Growing Hair on My Face and Losing Hair on My Head [How Do You Solve Your Hair Problems?]

babybangs

See? We’re so obsessed with thick, luscious locks that even adorably bald babies are supposed to put a mop on their top to prove they’re a girl!

Big accomplishment today: Remember the age-old gym debate of camel toe versus muffin top? You know, when you can’t decide whether to hike your ill-fitting workout pants up and give yourself wicked camel toe or tug them down and roll out your muffin top? Well, I have settled the debate once and for all by wearing an outfit today that managed to do both, thanks to yanking my capris up into dromedary territory and then topping them with a tennis skirt that rode low into bakersville! I win again!

That wasn’t my only dubious accomplishment for the day, however.

“Oh hey, just a sec. Let me get that for you…” My husband leaned in to brush something off the side of my jaw for me. Suddenly feeling a sharp pain, I yelped as he exclaimed, “What the?! It’s attached!”

The “it” was a chin (lower back jaw actually) hair long enough that I could allllmost get it into my ponytail. Yep.

Honestly it doesn’t bother so much that I have a chin hair – I just yanked that sucker out while my husband hid in horror – but what freaks me out is how it got so long without me noticing it! But before I could get really worked up about it, I came across this article on XOJane “I’m a Bearded Lady and It Controls My Life” by Britta Gregor. The author, for no apparent medical reason (she checked!), grows an abundance of facial hair. So much so that she has had to come up with an elaborate grooming routine that involves shaving her face and then covering the visible follicles with heavy makeup – something that she sometimes has to repeat several times a day.

“First, I wet my face and apply Bath and Body Works Shave the Day to the areas of unwanted hair. For a long time I shaved using a light moisturizer, but I find that the shea butter in Shave the Day leaves my face soft without clogging up my pores. The hair on my face grows in different directions, so it takes at least 15 minutes just to get the hair removed.  The Bic Soleil is the only razor I’ve ever found that gives me a close enough shave without cutting up my face. Still, my chin never feels totally smooth. If I try to go gangbusters on it, the skin gets red, chapped, and sore, kind of like a burn.

Hair removal is only the first battle. I’m left with dark spots from the hair follicles, which are very visible on either side of my chin. First I moisturize my entire face and use a makeup primer. I apply a thick coat of Cover Girl concealer stick over the dark areas and cover my entire face in a liquid foundation slightly lighter than my skin tone. I apply a second coat of concealer, put on more foundation over the darkest parts of my face, and then use loose powder to keep everything in place.

At this point you can only see the dark patches if you’re really looking for them. Unfortunately, after about four hours, the hair has grown long enough to be visible through the makeup. (5 o’clock shadow my ass. I have a 1 o’clock shadow.) It’s subtle, but still annoying, and it makes me paranoid that someone will notice. I either shave again mid-day and completely reapply my makeup, or if I know that I’m going to be able to stay in dimly lit spaces, I just power through and tell myself that people will just think I have really uneven skin.”

Yeah that makes a rogue jaw hair seem pretty inconsequential, even if it is long enough to braid. First, I want to commend Gregor for talking about something that affects a lot of women and yet is hardly ever talked about. Female facial hair is still seen as unattractive at best and unfeminine or gross at worst – despite the fact that its prevalence makes it a pretty normal occurrence. I daresay I have very few friends who don’t have to wax or use a depilatory cream or laser some part of their face.

And speaking of traits deemed “unfeminine” or “gross’, the issue of female pattern hair loss seems to fall in the same silent category even though it turns out that fully 65% (!!) of us girls will experience it in our lifetimes. Granted most of the baldness seems to happen in later years but there are many of us for whom it starts earlier. I am 35 and I’ve been losing copious amounts of hair ever since Jelly Bean was born three years ago.

