Menopause & Hair

My Hairdresser Noticed Before Four Doctors Did

HRT gave her back her sleep and took her hair. How she kept both.

My hairdresser was the one who told me.

Not my family doctor. Not my gynecologist. Not either of the two dermatologists I'd already paid to look at my scalp.

My hairdresser.

She was running her fingers through my hair, and she stopped in the middle of a section. She looked at me in the mirror and said, "Denise… have you noticed how thin it's gotten up here?"

I had noticed.

I'd been noticing for a year and a half.

But hearing it out loud, under those salon lights, with the pink of my scalp shining through what used to be thick curls, that's when it hit me.

What she said to me six months later, in that exact same chair, made me cry for a completely different reason. I'll get to that.

I'm 55 years old.

Retired school secretary. Married 31 years. Two grown kids.

Perimenopause started for me at 43. I didn't even know that's what it was. Nobody told me hair loss could be the first sign.

Menopause finished the job at 48.

Since then I've gained about 75 pounds I can't lose, no matter how much I walk. My skin got dry and thin, like tissue paper on the backs of my hands.

I made a kind of peace with the weight and the skin.

What I couldn't live with was everything else. Hot flashes several times an hour. Joints that ached just getting out of the car. Awake at 1 or 2 a.m. every single night. Brain fog so bad I'd lose words in the middle of a sentence.

Two years ago, I finally started HRT. Estrogen. Progesterone. And a little testosterone cream for my energy.

It was a game changer. I slept through the night. My joints quit aching. I felt stable for the first time in years.

And then my hair went.

I'd always had thick, lush curls. The kind women stopped me in the grocery store to ask about.

I lost about three quarters of them in less than two months.

Handfuls in the shower. After I blow-dried, the bathroom floor looked like someone had gotten a haircut. I got afraid to wash it.

"I'm feeling better, which is amazing," I told my sister on the phone. "But my hair is killing me."

I read posts from women who stopped their testosterone the same day they saw their part. I almost did too.

My doctor asked me not to. "Your symptoms will come right back."

So she put me on minoxidil instead.

And for a while, it worked. The shedding stopped. My eyebrows grew back. My eyelashes stopped falling out.

I almost cried with relief.

Then one morning I got out of the shower, turned around in the mirror, and saw fuzz on my lower back. Dark fuzz. About half an inch long.

My hair was growing everywhere except where I wanted it.

I freaked out and stopped the pills.

Within about six weeks, the shedding came right back. Worse.

Nobody had warned me. You have to stay on it forever. Stop, and you lose what you gained.

Every single thing that made me feel better was taking something from me.

So I went looking for other answers.

My gynecologist said it was just menopause. "Take biotin."

The first dermatologist said it was dandruff.

The second one said, "It's hormonal. It happens."

My family doctor ran bloodwork. "All normal. Thyroid's fine. Iron's fine."

Normal.

Then what was normal about losing three quarters of my hair?

All four of them said it like they'd already moved on to the next patient.

But I couldn't move on.

Every morning I stood at the mirror for twenty minutes, deciding if it looked worse than yesterday. It always did.

The bobby pins only stayed in so tight they gave me a headache.

I bought $28 hair powder for my part.

I bought three hats. I hate hats.

And then my niece posted the pictures from our Fourth of July barbecue.

There was one of me from behind, standing at the grill.

I thought it was some older lady. Then I saw my blouse.

You could see right through to my scalp. The crown. The part. All of it, lit up by the afternoon sun.

I'd finally gotten my life back. And I was paying for it with my hair.

That night I locked the bathroom door, sat on the edge of the tub and cried. Not the quiet kind. The kind where you hold a towel over your mouth so your husband won't hear.

I know. It's just hair. And I was grateful to be sleeping.

But why did it have to be one or the other? Sleep or my hair. My energy or my ponytail.

I didn't want to give up the first good thing that had happened to me in years. I just wanted to feel better without sacrificing my hair.

So I tried everything else.

Biotin. Eight months. Nothing. Not one new hair.

Hair gummies. Four months. They did exactly what candy does for your hair.

Nutrafol. Five months at $88 a month. The only thing that got thinner was my bank account.

Viviscal. A full year. I bought the last box and swore it would be my last. It was.

A caffeine shampoo. Deep conditioning masks. Rosemary oil that ruined three pillowcases. Every "wellness" product Instagram put in front of me.

I added it up one night. $2,140 in sixteen months.

And the drain didn't care.

Every morning. The same handful.

And the worst part?

I started hiding.

I quit Tuesday water aerobics after six years. Wet hair shows everything.

For 31 years, my husband ran his fingers through my hair while we watched TV. Now I'd pull away. I was terrified he'd feel how little was left.

