Help for Hair
Firstly, menopause doesn’t make your hair go grey or fall out. Greying, thinning hair is a normal part of aging and any number of ‘menopause therapies’ won’t give you back the colour and the texture you once had.
Your hair is now behaving completely differently. It fades away on your head and grows where you don’t want it. It’s common enough to find extra hairs growing on your upper lip and chin, your legs and even on your chest during or after menopause. Remove it by plucking, waxing or shaving if it disturbs you. (This may cause the hairs to grow more thickly and coarsely however)
Sick of the stray hairs on your chin? Bleach them with lemon juice.
There must be millions of women from the 1960s in various stages of menopause who have rarely, or never, removed body hair. . But times change, and our bodies change, and no one is going to cry ‘anti-feminist’ if we shave. Seriously, does anyone else besides yourself really care?
Please note - if you experience a sudden drastic growth in hair, please consult your health care provider to eliminate any other physical causes.
Now we come to the stress of our other hair changes. When you think of someone balding, you think of a man, but we lose our hair too. When hair loss occurs it’s certainly stressful and gives our ever-diminishing body image satisfaction a hefty punch. Figures show that roughly half of all women experience some hair loss during their menopausal years, and two-thirds of post-menopausal women deal with thinning hair or bald spots.
Bald spots? Help! We rarely become bald in the true sense, but as we get older we experience overall thinning and a reduction in hair shaft diameter, a pattern that starts at around age 40.
As we reach our midlife years, low thyroid function, common among menopausal women, causes changes in our hair. There are many other causes like physical or emotional stress, medications, scalp or dermatological issues and heredity.
Any time you experience sudden hair loss, you have to take into account those events which took place up to three months before. Did you start taking medication then? Did you experience divorce, or another significant event? Did you suffer a loss, like the death of a loved one?
Please note - If you suddenly develop a rapid drastic loss of hair, please consult your health care provider to eliminate any other causes.
We all know what balding men look like. They display the typical male pattern hair loss in a receding hairline and hair loss on top of the head. It’s typically genetic. But there’s also a genetic female-pattern hair loss which can first appear in our late twenties.
Female-pattern baldness starts with the replacement hairs becoming progressively finer and shorter, usually where the hair is parted. Did you wear a ponytail as a child? You can often find thinner groups of almost transparent hairs at the temples where your hair has been constantly scraped back and pulled up tightly. But our hair loss is far less prominent than it is in men. And we don’t suddenly develop a receding hairline
What can you do ?
- Remember to be gentle. Don’t tug, pull at, back-comb or even use a comb on your hair. Use a soft brush from now on
- Put your blowdryer away and style your hair with your fingers
- Cut down the number of times you wash your hair.
- Alternate your shampoos
- Don’t bleach or perm your hair at home and avoid harsh ingredients of blonding creams and perms. if you must use these on your hair, go to the hairdresser for professional application A colour is usually more gentle
- Softly massage your scalp for a few minutes once a day. Try using rosemary essential oil in the massage, it’s beneficial to hair and also looks, feels and smells lovely.
- If you haven’t already augmented your diet with fish oil, at least get some to improve your hair.
Susun Weed recommends several essential oils which improve hair growth and reduce hair loss. Lavender oil, lemon oil, thyme oil, sage oil or carrot seed oil. You can mix 10-20 drops of any of these into four ounces of cold-pressed olive oil or jojoba oil
