Will Thinning Hair Grow Back?
Thinning hair can be very stressful for both women and men and what’s even more stressful is wondering if it will ever grow back.
This depends on a few factors, including the main one; what caused your hair to thin in the first place?
There are a few reasons you may be experiencing hair thinning, including stress, underlying health conditions, pregnancy, and nutrition deficiencies.
Solutions for Thinning Hair
Unlike complete hair loss, thinning hair won’t necessarily cause complete baldness. It can, however, give your scalp sparse spots where your hair once was. This happens for various reasons, and it's best to figure out why before trying hair regrowth methods.
1. Evaluate Your Lifestyle
Stress pushes hair into its resting phase meaning hair loss can happen months after a shock or stressful experience. However, you can prevent hair loss by changing your lifestyle.
Ways to decrease stress include meditation, yoga, exercise, and even seeking advice from friends or a therapist.
2. Check Your Diet
Nutritional deficiencies are another common cause of thinning hair. Healthy hair depends on overall good health, including a diet rich in fatty acids, folic acid, iron, zinc, and protein. If you are not getting enough of these in foods, try a multivitamin or supplement; the correct doses of both are essential for new cell generation. But, again, we suggest you visit a doctor first. A blood test will help determine if you have a nutrition deficiency.
If you’ve been dealing with more severe hair loss for a while, a blood test can also help determine if you are suffering from underlying health issues. For example, hair loss can result from medical conditions such as lupus or even a thyroid disorder.
3. Give Your Hormones Time to Adjust After Pregnancy or Menopause
During pregnancy, your body produces more progesterone and estrogen to accommodate the needs of your growing baby. The body’s fluctuation of hormones can affect everything from food aversion to hair loss, though postnatal hair loss is more common. Women benefit from full and lustrous hair during pregnancy because of the added estrogen.
Three months or so after your baby is born, your estrogen levels decrease, which triggers an increase of androgens. Androgens shrink hair follicles causing hair to shed quickly.
Eating healthy, using good hair products, and a gentler hair routine will help speed up the hair growth process if it is possible.
4. Enhance Your Hair Care Routine
When dealing with hair loss, you need to be mindful of any harsh hair products or hot styling tools you are using as these can increase hair shedding. Toss hair products with harsh chemicals like sulfates and instead opt for essential oils on your scalp. Massaging thyme, lavender, rosemary, or peppermint oil on the scalp can reinvigorate your scalp and hair follicles, promoting hair growth. Rosemary oil has been proven to aid in hair growth. Or, you can try BeautiMark's moisturizing shampoos and conditioners for human hair to protect your hair from breakage and encourage regrowth.
Besides changing up your hair products, be cautious with how you style your hair. For example, avoid rough combing and tugging on your hair or scalp and opt for hairstyles that don’t require tight pulling like a ponytail.
3pc Human Hair Must-Haves by BeautiMark
5. Visit Your Dermatologist
If you are experiencing dramatic hair loss or thinning, you should see a dermatologist. Your doctor can help rule out any underlying medical conditions and determine if you are suffering from alopecia. Alopecia areata occurs suddenly, and it manifests itself through patchy hair loss. This type of hair loss is caused by the immune system attacking healthy hair follicles.
Therefore, you need to get treatments to stop your body from attacking the hair follicles. This may include injections on your scalp. After the injections, the thinning hair will eventually grow back to its previous state.
You can also wait for your hair to grow back naturally, but it will take longer without medication and injections. The good news is that most alopecia areata patients grow their hair back without treatment. In the meantime, wigs are an excellent option for alopecia sufferers.
6. Be Patient
In some cases, you just need to be patient with your hair and allow your body to go through its natural regrowth process. For example, chemotherapy attacks hair follicles and other cells in your body as it fights to kill cancer cells.
While not everyone's hair regenerates, most can expect your hair to grow back three to six months after the end of your chemotherapy sessions. It may be a soft fuzz in the beginning, but it will soon resume its normal growth rate, which for most people is six inches a year. After regrowth, your new hair may even have a different texture or color.
What If I Can’t Regrow My Thinning Hair?
Unfortunately, not all hair loss problems have a medical solution. For example, hereditary hair loss is irreversible and permanent. But, that doesn't mean you’re doomed!
While you may not be able to grow your hair back, there are so many options to explore. One is a hair topper or a wig, which can look like natural hair and last for months.
Top Billing Hair Topper by Raquel Welch
Final Thoughts
Dealing with thinning hair is often frustrating and can even be scary when you’re unsure whether or not it will grow back.
Luckily, in some cases, once you determine the root cause of your hair loss, you can find a way to regrow your hair. Some hair loss conditions require a simple lifestyle change, while others require medication.
Are you dealing with thinning hair? If yes, what’s causing it? Please share with us in the comment section.