At first I wasn’t sure if I was just losing the hair I’d gained during pregnancy (it’s true – pregnancy really does give you a glorious mane!) but eventually I realized that it just wasn’t stopping. I tried basic stuff like deep conditioning, root cleansing, not sleeping with a ponytail and making sure to never comb my hair wet but it didn’t help. Then I got more proactive and, as you may recall, got tape-in hair extensions. That was one of the strangest moments of my adult life, honestly. I literally glue-gunned strangers’ dead hair to my head. But my purpose wasn’t to have those ridiculous Hollywood Rapunzel locks that are so en vogue right now. I just wanted to look like myself again.

And they worked! My hair looked gorgeous – I don’t think I’ve ever had so many compliments! Unfortunately not only could I not do normal things like run my fingers through my hair or let Jelly Bean play Giant Barbie Head on me but the extensions made my hair fall out even faster, thanks to “tension alopecia” or the weight of the extension putting too much stress on my natural hair. I remember one day over a year ago when I took the extensions out to give my scalp a good scrubbing and move them back up closer to my scalp. Huge chunks of my own hair came out with the extensions and when I saw what little hair I had left I sat on the edge of the bathtub and sobbed.

In desperation I called a hair dresser friend who came to my rescue and did what she could to trim my wisps into a better shape. She also advised me to never wear hair extensions like that again. She gave me some special product called Nioxin that’s a shampoo, conditioner and mousse designed to lessen hair fallout. After moving up the levels to #4, I think I can say that it works. It’s not a miracle cure but I do think it’s helping. (Note: Whenever I tell friends about this stuff, they immediately say they want some because who doesn’t want fuller hair? But let me reiterate, it won’t make your hair thicker or grow faster or add body. All it does it help it to stop falling out as much.)

Now I kind of feel stuck. My hair is longish but it doesn’t grow. I’m not bald by any means. It’s not noticeably thin but that’s only because my super secret identity is Poodle Girl. I’m really really good at “fluffing” using backcoming, volumizing sprays, thickening sprays, style tricks, the works*. I spend a lot of time styling it to camouflage the thinness but you can still see a lot of scalp peeking through if you’re looking for it.

But the question now is what do I do about it??

Should I just embrace it and start a wig collection? I’m seriously tempted to put the extensions back in just so I’ll temporarily stop worrying so much. But I won’t. Because the last thing I want to do is make my problem worse. I probably should go to a dermatologist who could look at my scalp follicles and tell me if I actually have female pattern baldness or if something else is happening. The hard thing about hair loss is that because it can have so many causes – stress, hormone imbalance, vitamin deficiency, illness, genetics, a Manic Panic addiction – it also has that many potential “fixes.”

hair1

I miss my Manic Panic days, not gonna lie. How cool is this??

My problem is compounded by the fact that no one talks about this. At my age the majority of my friends are still complaining about how their thick hair gives them headaches in ponytails or how they always have to have their hair thinned at the salon. If anything comes up, it’s gray hairs (which thankfully I have none of yet). I can only think of one other girl I know who has obviously thinning hair and she not only refuses to discuss it but I think she might actually be in denial bordering on delusion.

I keep trying to tell myself that my hair shouldn’t matter so much to me. But our society puts a lot of emphasis on female hair as part of the standard of beauty and I’ll admit that I’ve internalized a lot of that. Our hair is one of the first things people notice about us and the color, cut and length can be a social commentary without you ever opening your mouth. Just ask Miley. She says her new ‘do literally changed the course of her life. From the mouth of (pop) babes…

Last weird hair confession: I also have hair on my big toes. I shave it. If I don’t it looks like I’m being attacked by tarantulas with a foot fetish. Or like I’m going to a hobbit convention.

So let’s talk weird body hair! Do you have hair growing places that you wish you didn’t? Can you relate to Britta Gregor with her face shaving or me with my hair losing? Any advice or recommendations for me??

*If you’re looking for product recs, I’ve tried them ALL. And in my opinion, the best ones are from the Tresemme “collagen” volume line. I use their root booster spray every day and I swear it’s miraculous. Plus it’s cheap and I swear this $4 bottle works better than the $30 version I bought at the salon. If I’m looking for more volume I’ll add “dust in” mattifying powder. The two together are amazing! Them’s my tricks.

