The Hair on Your Head

I have never been a daily hair-washer or styler. My hair, though always thin, is generally healthy, save for those years in the 90s when cutting it was anathema and split ends were ‘in.’

My hair’s most regular abuse has been alternate-day styling and 15 years of dyeing it brown every three months when I was working in offices and trying to look “professional.” This is such anathema to me that I cannot locate an existing picture to share.

When I moved full-time to the mountains above California’s high desert, my hair got increasingly dry. Still in blissful ignorance about the stage of life I was entering (#mountainlife vs. #perimenopause – no contest), I asked a hair stylist what I could do.

She recommended a hair strengthener and a water filter for my shower head, to help pull out any of the tasty chemicals left over in our local water (naturally or otherwise) from the booming mining industry of the late 1800s.

The shower filter was an instant hit. I could feel the difference on my skin from having harsh minerals removed from my luxurious drought-length showers.

After choking on the cost of hair serums, I chose one well-reviewed and of moderate price, but failed to use it regularly. Its instructions – apply it to towel-dried hair multiple times a week, leave for 20 minutes, then wash as usual – were a bridge too far, since I barely shower multiple times per week.

I am now thankful for my suckage at beauty regimens (see the note above about being an infrequent styler of my hair), since it turns out the strengthener I chose is made by a company being sued by customers who allege Olaplex products make your hair fall out.

I can’t blame my thinning hair on Olaplex because I didn’t use it enough, but I also can’t blame it on altitude, because that’s not a thing. What is a thing, according to multiple sources (including the New York Times, Oprah’s myriad doctors, What Fresh Hell is This, and Healthline, among others) is that your hair thins as you go through peri/menopause.

Like most everything related to peri/menopause, the cause is hormone fluctuation.

In your ‘normal’ life, estrogen and progesterone help your hair grow, keep it healthy, and aid the cultivation of an environment that encourages your hair to stay attached to your head longer.  With both of those hormones’ levels fluctuating and eventually fading as we travel through peri/menopause, your trichovial toolkit loses two essential tools.

These  fluctuations affect the oils (primarily sebum) produced by your skin (remember: your scalp is skin), the shape of your hair follicles (which determine, in part, your hair type), and the functioning of your hair cuticle. The hair on your head may change thickness, texture, growth pattern, moisture level, or just general health. And of course, the results are different for everyone.

Adding to the challenges caused by hormone fluctuations is the fact that fever can impact your hair growth, pushing it out of its growing (anagen) phase and into a resting (telogen) state. Two articles in the New York Times late last year, one on Covid-related hair loss and the other on scalp health, both mention this hibernation of your hair’s growth stage as a challenge for hair and scalp health.

What looks like a fever, acts like a fever, and smells like a fever (or worse) but isn’t one? HOT FLASHES. Anecdotal evidence indicates this may be adding to perceived hair loss in peri/menopausal women; you may not be experiencing accelerated hair loss, but a lack of regrowth.  

Here’s what this may look like in real life: your hair appears to radically accelerate its disappearing act: you grow a widow’s peak and experience thinning above your ears, along your hairline, or in a random patch on the back of your skull (like an infant who spends all its time lying in bed sleeping, only you don’t get to lie in bed, and sleep may be illusive). Simultaneously, your scalp itches so severely, you worry a second-grade classroom’s worth of head lice has moved in. This may or may not be your most irrational fear, so you walk everywhere either scratching your head or trying not to.

Because it is winter, and it won’t go above 20 degrees or stop snowing, you think your wool hats may be causing the itch, but you realize that they don’t touch your scalp, so you check, obsessively, through your transparently thin hair, to confirm there is not actually an infestation on your head.

You wonder if it’s also the hats that make your hair so greasy. Within 24 hours of your bi-weekly hair-wash, the top half of your length is weighed down by grease, yet your scalp still itches.  Ironically, these symptoms literally have the same root cause – sebum production – but indicate opposite production levels, so there’s no hope of finding a cure.

In the past, if left to its own devices, a greasy scalp would right itself, stop producing grease, and your hair would absorb the excess and return to looking clean. This takes between 5-7 days of not washing your hair, based on unscientific research conducted while camping in Mexico 25 years ago. But in peri/menopause, that day never comes.

There are myriad approaches to addressing these changes. One, frequently advocated in different forms by Heather Corrina, Aubrey Gordon, and others, is to accept yourself where you are. You don’t have to change anything. You can love your changing body as it grows with you. I know: easier said than done. It will be a common theme throughout this blog, and I, like many of you, will struggle with it constantly.

Another approach is to treat the symptoms that bother you the most, physically or mentally. I’m currently trying a scalp serum designed to kick my scalp into the hair growing phase; it’s too soon to know if it’s working. A friend discussed her hair loss with a dermatologist who prescribed minoxidil to see if that helps.

What’s happening to your hair? Have you found treatments that help you in this head, hair, scalp department? Please share below, and as always, remember to consult a health care professional before trying anything that may have significant impact on your health.