Dr. Mohit Malik

For women, hair are not just fibres, but an expression of beauty, style, and personality. Losing your hair can really freak you out. Whether it's short-term or long-term, women lose hair the same way men do. It might thin all over, or your centre part could get wider and wider.

How Does Hair Grow?
Your scalp has about 1,00,000 hair. Each one has its own life cycle. A follicle produces a single hair that grows at a rate of half an inch per month. It stays for 2 to 6 years, then stops for about a month. When the next cycle starts up, that hair falls out. At any given time, most of your hair are in the growth phase.

How Much Hair Loss Is Normal?
Most people shed about 50-100 hair every day. But if it starts to fall out in clumps or if you notice it getting thinner over time, see a Dermato-Trichologist.

Major Hair Loss Triggers in women:

1. Thyroid Problems: If the thyroid makes too much or too little thyroid hormone, you may develop progressive thinning of hair all over the scalp.
2. PCOS: In polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), your body makes more male hormones, or androgen, than it should. This can cause the extra hair on your face and body while the hair on your head thins out.
3. Childbirth: Hair seems fuller during pregnancy because high hormone levels keep resting hairs from falling out. But after the baby comes, things go back to normal and those strands will fall out quickly. You could lose a lot of hair at once.
4. The Pill: The hormones that suppress ovulation can also thin out your hair. You can also lose hair when you stop taking the pill.
5. Medicines: Drugs like blood thinners, methotrexate, cholesterol lowering medications, chemotherapeutic agents, anti-depressants etc. can cause hair loss and thinning.
6. Crash Diets: You may lose more than weight with a fad diet. And if you lose weight more rapidly, you might also lose hair in a couple of months.
7. Deficiency: A longstanding deficiency of Iron, Folic acid, and other nutrients can also trigger off hair loss and cause hair thinning.
8. Tight Hairstyles: Wearing tight ponytails can irritate your scalp and cause hair to fall out. Long-term use of these styles can scar your scalp and lead to permanent hair loss.
9. Cancer Treatment: Chemo and radiation therapy, can take a toll on your hair. In their quest to kill cancer cells, both can harm hair follicles and trigger dramatic hair loss.
10. Extreme Stress e.g. a serious illness, major surgery, trauma involving blood loss, severe emotional disturbance etc., can cause you to suddenly shed huge amounts of hair.

Hope this gives you a fair idea about the possible reasons for losing your lovely hair. The good news is, there's often a way to fix it. If you wish to discuss about any specific problem, you can consult a Dermatologist.