There are a number of different reasons for why a woman may find that she starts to lose her hair. Yet although some women do suffer from hair loss, it is not to the same extent that men do. In this article, we look at one reason that is the cause of female hair loss and is the most common.

Yet even though we still think that hair loss is predominantly a male problem, today quite a few women are likely to suffer from some form of serious hair loss. In fact, according to the American Academy of Dermatology around 30 million women in the United States alone are troubled with hair loss of one sort or another.

One of the main causes for a woman to start losing her hair is because of her genetic makeup. All of us have hormones known as androgens, which work in perfect harmony with all other hormones in the body. However, for some women because they have a genetic predisposition these hormones can actually interfere with the way the body functions. One particular hormone that is part of the androgen group is testosterone, this can cause problems for certain women.

Although all women have this hormone in their bodies, when it is able to connect with a particular enzyme it can then convert easily into Dihydrotestosterone (DHT). This then binds itself to the woman’s hair follicle receptors and starts to interfere with the growth of hair on her body.

Generally, this build up of DHT on the hair follicles takes some time so a woman will only see a gradual increase in their hair loss. The build up also causes the hair follicles to shrink and so the pattern for natural hair growth in a person begins to alter. Often as this happens, a woman is likely to notice that they are beginning to suffer from female pattern baldness or androgenic alopecia if you wish to use its medical name.

Even though the cause of this form of baldness in women is much the same way as it is in men, the pattern of the baldness is different. With women their baldness will be somewhat diffused and generally occurs as a thinning of the hair on top of the scalp. On the other hand men will normally start to lose hair completely from specific areas of the head, namely at the crown or around the temple or at the back.

As well as this difference in the two types of baldness, the other is that it only occurs in men as they grow older. Whilst for women they can start to suffer from female pattern baldness at any stage in their lives. For some women who get it when they are young it is because they may well be suffering from some other medical condition.

As well as the above, there are other reasons as to why a woman may suffer from hair loss. Certainly, when it comes to deciding what the cause of female hair loss is in a particular woman it may come down to a number of different factors. With Some women, the cause can be from a traumatic event in their lives, whilst for others it could be down to some kind of medical condition or treatment.