Hair Loss In Women
The relationship between women and their hair is a complex one. It has often been known as a woman’s ‘crowning glory and, when times are changing, women often want to alter their hair to reflect how they feel. Women’s hair and its style can be seen as a bell-weather in some ways, which is why female hair loss treatment is so important.
And for these very reasons, female pattern hair loss can be devastating – despite the fact that is affects a quarter of all women.
Hair-loss in women is a genetic condition, and it does share some characteristics with male pattern hair loss in that it, too, follows a clear and recognisable process.
There are 7 stages of hair-loss in Female Pattern Hair-loss:
And although you wont won’t necessarily go from stage 1 to stage 7, the path that the hair loss follows will be recognisable even if it is your genes which will determine the stage at which your particular hair-loss will stop.
There is no doubt that hair loss can have a particularly devastating psychological effect on women and can undermine self-esteem and confidence at a deep level. At Paradigm, we take this in to account when we treat women with hair-loss.
We take a specific approach to treating hair-loss in women because although it does share certain characteristics with male pattern hair loss, there as just as many facets which make it a completely different clinical issue.
There are also key differences in terms of styling, texture, patterns of growth, density and female biochemistry.
It is important that female patients have a medical consultation and, at Paradigm, all of our patients will meet with our Consultant Plastic Surgeon, Mr Brendan Fogarty. This consultation may be followed by blood tests and a skin biopsy if Mr Fogarty feels these tests are necessary to confirm his diagnosis.
If you are suitable for surgical treatment, we will invite you back for a separate design consultation. It is essential that the limited amount of hair available for transplantation is placed in to a design that will benefit each individual woman now – and for the rest of her life. As hair-loss is an ongoing process, more than one treatment is usually needed over a person’s lifetime, so it’s essential that this is taken into consideration in the planning and design of the first transplant.
An on-going and solid relationship between patients, Paradigm and hair-dressers is something that is important in managing how the ageing process and patterns of hair loss interact with a persons style choices and design options.
Whilst there are a few medical treatments available to women who suffer from hair loss, by far the most effective treatment is a hair transplant whereby permanent hair is taken from the donor area and transplanted in to the newly designed recipient area.
At Paradigm we use the FUE method of hair transplantation where we remove one follicular unit at a time and transplant that follicular unit in to the recipient area. We take this hair from the permanent area at the back and sides of the head. A small area of hair must be trimmed to facilitate the harvesting of grafts – but this area will be covered by the hair above it.
The ideal hair style for women to adopt before a FUE transplant is an undercut bob (pictured above) although we can discuss styling options with the design consultant at Paradigm as these choices will vary from patient to patient.