve lost hair during or after pregnancy or while taking hormones think of foliate first. Frequently, extra foliate and a few months time are all that are necessary to reverse hormonally related hair loss.
Though hormones are often related a foliate deficiency, foliate-deficiency hair loss can occur without any apparent hormonal association, simply through poor eating habits.
Foliate is said to be nontoxic, but recent research indicates that the foliate and zinc probably interfere with each other’s absorption – another point to check with your doctor if you’re planning to take either one for any length of time.
An underactive thyroid can be the cause of both hair loss and weak nails. Unfortunately, routine thyroid blood tests do not always uncover a weak thyroid. As more sophisticated thyroid function tests have become available, doctors are discovering that many individuals previously labeled “normal” are hypothyroid after all.
Major drug companies are finally discovering essential fatty acids may help prevent heart attacks, but it may be another 50 years before they get around to noticing that healthy hair and nails need them too.
“Dull” and “lifeless” are two adjectives that should send you in search of a bottle of linseed oil, not a bottle of the latest miracle shampoo. Don’t dump it on your head; swallow about one tablespoon daily and see what happens in a few weeks. Get a small bottle to minimize rancidity problems.
Linseed oil contain both omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids. Fish oil contains the omega-3 type, and almost all other vegetable oils contain only omega-6. Human metabolism requires a balance of both types, making linseed the “preferred” supplemental oil for human use. (If you can’t stand the taste, it’s also sold in capsules.)
Biotin
Year ago, someone noticed that animals given biotin grew stronger hooves. Human nails respond to biotin often enough that it has become a standard part of “hair and nails” supplement formulas. Used alone, one or two mg. daily is usually sufficient. Biotin is generally considered nontoxic.
Very specialized topical biotin preparations are in use at male baldness clinics. At present, most of these clinics are quite expensive, and the biotin preparations are not available for general sale.
The best food sources of biotin include liver, kidney, egg, yolk, haddock, halibut, cod, salmon, and tuna. Vegetable generally contain much less.
Many of us have observed that taking calcium seems to improve nail quality. When trying calcium, it’s usually wisest to balance it with magnesium; calcium in a “background” of magnesium plus a multiple mineral is even better. Remember that calcium and other minerals don’t absorb well unless the stomach is making sufficient hydrochloric acid and that as we grow older more and more of us have under acidity problems. Fortunately more absorbable forms of calcium and other minerals are starting to appear in nutrition stores.
For a few of us, too much zinc and too little copper can result in hair loss. Although this situation isn’t common, it should be checked for when the more usual answers aren’t working.
Balding grannies
With advancing age and granny hood, some women’s hair becomes “quite thin on top.” When this is part of an over-the-whole-body hair loss, the problem is often hormonal. The “missing hormones” for hair are not estrogens, but rather androgens, the male-type hormones.
Women and men have both estrogens and androgens. Women have considerable estrogen and comparatively little androgen; for men, the balance is opposite.
Androgens are principally responsible for stimulating hair growth in both sexes. As women have only comparative traces of testosterone, no beards grow, but as is obvious from other body hair, women’s bodies have larger quantities of other non-testosterone androgens.
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