34 Comments

  1. I have hair on my big toes too. Shave them as well.

    I have alopecia area and have spent a lot of time hiding bald spots. Thankfully the rest of my hair is fairly thick, but I would be terrified someone would see my bald patch.

    Why was I so worried? No one knows. No one is going to think less of me if I have a bald spot on my head, they might be curious, but I don’t think it would lessen my standing in anyone’s eyes. But I would cry at night over my lack of hair.

    I haven’t had an outbreak in years, but I still remember what it feels like. I am grateful for my hair, which really is thick, in a way many aren’t.

  2. Thank you for writing this! I have hairy hobit feet, thre patches of black hair on my chin that I have to monitor at all times because one second I’m smooth and clear and 2 hours later I have a soul patch. I’m also now suffering hair loss. If it weren’t for my curly hair I would be wearing wigs already. I’ve been ok with everything but losing the hair on my head. I know wish that men would stare at my boobs instead of at my hairline (which they do, and I can’t blame them because my scalp glows if I’m standing directly under a light). It has been a hard but good lesson for me on self love. I love ME not my hair. I am worth loving, not my hair. That said I am trying to do everything I can naturally first (exercise, sunlight, vitamin d and calcium from vitamins and food, sleep more, and eat less sugar). If, after a year of being totally faithful to these things (and I’m still working on the exercise and sugar parts) I get worse then I will start looking at other options (medications, wigs, saving for hair plugs, shaving it all off and rocking the bald look).

  3. I started losing my hair a while back. It got to the point I was afraid to brush it. My hairdresser asked me what had happened 3 months before it started. I was extremely stressed at work. Once I stopped stressing so much it’s grown back but really slowly. It’s still thinner than it used to be but at least it’s not falling out in clumps.

    Because yours started after Jellybean was born I’m wondering if it’s hormonal ? Maybe a trip to the doctors to get your levels checked ?

    I also have those unsightly hairs under my chin (upper neck). I epilate regularly. That seems to slow them down 🙂

  4. Not having any hair loss problems, yet…but I am definitely of the hairier sort on the rest of my body. [YAY FOR BEING A MAMMAL!!!!]

    Toes? Yep.
    Face? Yep. Thankfully, that’s mostly a soft, light layer – but I also have THAT PATCH on my chin. My questions about this include: Why right there? Why only on one side? How do they grow so fast? And, most importantly: Why do they grow faster when I’m on an airplane??? (I swear.)

    I guess I could feel more justified with all this hair if I lived in a cold place. But I live in the tropics, and it’s totally superfluous….

  5. The only hair issue I’ve got going on this year is that about a month ago I decided to let my hair go grey, after dying it “Medium Golden Brown” for the past 20 years. Quite an experiment, since I have no clue how grey it actually is.
    But volume-wise, no problem, I’ve got thick hair. For the most part, it stays where it’s supposed to, although I also get the occasional 2-inch long chin hair that makes me wonder WHY DIDN’T ANYBODY TELL ME ABOUT THAT?!

  6. Oh yes. I’ve been dealing with the hair wars for years. Laser was super expensive but I’m so glad I did it. I actually need to go back since it has been a few years, but it moved me from “yeti” into “typical middle aged mom” territory. I’m “black Irish” meaning super-pale skin and super-dark hair so laser was sort of designed for me.

    That said, please consider getting your thyroid checked, or if has been checked, re-checked, or at least ask your doc what the number was. If it was greater than 4, or if you’re also experiencing fatigue, feeling cold all the time, dry skin, depression/anxiety, weight struggles (yeah, well), and brain fog (who can tell with kids), make an appointment with an endocrinologist. Lots of docs will get what they see as “borderline” results and not do anything, but I had two miscarriages with “borderline” thyroid (7, then 4 with treatment) and have learned over years that I need to be under 2 to feel normal. The fact that this started post-partum is kind of a red flag for autoimmune thyroiditis, and it’s totally hit or miss whether docs will catch it or not, even with the test.

