Perimenopause hair loss and how I’ve treated it
Apart from the odd haircut I’ve not been happy with, or issues with finding a good consistent hairdresser, I’ve generally been happy with my hair. Ok, so it never stayed straight, had a bit of frizz as soon as I stepped outside, could get tangled easily. It was fine, but I always had a lot of it. But over the last 9 months or so, I’ve started to lose a lot of hair.
Interestingly a few friends a couple of months before Covid kicked off, had mentioned that they’d been having increased hair loss. At that stage I hadn’t, but as it kicked in after Covid all went mad I thought it could have been down to a bit of stress. Working from home, having N home schooling. I didn’t think I was stressed but underneath it could have been.
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I then started my diet back in March. This pretty much coincided with the hair loss increase. So I thought the diet change might have been a reason for it.
But having seen lots of information about the perimenopause symptoms online over the last couple of months, it made me think that maybe I was starting to hit those years. I don’t have any other symptoms, but perimenopause hair loss is sometimes mentioned.
Evidently there’s a whole lot of ‘fun’ to look forward to with the perimenopause, so I’ve got that to look forward to. Luckily after a bit of chat on the diet group I’m on, I found out that biotin could be a good thing to try.
I checked out that it wouldn’t clash with my warfarin, then ordered some biotin online. There’s lots of brands and types to choose from but I just went for the smallest tablets, that were a reasonable price. I take one a day. Biotin can be found in foods like cauliflower, mushrooms, nuts and egg yolk. There isn’t actually scientific proof that biotin helps reduce hair loss or help nail growth, but I’ve seen a definite improvement from about 3 weeks into taking it.
As well as starting to take biotin* (I use this one – UK), I’ve changed my shampoo to a caffeine shampoo Plantur 39*. It’s pricy and isn’t the nicest smelling. Plus you have to leave it on for a couple of minutes which sometimes I forget to do. I’ve also got the conditioner.
Again after a few weeks of use, my hair loss has reduced. I’m no longer shedding in the shower, and no longer find all the hair over my clothes. My hair’s looking better again (although that might be to do with actually styling it rather than just leaving it to dry naturally).
I’ve always eaten a good amount of fruit and veg, although due to being back on keto and low carb, I do limit the fruit. But I’m trying to keep up the variety of veg to make sure I’m getting a good mix of vitamins, as well as what I get from meat we eat.
Hopefully now I’ll lose less hair. It’s certainly looking fuller again. From reading up, it looks like hair loss due to the perimenopause usually slows down after a while. So that’s positive. I’ll have to wait and see if/when any other perimenopause symptoms arrive and when.
Have you had an increase in hair loss? How did you deal with it?
