Love Your Beautiful Hair Through Every Stage of Peri and Menopause

Are you watching your hair thin and fall out while simultaneously dealing with unwanted facial hair during menopause? Eek! This episode of The Ageless and Awesome Podcast tackles this very struggle, offering deep insights into why nearly 40% of women experience hair loss during peri and post-menopause. I'm here to unravel how plummeting oestrogen levels contribute to hair thinning, shedding, and even bald patches. We also cover the critical need to rule out other potential causes like medication side effects, thyroid problems, autoimmune diseases, or even fungal infections, setting the stage for proper diagnosis and effective treatment.

Of course, I'm here to help with practical hair boosting strategies. From the wonderful benefits of biotin and collagen for hair and nails to the simple yet profound impact of regular head massages, this segment is a treasure trove of actionable advice. Discover why switching to non-toxic hair products, reducing heat styling, and maintaining a straightforward hair care regimen can make all the difference. We also delve into the merits of hydration and Omega-3 fatty acids for lush locks and stress the importance of choosing contaminant-free, high-quality fish oil supplements. Whether you're grappling with significant hair issues or just looking to optimise your hair health, this episode is your guide to keeping your mane magnificent through every life stage.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Combatting Hair Loss in Menopause
• 12:31 Hair Care Tips for Women

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi, I'm Susie Garden and this is the Ageless and Awesome podcast. I'm an age-defying naturopath and clinical nutritionist and I'm here to bust myths around women's health and aging so that you can be ageless and awesome in your 40s, 50s and beyond. The Ageless and Awesome podcast is dedicated to helping women through perimenopause and menopause with great health, a positive mindset and outrageous confidence. Hit, subscribe or follow now and let's get started. Hello, gorgeous one, and welcome to this week's episode of the Ageless and Awesome podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:42

This week, I'm talking about a problem that many, many women struggle with, in fact, and the problem is issues, I guess, with hair in peri and post-menopause. Now, if you've seen a photograph or an image of me, you will see that I have very long hair me, you will see that I have very long hair. Currently, I'm just feeling it. Currently, my hair is at my waist right, it's at my waist and I've been growing it for quite some time. I was about to say I'm really lucky, but I'm not really lucky. I do a lot of things to really manage my hair and I wanted to talk about it today because I hear this a lot from women and it can be extremely distressing to have hair loss and it is particularly prevalent during the peri and menopause years and in fact, 40% that's four zero, 40% of women will experience hair loss during or after menopause. It's huge, that's really huge. When I read that statistic, I was really quite shocked. I really didn't expect it to be that much, but when I think about it, there's so many women that I talk to that have issues with their hair that it kind of makes sense, and we know that the cause of this hair loss generally is because of the deficiency of hormones as we lose our estrogen in particular.

Speaker 1: 2:16

Now the thing is, if you are someone that's experiencing hair loss and I'm going to talk a little bit more about what that could look like the thing is you do need to get checked if you're on certain medications, because some medications can cause hair loss. It could be another hormonal issue. So you don't want to assume that it is menopause or perimenopause, just in case it's something else, some other hormonal issue causing it. Rather, stress can definitely cause hair loss, thyroid conditions and, generally speaking, when you get blood testing done, they will check your TSH, which is your thyroid stimulating hormone, and if that's a bit out, then they'll go further and look at your thyroid hormones. But it's important to make sure that that is getting checked so that if it is a thyroid cause because it's one of the first symptoms that really gets women going and seeking answers is when it comes to thyroid conditions it could be an autoimmune condition. It could be a fungal infection that's causing hair loss. So there's quite a lot of different reasons that this might be happening. But if you're in that age group, it's probably more likely that it is from the estrogen that's fluctuating all over the place. Oh, and the bonus is, while you're losing the hair on your head, you're gaining facial hair. While you're losing the hair on your head, you're gaining facial hair. So, on the chin and the upper lip, if you're getting excess hair there, then it's very possible it's from the relative androgen excess that we get when we're having the fluctuation of hormones in this time of life. But it does also need to be checked. If you're getting this facial hair, it's always a good idea to have a chat with your healthcare practitioner just to make sure it's not a symptom of another problem. And the thing is, like those of you that have been through pregnancy you would have noticed that your hair gets really luscious and your nails because they're very similar material that they're made ofets very luscious.

Speaker 1: 4:24

In pregnancy and then post-pregnancy often women will get hair fall, quite a lot of hair fall, and it's very similar in menopause You're getting a lot of hair fall. What happens is women will notice perhaps clumps of hair coming out. Hair might be thinning out, hair might be breaking. It might be thinning out, hair might be breaking. It might be brittle. You may even see bald patches on your head, which obviously is really really distressing.