    Though I am hypothyroid (and PCOS, lucky me!), my hair issues do stay on the “too much” side, since the black Irish comes with a ridiculous amount of wavy (ok, frizzy) dark hair. So when it falls out, that just means the Roseanne Roseannadanna effect is slightly muted. Oh who am I kidding, it’s exactly the same, I just have hair on my shoulder pads.

    Thanks for talking about stuff no one talks about, and for all your wonderful experiments!

    • Mamacate — Thanks for your post. I was wondering if your endocrinologist was able to find out that you were more normal at a level 2 for thyroid or if you had to figure that out yourself. Also, what did you have to do to treat it? I have issues with thinning hair and excess facial hair, weight gain, fatigue, and many of the other symptoms, but my doc says my thyroid tests are normal and so is my testosterone (at least according to the doc). I am negative for PCOS. I also started seeing a naturopathic doctor in conjunction with my regular doc, and she has helped me with some changes in diet that have helped improve some things, but I still have issues with the hair and some of the other things. She has ruled out PCOS (my periods are regular and normal), but I am really wondering if there is something going on with my testosterone levels or thyroid. I just don’t want to spend all the money (thanks, high deductible insurance!) on an endocrinologist and get nowhere. Can you help?

      • Hi Nicole,

        Sorry, it was an endocrinologist. After two family members were diagnosed with hypothyroid, I’ve seen a lot of primary docs managing thyroid disease, and few of them are up to date on the latest research that shows that “high-normal” isn’t normal, which was the conventional wisdom 20 years ago. I know it’s expensive, but see if you can get in with an endo for at least one appointment. You could also try seeing a good GYN. Some get this, some don’t, but at least they have more of a chance of understanding the lady stuff. They also just need to listen to how you say you’re feeling. When you’re hyper, you’ll know it. It’s not fun.

        Also, I had normal periods, and it wasn’t until I underwent infertility treatment that my PCOS was diagnosed, based on response to ovarian stimulating hormones. You can have normal periods and still have PCOS.

        Check out Mary Shomon’s book and look around the internet for lists of docs who have a clue (PCOS forums, the thyroid about site, etc.). Maybe you can find a PCP to switch to.

        Good luck!

  7. I too had thinning hair, I worked with a nutritionist and it took 6 months or so-my hair has started to grow again and I am not losing as much. Just a thought.

  8. Mark down another one with hobbit feetses — I have to shave my toes and the tops of my feet or I look like the star of a Tolkien movie.

    The hair on my head isn’t an issue except for its texture and color (grey, in its natural state, which I refuse to embrace). As I’ve been going through perimenopause it’s gotten ridiculously curly and coarse, so I’ve had to completely change my styling routine from blowing it out and straightening it (for, like, an hour — insanity) to washing it with conditioner, glopping 50 pounds of gel into it, and just letting it air dry.

    I look like an idiot before bed, but I wake up and scrunch out the gel and it’s fabulous. Well, unless I slept on it weird.

    On unwanted facial hair, oh let me count the ways. I’m of Irish descent and it appears that my particular strain of that bloodline puts me firmly in the “bearded lady” category. I tried waxing, but it pulled off a layer of skin along with the hair which would eventually have led to scarring (ick). Tried bleach, but all that did was give me a blonde ‘stache. So finally, I got this little manual epilating spring thing (if you Google image “spring facial hair remover”, that’s what it is) and it works like a charm. It’s not FUN by any means, and at times I’ll twist, shriek, then twist again, but if I do it daily it’s not unbearable and it keeps me from having to deal with stubble or a blond mustache/ beard combo.

    And I never leave the house without tweezers, because those dratted mutant hairs *will* crop up, epilating or not.