I'd see women my age with beautiful thick hair and feel an ugly little flash of rage. Am I crazy for being this angry over hair?

My son was getting married in April. I'd already decided I'd be the mother of the groom hiding in the back of every photo.

I'll tell you how that day turned out.

But first, what I finally found out. Because four doctors had told me my labs were normal, and something was very much not normal.

Something was happening in my body that no blood test was ever going to show me.

I was about to find out what.

It took me four months to get in with a third dermatologist. One who only does hair.

A woman. Younger than me. And she actually listened. For forty minutes.

Then she said one sentence that explained why every lab had come back normal.

"This isn't happening in your blood, Denise. It's happening in your scalp."

I didn't understand.

She pulled up a diagram on her screen.

"Women have testosterone too. Less than men, but we have it. For most of your life, your estrogen kept it in balance. When estrogen drops in menopause, your testosterone doesn't drop with it."

"And there's an enzyme right in your scalp, at the root of each hair, that turns some of that testosterone into something called DHT."

DHT.

I'd heard of it. I thought it was a man thing. Something to do with bald men on TV.

"It's the same hormone behind male pattern baldness. It latches onto the follicle and squeezes it. A little tighter every cycle. The hair that comes back is thinner. Then shorter. Then soft and wispy, like your temples. That's why your part keeps widening."

My stomach dropped.

"So why didn't my bloodwork show it?"

"Because the DHT that's doing this is being made right here," she said, and tapped the top of my head. "Locally. Your blood tests can look completely normal while this is going on."

Then I told her about the testosterone cream.

"That makes sense," she said. "In some women, more testosterone means more raw material for DHT. That doesn't mean you have to give up your HRT. It means you protect the scalp, where the DHT is being made."

I could have hugged her.

Then I told her about the minoxidil. The eyebrows. The back fuzz.

She nodded like she'd heard it a hundred times.

"Minoxidil pushes hair to grow. Everywhere, sometimes. But it doesn't do anything about DHT. So when you stopped, DHT was still sitting right there at the root, squeezing. That's why it all came back."

"And the hair vitamins?"

"Biotin and collagen feed the hair. But the hair can't do much if the follicle is being squeezed at the root."

That's why nothing had worked.

For sixteen months, I'd been feeding hair that was being strangled at the root by a hormone I'd never heard of.

And not one of the four doctors had said a word.

I wasn't sad anymore when I left that office. I was angry.

But I had to ask.

"Is there anything for it that isn't forever, and doesn't grow hair on my back?"

She laughed. Then she was honest with me.

"There are other prescriptions. Some women do really well on them. But you stay on them, and there are side effects."

I told her I wasn't giving up my HRT. And I was done piling more pills on top of it.

Then she said something that changed how I looked at all of it.

"Then think about where it's happening. It's happening at the scalp. So whatever you try, it has to actually get to the scalp. Not just sit on your hair and rinse off."

I asked about the pumpkin seed oil my Facebook group kept recommending. "It's a pill," she said. "It goes through your stomach first. The DHT is being made in your scalp."

She mentioned interesting lab research on a few plants. A mushroom called Ganoderma. Ginseng. Rosemary leaf.

"A mushroom?" I said.

She laughed again. "Look it up."

That night I went down the rabbit hole. This time I knew what to look for.

Black Ganoderma. In lab research, its compounds slowed the enzyme that turns testosterone into DHT.

Ginseng. In a study on human hair follicles, it helped the cells keep growing even when DHT was added.

Two jobs. Less DHT made in the scalp. Less reaction to whatever is still there.

My daughter is the one who found it.

She called at 11:40 on a Tuesday night.

The first thing she said made me laugh out loud.

"Mom. It's a bar of soap. Don't hang up."

It wasn't soap.

"It's the Korean Herbal Root Rescue Bar, from a company called Nutrion. Black Ganoderma. Ginseng. Rosemary. Twelve-plus fermented Korean botanicals, no water, so it's concentrated. You rub it straight onto your scalp. Not your hair. Your scalp. Sixty seconds. No pills. And it doesn't touch your hormones, Mom. You keep everything that's working."

"Honey, I've spent over two thousand dollars on special stuff."

"That's the point, Mom. All that stuff was for your hair. This is for your roots. It's exactly where your dermatologist said it's happening."

She sent me the link.

14,653 reviews. 4.7 stars.

Readers’ own before-and-after photos.

I ordered two that night.

One for me.

And one for my sister, who'd been hiding her temples under bangs since her hysterectomy.

But on the very first wash, something happened I didn't expect.

It wasn't my hair. Not yet. That takes weeks.

It was that I wasn't afraid.

Sixty seconds on my part and crown. My scalp tingled and felt clean in a way it hadn't in years.

For the first time in two years, I washed my hair without bracing myself.