Speaker 1: 4:52

And the thing is hair goes through these phases, right. About 90% of the time it's in a growth kind of phase and 10% of the time it's in a shedding phase. And you may notice and certainly you have if you have long hair and I noticed it a lot with my hair is sometimes I'll run my fingers through my hair and I'll get quite a lot of hair will come out. But then that won't happen every time and it's because there's these growing phases and then shedding phases. So it's quite normal to have hair a bit more hair fall sometimes than at other times. But if it's excessive all of the time, like in particular if you're waking up and there's hair on your pillow, that's a bit of a worrying sign. If you're getting hair all over your like your clothing on your shoulders, that's a bit of a concerning sign. Or if you know you get off the lounge or your desk chair and there's hair sitting on it, it's probably a sign that that's a bit excessive and you may want to look into that.

Speaker 1: 5:50

The thing is the drop in estrogen because, remember, we get surges of estrogen and then we get the drop in estrogen throughout the years of perimenopause and the drop in estrogen slows down the growing phase from 90% of the time to only 60% of the time and at the same time that that's going on, it ramps up the shedding phase. So you get more hair loss, less hair growth and therefore thinning of the hair and hair fall and maybe bald patches. So the thing is, we think of estrogen, we think of our reproductive organs, but we have estrogen receptors all over our body and including in the hair follicles, and the hair follicles can also shrink and that means the hair gets the actual, each individual hair strand can get thinner, can get grays coming through, that sort of thing. So yeah, there's a lot that's going on at this time of our lives that can impact your hair and I feel this is a really important thing, because a woman's hair in particular is really a big part of self-esteem, and if you feel, if your hair feels good, you do feel good. And if you, if you're worried about, uh, like a receding hairline, or that you're losing your hair or that it's, um, the quality of the hair isn't good, then that's that can make you feel not so great about yourself. It can reduce your, um, your desire to have social time can be a real problem.

Speaker 1: 7:29

So I think it's important to address it and there's so, so many things that we can do to address it through lifestyle and diet. And let's start with diet. What we want to do primarily is reduce insulin resistance. Now, you've probably heard me talk about this, because I talk about it a lot, particularly in the context of weight management, but the insulin resistance that will develop pretty much in all of us as we move through our 50s, 60s and beyond it's just part of the aging process is that that insulin resistance can increase facial hair and kind of contribute to the hair loss, because the insulin resistance does interfere with our androgen. So if we can reverse that insulin resistance, we are reducing our androgen excess, which means we're going to reduce our facial hair and we're going to improve our hair loss. So doing things through diet to reverse insulin resistance, and those are things like avoiding it's going to be the same things avoiding processed food, avoiding lots of sugar, eating lots of good protein, a healthy balance of whole foods, so lots of veggies, fruits, multicolored, eating, the rainbow, all of those sorts of things.

Speaker 1: 9:06

But there are also some specific nutrients that you want to go to as well. Probably the number one will be zinc. The number one will be zinc, and zinc we use for over 300 different chemical reactions in the body and you know it's used for a lot of things, as pretty much all of our nutrients are going to be used for a higher priority than our hair. Our muscles, our bones, our teeth, our eyes, our skin, our organs get higher priority of our nutrition than our hair or our nails, which is why, as a nutritionist, I'm always asking people in consultations what's the quality of your hair like? Does it break, is it fragile, is it thinning, is it thick and luscious? If it's thick and luscious, it can tell me that your nutrition is pretty good or your hormones are pretty good. So having a good, nutritious diet is going to really help because if the rest of your body is nourished, then the hair and the nails, et cetera, are going to get that nourishment as well.

Speaker 1: 10:15

So protein's really important, zinc is really important and vitamin D as well. And iron keeps hair in the growing phase and, as I may have mentioned recently talking talking about bone health, is a huge percentage of our population in Australia is deficient in vitamin D because of our sun safe message. Now it is important to be sun safe, but also super important to make sure your vitamin D is optimal. So, getting a test for your vitamin D so that you can see where it is For women, we probably want to get it above 75, close to 100. Even my GP wants mine over 100. So you can do that. There are a few food sources of vitamin D, such as eggs, but really the vitamin D supplementation is probably going to be the best option if you are vitamin D deficient, because we want to get it up fairly quickly. So vitamin D and also iron.