  9. Again you are incredibly timely! I have noticed my hair thinning too! I can see my scalp all the way back to the top of my head. A few weeks ago I started using Nioxin and taking Biotin. A friend who has struggled with eating disorders and overexercising to the point that her hair was falling out recommended Biotin to me. I’ve only been taking it for about two weeks so its too soon to say if its working or not. I’ll keep you posted…..

  10. I don’t have hair loss yet, but I do have some unwanted facial hair. I have blonde hair and the facial hair is peach fuzz but about a year ago I decided I would try shaving it after doing some internet research. Best decision ever. I don’t have to pay to get it waxed and with waxing you had to let the hair grow anyway. So now I just shave about every other day while I’m in the shower and it takes about a minute and it is fine. I don’t know what the stigma with women and shaving facial hair is, but I think it’s dumb. What is the difference between waxing/using a cream and shaving? For some types of facial hair it might not work, but for me it is the perfect solution.

  11. The only problem I can see with shaving hairs on your chin is that the blunted ends are more noticeable when they start to grow back than if you had plucked or waxed them. Actually, there is a product you can get at the Asian stores in malls and such that reminds me of those springy doorstoppers with the white caps on each end. You twist it on your face and it pulls out the fuzzy hairs. Don’t know how well it would work on longer hairs, I think you might just have to pluck those with tweezers. That’s how I control the occasional wild jawline hair.

    I have hair on my big toes, too. and occasionally in the middle of my feet. When I remember to I just shave those suckers when I shave my legs. Not like anyone really looks too closely at my feet anyway.

  12. Props to you too for talking about this Charlotte! As someone who’s very much defined by their hair, I can only imagine this must be really hard. I think as others have said, seeing a doctor is really important. It sucks but there might be an option other than acceptance or extensions.

    I struggle with 2 issues, both super thick curly out of control hair (thinning made the ends of my hair really straggly and gross after a few months) and the occasional tiny bald patch from hair pulling (another issue people don’t talk about!) Mostly they’re hidden by the rest of my thick hair until I get it back under control but it’s a battle. But when I’m frustrated I try to think about my good friend who is transgender and the hair battle she went through transitioning to a woman. That puts it in perspective for me!

  13. I naturally have very thick, wavy hair, but there have periods of the years of struggling with an eating disorder that it definitely has thinned to an alarming degree. No mystery to the cause, there, though I guess. It may be vain, but when it gets to that point it’s usually a wake-up call for me that I need to get with the recovery program a bit better. So far I’ve been lucky and after 6 months-a year of taking better care of myself it usually looks as lush as ever.

  14. Unfrotunately, I lsot a lot of hair in my ED days, I thin the malnourishment was the #1 for me. Lsot more after giving birth, but I think it wasn’t “more” than before…the bulk was really earlier in life (I had thick long hair as a teenager! sigh). Now I cna’t grow it very long, for those reasons: thinner, so it looks stringy past a certain length… and I read about hte cons of extensions, so not going there… dying it seems to helo, makes it look thicker by “depositing” the color pigments…or it is jsut my imagination.

    Rogue hairs: yeah, what is up with tem apeparing in one day something like an inch long (and not there the day before!) My weirdest ones were on my tongue (yeah, and that hurt) and breast… I ahve a “re-curring” one under my chin in my “gobble-gobble” as I call it… perks of growing older!!!

  15. Thanks for a lot of great information!

  16. Insert fake name here

    I am a peach fuzz monster. One of the saddest (superficial) days of my lives was when I could finally afford laser hair removal and found out it doesn’t work on blond peach fuzz. I wax religiously and keep tweezers handy for anything rogue that appears. Both my sisters are almost hairless. But my five year old daughter has a little blond mustache. She doesn’t know it yet and I dread the day that she finds out. When she’s a teen we can be waxing buddies.

    My mom has really fine hair. She started using a hair loss shampoo for women (not sure what brand) (she swore me to secrecy even from my sisters)(lol. She probably swore them to secrecy too) and her hair came in much thicker. Unfortunately, it also came in thicker on her face. Thick enough she stopped using it, and cut her hair short instead.