Week two: I counted what was in the drain. I actually counted. Thirty-one strands. Down from what I can only describe as "enough to make a small wig."

Week four: Fourteen.

I called my daughter.

"It's working."

Week six: I was blow-drying in the bathroom, and I saw something I hadn't seen in two years.

Little short hairs standing straight up along my part. Wispy baby hairs at my temples. Dozens of them.

On my head. Not on my back.

I looked like a dandelion.

And I had never been happier.

Week seven: We went for a walk after dinner. I have energy for walks again.

The wind picked up, and for once I didn't reach for my head. My husband looked over and said, "Your hair looks different."

"Good different?"

"Like before all this."

I was sleeping. I had energy. And my hair was filling in. I'd stopped choosing.

By two months, the drain stayed almost empty. I didn't see scalp shining through my part.

My ponytail used to take four wraps of the hair tie just to end up stringy and thin.

Now it takes two.

I went back to my hairdresser.

The same chair. The same lights.

She ran her fingers through my hair and stopped in the middle of a section. Just like before.

"Denise. What are you doing? Because whatever it is, keep doing it."

Then she looked at me in the mirror. "And you look rested. What happened to you?"

I laughed. "I stopped choosing."

That's when I cried. The good kind this time.

I told her about the bar. She wrote it down. "I have women crying in this chair every week," she said.

That's when I decided to write this.

Because here's what I need you to understand.

If you're in menopause, your hair is going down the drain, and your labs came back "normal," there's a very good chance this is DHT at the root.

If biotin and gummies did nothing, it's not because you did something wrong. They feed the hair. They don't take the pressure off the root.

If HRT is finally helping you, you shouldn't have to give it up to keep your hair.

And if minoxidil worked but you couldn't live with what came with it, you're not weak. You're just tired of choosing.

DHT is made right in your scalp. So that's where you have to work.

But I need to tell you what happened to my sister. Because it's the reason for this next part.

Before her bar from me arrived, she got impatient and bought a cheap "Korean herbal bar" online. $14. Half the price.

It smelled like a candle. No Ganoderma. No real ginseng. After a month, nothing. Two months on the Nutrion bar I sent her, she pinned her bangs back for the first time in three years.

There are copycat bars all over the internet now, pretending to be Korean.

Nutrion uses real fermented Korean botanicals. Black Ganoderma, ginseng, rosemary, he shou wu, mulberry root bark. No water. And the full ingredient list is right on the page.

My friend from church tried it after seeing my hair at Sunday service. Both of them said some version of the same thing.

"Why didn't anyone tell me about this?"

Every night DHT goes unchecked, those follicles get squeezed a little tighter. The sooner you take the pressure off, the more you have to work with.

I waited sixteen months and spent $2,140 on things aimed at the wrong place.

I don't want you to burn your timeline the way I burned mine.

So here's how I see it. If your hair looks the way mine did, you've got three choices.

One. Keep doing what you're doing. More biotin. More bottles. More hats. More twenty-minute mornings pressing your hair flat at the mirror. You already know how that one goes.

Two. Go the prescription route. It does work for some women. It worked for me, for a while. But you'll be on it for the rest of your life, and you'll have to decide if the side effects are worth it. For me, it was half an inch of fuzz on my lower back.

Three. Do what I did. Sixty seconds a wash. Right at the root, where DHT is actually being made. No pills. Nothing that touches your hormones. Keep everything that's working. With 90 days to try it, and your money back if it's not for you.

I can't choose for you. I can only tell you which one let me keep everything.

Remember my son's wedding in April?

I didn't hide in the back.

I'd slept eight hours the night before.

But I wore my hair down. Curls and all. I let the photographer shoot from every angle. Even from behind.

When my husband and I danced, he ran his fingers through my hair. The way he used to.

And I didn't pull away.

We danced until midnight. Me, the woman who used to be awake at 2 a.m. staring at the ceiling.

Rested. Clear-headed. Hair down.

I didn't have to give up one thing to have the other.

If you finally feel better inside, and you're watching your hair go down the drain, I understand. I almost gave up my sleep to save it.

You don't have to choose.

Your hair isn't giving up. Your roots just need help.

And that part, you can still change.

— Denise, 55
Retired school secretary, recovering hat owner
And mother of the groom who danced until midnight

P.S. What to expect: your scalp feels clean and tingly from the first wash. For me the drain changed around weeks two to four, and the baby hairs came around week six. Give it the full eight weeks. That's when I stopped counting strands and started counting the things I didn't have to give up.

P.P.S. If you tried a cheap "Korean" bar and felt nothing, don't judge this by the knockoffs. Look for the black Ganoderma and the ginseng. Then read a few of those 14,653 reviews. A lot of those women sound like me. And a lot of them stopped having to choose.