The fallout of hair loss: Suffering in silence

Liz Rankin’s condition has gotten so bad that she hides the empties from her boyfriend, makes excuses to get out of camping trips and spends hours behind locked doors.

Rankin, a 27-year-old teacher from Seattle, isn’t suffering from any kind of addiction. Like 30 million other women in the United States, she’s coping with hair loss.

“Dealing with it gets really time-consuming,” says Rankin, who started losing her hair about six years ago. “I have to dry my hair a certain way, color it a certain way, part it a certain way. And it’s all a huge secret. I wouldn’t think of sharing it with any of my friends because it would open this world of questions. I even hide the garbage so my boyfriend won’t see my empty bottles of Rogaine.”

While many women spend countless hours lasering, waxing and tweezing away unwanted hair — laser hair removal alone has doubled in the last five years, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery — others contend with the pain, frustration and isolation brought on by thinning or disappearing hair.

Unlike male-pattern baldness, which is usually genetic and much more widely accepted — thanks in part to the popularity of the shaved male head — female hair loss is triggered by a number of causes and often cuts to the heart of a woman’s femininity, self-image and self-esteem.

An isolating condition
“Hair loss can be life-altering,” says Candace Hoffmann, 57, a Phoenix public relations specialist who wrote about her own hair loss and that of others in her book, “Breaking the Silence on Women’s Hair Loss.”  “I’ve gotten to the stage of my life where I’ve made peace with it, but it can be very isolating.”

Rather than confess their condition to others, women with hair loss often take great pains to hide it. Some have ended relationships or faded out of friendships; others have curtailed promising careers or even contemplated suicide.

Where to find help To learn more about hair loss in women and find support and guidance, check out these online resources: WomensHairLossProject.com  TheBaldTruth.com   AmericanHairLoss.org Herloss.org Hairlosstalk.com  Heralopecia.com

Hoffmann has androgenetic alopecia — commonly called male- or female-pattern baldness. The condition is related to hormones called androgens. In women, it generally causes thinning over the top and front of the scalp, as opposed to the receding hairlines and baldness seen in men.

Hoffmann says her hair loss first became noticeable in high school and progressed substantially after she went through menopause. Instead of going into hiding, though, she cut her hair short and wrote a book about the condition, which she says causes many women to feel guilty, as if they somehow brought the hair loss on themselves.

“For many women, it’s like having a disfigurement,” Hoffmann says. “It takes a lot to get over it, to build up your self-esteem enough to say, ‘I am more than my hair,’ especially in this society where you can’t go five minutes without seeing a TV commercial for some hair product.”

Her ‘crowning glory’
Our tangled relationship with hair may explain why women’s hair loss remains such a dirty little societal secret. A March 2008 review of hormonal therapy for female-pattern alopecia in the Dermatology Online Journal refers to it as a “common but puzzling condition” that strikes 10 percent of pre-menopausal women and 50 percent to 75 percent of women 65 years and older. As for treatment, the paper concludes that “the need for effective agents is highlighted by the paucity of effective treatments and the substantial psychosocial impact of alopecia on women.”

Hoffmann, who interviewed more than 100 women for her book, says many doctors seem unsympathetic or unwilling to take the time to seek out answers, despite the emotional pain associated with the condition.

“If you go in and say to a doctor, ‘My hair’s thinning,’ they usually just hand you Rogaine and say, ‘Try that,’” she says. “Hair loss is not life threatening — it’s not the same as having a lump in your breast — but it can’t be given that kind of short shrift. We, as women, have to bring it up. And doctors need to be more receptive when women do bring it up.”

Dr. Hema Sundaram, a Washington, D.C., dermatologist, agrees.

“One physician who sent a patient to me couldn’t understand why this woman had traveled so widely trying to find a solution,” says Sundaram, author of “Face Value: The Truth About Beauty and a Guilt-Free Guide to Finding It.” “Not that all male physicians are insensitive, but it is sometimes difficult for them to understand how profoundly hair loss impacts women. Hair is very much a part of the female psyche.”

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