    I’d say its hard being a woman, but men have a lot of body hair deemed unacceptable now too.

  17. Hobbit feet? Check
    Random, single facial that gets so long I could qualify as a hippy? Check. DESPITE the fact that I get my eyebrows, upper lip, chin, and throat threaded every 2 weeks AND spend some quality time with my pink Tweezerman in between.
    The need to shave more and more of the landscape of my body as the years go by? CHECK!
    More frequently? OH YES!
    Home waxing kits don’t stand a chance against my Irish/English/various Eastern European Countries of ancestry background. Depilitories? Ha! My body hair LAUGHS at them! HA HA!!!!!
    And now my beautiful 9 1/2 year-old daughter is starting to grow hair in places we thought we wouldn’t see any until she was at least 13. Poor kid.
    But the simple fact is, chicks are hairy. We don’t necessarily want to be, society tells us we SHOULDN’T be, but hair removal is a huge industry.
    I recently saw an ad for Vaniqua, a prescription cream that supposedly thins out unwanted hair. In the ad, a ridiculously attractive 40-something woman spies a (nonexistent) facial hair in the mirror (yes, ONE hair, apparently!) and is so ashamed, she cancels her evening plans. And not just regular, pedestrian shame, SLOW-MOTION SHAME!!!!!!!!
    I wanted to throw something at the TV. Because the pharmaceutical company that makes this chemically-laden, ultra-expensive, not-covered-by-insurance, will-most-likely-give-you-face-cancer crap is trying to tell us that if we grow hair, like normal human beings, we should be HUMILIATED!

    But I take heart in another incident: Recently, at a university food court, a guy took a picture of another woman, a young Sikh student who looked quite masculine because of her sideburns. he tweeted it, with a rather nasty comment. She, in turn, found out about it, and responded, very politely, that because of her religion, she is not supposed to cut or trim any of her hair. Ever. She went on to say that her spiritual beliefs were very dear to her, and that she understood that many in western society will treat her differently because of her appearance, but she has accepted that. To his credit, the guy who tweeted the photo made a sincere, heartfelt apology, castigated himself for judging her, and thanked her for teaching him something valuable that will stay with him forever.

    This morning I took my son to the pool, and hopped in for a bit myself. I haven’t shaved my legs or underarms in a few days, but you know what? No one died, no one fainted at the sight of female body hair, and the main concern I had was getting out of the pool once I jumped in ’cause it was FLIPPIN’ FREEZING!!!!!!!!

    Sorry for the long comment. I’m done now.

  18. Hairy feet? Check! Thinning hair? Check! (Although I’ve gotten a reprieve since becoming preggers with number 3, so that’s nice. I’m waiting until after he’s born, though, to watch it come out in clumps.) Also, this morning, I just yanked a rogue hair out from underneath my jawline that was long enough to qualify as braid-able. I also have a moustache. Like, a really, really dark, coarse moustache that I use a razor on every day. The best part about that is that now I’m getting melasma on my face from pregnancy, and it’s blotchy right on my upper lip in the shape of, you guessed it, a moustache. So I either have a real one, or a freckly one. Yippee!

  19. My entire adult life friends have openly envied how fast my hair grows and “wish my hair would grow like yours”. I assure them they really don’t want that as it grows that fast EVERYWHERE on my body and I have to shave and pluck daily. Spent years at the electrolysist to get the facial hair to a reasonable level only to have it kick in with a vengeance when menopause and unemployment arrived together. Those appointments will be the first thing reinstated as soon as I start getting a paycheck again!

  20. deb the librarian

    I don’t have the head hair problems, but I have the chin hair issue. The grossest ones are the ones that come out of my moles (GROSS – i know). I’ll also grow really long hairs out of my breasts.