Speaker 1: 11:15

And again, a lot of women are iron deficient, particularly in perimenopause, when periods are getting potentially heavier. Sometimes for some women they become more frequent. They're lasting longer. Not everyone experiences that. They're lasting longer. Not everyone experiences that, but some women do very much experience that or have iron deficiency. So I'm always looking at when women have iron deficiencies as well as how are they losing blood? But it's also are you absorbing iron rich foods? So if you do have a diet that's high in iron rich foods and you still have really low iron and you're not bleeding a lot, I'd be like well, maybe your gut health isn't that great and you're not absorbing the iron. Or maybe you're drinking red wine every night with your meal and coffee, with your breakfast and your lunch, and that's going to block your absorption of iron and it's going to interfere with your zinc absorption as well. So there are a few things to keep in mind absorption as well. So there are a few things to keep in mind In terms of other nutrients silica. Every now and again, I'll just pop myself on some silica powder, I'll just chuck that in my smoothie and that makes a huge difference to my hair and nails when I'm taking silica. I'm not currently taking it, it might actually. That reminds me to probably go on it again for a month or two just to give myself a boost.

Speaker 1: 12:31

Biotin is a vitamin. It's in all of your. What am I trying to say? Your B-complex supplements. Biotin is really important for hair and nails in particular. Collagen is another one that can really help with hair and nails.

Speaker 1: 12:54

If you're looking just directly at products for the hair, I would say head massage would be a really good one, and that's really easy to do yourself. It's really nice, too, just in terms of stress management. I'm giving myself a little head massage as I'm mentioning this of stress management. I'm giving myself a little head massage as I'm mentioning this, but it's just so nice to really get into the muscles in the head, and what that also does is increase blood flow to the hair follicles. So giving yourself just a few minutes of massage while you're watching TV or doing something that doesn't require a lot of attention, doing something that doesn't require a lot of attention you can give yourself a little head massage.

Speaker 1: 13:34

I'd also recommend decreasing your use of heat tools on your hair. If you're someone that uses hair irons on your hair pretty much daily or every couple of days, you may want to reconsider how you're styling your hair and reducing the use of those sorts of tools, maybe by using anti-frizz kind of products that may help. Always try and go for a non-toxic version so you're not contributing to your hormone imbalance. So really look at your hair products anything you're putting on your body and making sure there's not a big chemical load associated with that. And you may wish to use things like hair oils, things like that.

Speaker 1: 14:22

I don't particularly use that. I have a fairly basic sort of hair regime and I very rarely will use heat on my hair. It's one of the reasons I have it long. Whenever I've had it short, I've always struggled to really style it, so I find it really easy just to have long, straight, straight hair, so I can put it up if it's a bit messy, or I just leave it down and it generally just will sit fairly well. So I think that's all I want to say. I guess the other thing, as always, I should always mention hydration and I would also say Omega-3s are probably going to have a good impact on your hair as well. Going to have a good impact on your hair as well. I know this is going to sound really weird, but I noticed when I feed my dogs sardines occasionally I'll do that their hair oh my God, their fur gets so glossy and shiny. So and it'll be the omega-3s in that sort of fish. So, um, omega-3s you can find in, obviously, fish. You can find it in flaxseed. You can find it in hemp seed.

Speaker 1: 15:32

Um, you may want to take a fish oil. Uh, particularly if you've got any cardiovascular risk factors like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, anything like that. Make sure it's a good quality. Please do not buy the bargain basement fish oil. Look on the label. Has it been tested for microplastics? Has it been tested for radioactive products? Has it been tested for heavy metals? Because it's a really big issue in the fish oil industry and if you're not in it, you may not realize that.

Speaker 1: 16:11

So getting a good, clean fish oil is really important and you may pay a little bit more for that. But this is your body. You got to look after it. Put good quality in there. If you're going to get your fish oil through fish, get, if you can, wild caught, because we know that in the farmed fish they're full of antibiotics and it's just, it's not a good industry. So I would really get informed, get educated about what you're putting in your body in terms of your food sources and your supplement sources, but that's probably a different podcast. Anyway, I hope that has been helpful If you are struggling with hair issues, hair loss remember there may be something else going on. So if you're on other medications, if you've got sort of other things going on in your body, it might be worth going and having a chat to your healthcare professional and making sure there's not something else going on and not just assuming that it is from perimenopause or menopause. So I hope that's been helpful.

Speaker 1: 17:16

If you've got any questions, please let me know. I love to hear from you. You can email me hello at suzygardencom, uh. Or you can uh get on to me through instagram at suzygardenwellness. All of the links are in the show notes. Have a great week and I'll be back on thursday with q and a. Thanks so much for joining me today on the ageless and awesome podcast. If you like today episode, please make sure you click the little plus button if you're on Apple Podcasts or the follow button if you're on Spotify, so that you get each new episode delivered to you every week. If you like free stuff, then head to the show notes and click the link to receive my free Radiant Reset Hormone Detox Guide for Perimenopausal Women. Or, if you'd like to continue the discussion, head over to Instagram and DM me at suzygardenwellness. I'd love to connect with you.