The other day I received an email from someone who said that she had noticed a lot of thinning of the hair in her bang area – so much so that you could see the white of her scalp where her bangs met the top of her head. She asked me what could be causing this and what she should do about it. I’ll tell you what I told her in the following article.
Things That Can Cause Your Hair To Thin In The Front: The first thing that I asked her was if she had noticed any increase in the amount of hair that she had been shedding or losing. As the bangs are often more sparse to begin with, this can be one of the first places that you notice over all thinning or shedding. And, telogen effluvium (TE) is a condition that occurs because of changes in your body. In females, common culprits are changing hormones, stress, pregnancy, giving birth, going off of birth control pills, thyroid issues, and other things. Typically, it takes a couple of months between the stress or change on your body until you start to notice more hair coming out. As I said, the bangs are one place where you will start to see the thinning first since this area has less hair to begin with. If you have this condition, you will often know it because you will shed hair all over – not just in the front. And, you will see more clothes on the floor, on your clothes, and in your brush.
Genetic Hair Thinning In The Front: Men’s genetic thinning will often manifest itself in the temples when we are talking about the front of the scalp. Women though, often notice a thinning in their bang area. This is due to hormones also, but it’s often not a lack of hormones or even an excess or hormones. It is a sensitivity to the normal presence of hormones that increase as we age. It doesn’t’ happen to everyone. Generally speaking, you will have a genetic tendency toward this sensitivity and the front of the scalp (as well as the crown, temples, and part line) are particularly susceptible to this.
What You Can Do About Thinning In The Front: First off, you need to pinpoint why this is happening. If this is run of the mill TE, then generally what you have to give is just time in cases like giving birth or stress. However, if this is due to medical or other condition that you can treat and improve then you should certainty do that. This is important because this condition is not likely to improve if you don’t treat it or don’t treat the correct cause of it.
If it is a genetic issue that we are talking about, then you will have to work on reducing your sensitivity to the androgens which are the cornerstone of this issue. Many people will try to eliminate their presence from the scalp, but this is really impossible. Your scalp will continue to produce them and as long as the sensitivity is there, you will still have the problem. It’s far better to work on both reducing them (if your levels are too high to be healthy) and on reducing the sensitivity.
Also, you will want to take a look at and then reduce any inflammation. Often, the inflammatory process is present in both TE and in androgen driven loss. There are many natural substances that work well for this. (Tea tree oil, emu oil, lavender, etc.) Finally, you will want to really focus on stimulating your scalp to reproduce healthy hair in that area. Once the androgens are being treated, you must pounce on this window of opportunity to stimulate the follicles because the longer that they are not producing adequate regrowth, the harder it becomes to reignite this process.
In the meantime, there are powders that can cover the white of your scalp like topik and couvre. They do help. And, you can try growing out your bangs so that the area where scalp meets bang isn’t so noticeable. But, this things will only take you so far. Eventually, you will need to take the next step and figure out what is causing this and fix it.