  21. I used to have super thick, puffy hair from my teens into my 20’s. Hated. It. Now it’s thinned out some. I have a lot of hair but it’s super fine. The weird thing is that I can now coax a lot of wave, curls, & volume out of it just from blow-drying. I’m not sure if it’s changing texture again, or if at the age of 41 I’ve finally gotten better at styling it. Body-hair wise, I’m not on the hairy side, I only shave my legs about 2 times a week in the summer, but I do have this dark, extremely coarse hair that emerges from my chin every so often to wave hello before I attack it with the tweezers.

  22. You will have to read about it, but my understanding is that the use of regular head and shoulders types of dandruff shampoo will help with hair loss.

    http://inhumanexperiment.blogspot.com/2010/02/zinc-pyrithione-reduces-shedding-and.html

  23. Two words: nipple hairs. Black, coarse, you could probably floss with them. Incidentally, it’s been great reading about other people’s hair issues. It’s definitely a thing that is Not Discussed, isn’t it?

  24. OMG – you are asking this 55 year old!!! Holy crap – hair where I don’t want it & no hair where I need it!!! Charlotte – I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating the hair thing is – I have it all over my face & chin & neck & nose & eyelids & more & it gets infected & crazy yet I can’t shave or wax due to thinning skin & can’t afford the derm office – I could go on & on but I will not! 😉

    I had times when I lost a lot of hair due to hormones & then it stopped & it kinda goes in cycles due to the age hormones.. UGH!

  25. Toe hair, check. Random chin hair, check. Sideburns, check. All-over hirsute look, check. Thinning hair on head, check. Living in Scandinavia, looking like a Mediterranean goat-herder among angel-looking blond children made me feel like a weirdo. I was born with 3-inch long hair and bushes on my toes AND fingers. We account this to my mothers two-kilos-a-day carrot-and-parsley-eating obsession while pregnant.

    The first thing I bought with self-earned money at 14 was an epilator. In 1989, they were more like hell-machines.

    Later on, it turned out that I was kind on exotic with my dark thick hair (thick on the Nordic scale, thin as a mouse’s tail on universal scale). Guys started out conversations in bars in English with me, because I had to be foreign.

    At 34, I had focused all my attention on all kinds of hair-removing gadgets and had not been paying attention to the great hair on my head. I was also quite hefty having stopped all exercise and having eaten mainly fast food for about five years. Turns out my hair was thinning all over, with especially the longest hairs falling off. The scalp was somewhat sore with all the hair falling off, but otherwise healthy.

    I have been seeing a dermatologist specializing in hair loss during the last five years, but no reason for the hair loss has been found. It is just general thinning – not female-type balding, not male-type balding, not alopecia. I have since lost 90 pounds, completely changed the way I eat and healed my systemic inflammation, but the hair is just not coming back. About 50% of my hair is gone, and about 7 inches of the lenght without cutting it.

    It seems there is no use for trying to find a reason, as it usually cannot really be identified, or trying to find a cure might mean worse problems: for example trying anti-androgene (male hormone) medication would inhibit my weight-lifting progress, also, there is no imbalance in my hormones, but these things are still usually hormonal.

    A year-long prescription of strong Vitamin B seemed to help a bit although I was already eating over-the-counter Vit B. Animal medication-grade Biotin made my eyelashes grow but had no effect on head hair. (My mom had her bikini line go wild on Biotin, but her hair remained as before!) Great paleo-type diet hasn’t helped, or good sleep, or exercise, or stress management.

    Using Nioxin, hair powders and Moroccanoil now. Looking at older women, I’m thinking that very many women have thinning hair in their 30’s, since most women cut their hair shorter at that time.

  26. I lasered the hair on my upper lip and forearms. That was at least ten years ago and it hasn’t come back. It was expensive but well worth it.

  27. “How Do You Solve Your Hair Problems?”
    I sweep.

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  29. I also have hair on my big toes. I shave it. If I don’t it looks like I’m being attacked by tarantulas with a foot fetish

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