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Reasons for Hair Thinning

So, you’ve established that your hair is thinning. This is no easy feat, especially when you consider that thinning often happens so gradually, it can be very difficult to spot until very late on in the process, when a large percentage of hair volume has been lost. But now that you’ve pinpointed that particular symptom, you can start looking at the reason why it’s happening. Here are the main reasons why your hair might be thinning:

Genetics

The most common cause of thinning hair is rooted in your DNA. Hereditary hair loss, also known as female-pattern baldness, is passed down throughout your family and can cause your hair to slowly and gradually thin over time. Unfortunately there’s nothing you can do to prevent genetic hair thinning entirely, it’s encoded into your genes already! But there are clinically proven1 ways in which you can prevent hair from shedding and help to thicken the hair that’s growing back in.2

Hormones

Your endocrinal system also plays a crucial role in determining the speed and severity of your hair thinning. Your genetics will determine how sensitive you are to the hormone DHT (dihydrotestosterone - a distant cousin of testosterone). This hormone attacks your hair follicles and causes them to slowly shut down, a process known as miniaturisation.

As the follicle slowly shuts down, the hair cycle for that particular follicle starts to shorten. This means that hair spends less time in the growing phase, so that when it does eventually fall out, it hasn’t had the opportunity to reach the same length and thickness as some of the surrounding hairs. Over time, the hair you shed will become shorter and thinner, with less pigment, until eventually the follicle shuts down entirely and stops producing hair.

Contributing factors

Diet, lifestyle and stress (both emotional and physical) can also be big contributing factors in hair thinning. If you have a poor diet, an unhealthy lifestyle and a lot of stress in your life, your body will not be in the best position to regrow hair, and you may notice that the thinning progresses a little more quickly. None of these factors alone can cause hair thinning, but they can certainly speed up the process.

1Blume-Peytavi U et al. J Drugs Dermatol.2016 Jul 1;15(7):883-9.

2Individual results may vary.