PREGNANCY | HAIR LOSS TREATMENT

PREGNANCY | HAIR LOSS TREATMENT

Like most mama's, during pregnancy, I had incredibly long and shiny hair. Seriously my hair was so thick and healthy. And to me this was amazing because Ive been colouring my hair since i was 13 and just a couple of years ago stopped bleaching my hair, So before my first pregnancy, my hair was already damaged. And pregnancy just brought my hair to life again! However, about 4 months after delivery i lost about half of my hair. It was so traumatising to lose hair, i had to trim my hair quite a bit after that. It lasted about 3months and then eventually came to a stop, and i was left with lots of hair loss. I went to a hair specialist and to a doctor.

THE HAIR SPECIALIST

The "Hair Doctor" as he was called. Checked my hair and medical history, and told me it was just due to pregnancy and that it was normal. He gave me topical lotions and hair masques to use, to help my new hair and existing hair to be strong and healthy.

THE DOCTOR

My doctor also said its completely normal to lose hair after having a baby, and told me it will stop falling after a few weeks. He prescibed me a topical spray called "Neoxidil". I had to spray the areas of my head where the hair loss was more prevalent, which was more on the top and temples. After a week or so i started to see a difference. How amazing!! I had soooo many baby hairs growing, and within a month all the hairs that I lost were growing once again. And my hair was starting to get thicker again from the roots.

Hair is one of the most important attributes to being a woman, so its seriously depressing when you lose hair, even if it is pregnancy related, and it will grow back. So having this treatment really helped me, and i also used it after my 2nd child, as i also had hair loss at around the same time.

(You can buy this lotion at pharmacies, but I would say its better to ask your doctor, because it has something to do with homones, as ive been told. And thats not something you really want to mess with. Also if you are still breastfeeding, its better to check with your doctor first).

"Everyone who's had a bun in the oven knows that one of the biggest pregnancy perks is that you suddenly look like you could be in an Herbal Essences commercial, but where exactly does that new hair growth come from? And what makes it fall out after the baby’s born? We went to Mary Jane Minkin, M.D., clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Yale Medical School, for answers on this hair-raising situation.

“The prevailing wisdom is that hair grows so nicely during pregnancy because women are making a lot of the estrogen hormone,” says Minkin. That’s due to the placenta, which weighs about a pound and looks like a cross between brisket and cooked liver, says Minkin. “You can think of it as being attached to the uterus. It nourishes the baby through the umbilical cord and is also like a hormone factory that keeps pregnancy going and pumps out things like estrogen and progesterone.” While the medical world isn’t exactly sure how estrogen might be linked to hair growth, they do know it can stimulate follicles. “In general, people often don’t realize how much of a role estrogen plays in pregnancy," says Minkin. "It’s also what gives your body the message to fill your breasts with milk, and it also helps trigger the milk’s release after the baby’s born."

When you give birth, you’re pushing the placenta out after the baby, losing out on all that extra estrogen you were getting for months. Minkin suspects that sudden decline in hormones could be at the root of post-pregnancy hair loss. So can you use estrogen-based treatments to grow your hair back if you miss its lush pregnancy state? “Some people find them helpful, and some don’t,” says Minkin. Basically, it’s a toss-up.

Another factor that may be at play is that even though giving birth is a natural process, it can be somewhat traumatic. “Sometimes things like having surgery or getting anesthesia can trigger hair loss, but it could even just be the stress of the event of giving birth itself. We see significant hair loss with people who have undergone tremendous shocks or events, so that could be the cause,” says Minkin.

Although it can be terrifying to see more hair in the shower drain than usual, Minkin emphasizes that this is pretty normal. “The majority of women have some degree of hair loss,” she says. If you’re seeing more than you used to before you were pregnant, just think of it as your new normal until your body hopefully evens out. However, if you start pulling out entire clumps of hair or see major thinning, you can make an appointment with your gynecologist to get checked out. “Around three to five percent of women have more severe hair loss than normal after a pregnancy," says Minkin. "In that case, I’ll perform a test to check thyroid function because its hormones can be involved."

(Taken from Women's Health Magazine, 2015)