Just by looking at a picture of any assembly of professional women’s sports, you can notice something common. With one look at their foreheads, you can see what seems like a receding hairline.
Yes, women can also have receding hairlines. The average hair loss pattern for women normally diverges from the male’s. Women tend to lose hair in the centre, middle of the head, the crown area where their hair tends to part to the sides.
That isn’t always the case, however. Some women present high hairlines that make it seem like they actually have male pattern baldness. This seems to be somewhat of a trend among women athletes, and there are a few reasons why this might be so.
Causes of Women Athletes’ Hair Loss
Two things related to genes might be going on. First, they just happened to be born with a high hairline that looks awfully like males’ signature receding hairline.
Second, women can inherit the genes related to male pattern baldness from either the father or the mother just the same as males do. Due to this, there’s a chance that women can actually develop “male-patterned maturation of hairline.”
The said condition notably changes a woman’s hairline to resemble that of a man’s receding one. Women afflicted by it, in addition, have high androgens themselves and can actually experience hair loss as a man would.
This is due to the baldness-related genes making them sensitive to dihydrotestosterone (DHT). DHT is a hormone that binds itself to the hair follicles, which causes them to shrink progressively until they don’t grow anymore. This is the actual cause of male pattern baldness.
DHT is a byproduct of testosterone. Due to this, the increased presence of androgens (which testosterone is) might lead to increased conversion to DHT.
Myths about Women Athletes’ Hair Loss
First of all, strenuous physical activity does not significantly increase levels of androgens on women’s bodies. The levels remain practically the same before and after vigorous exercise. Any increase is negligible and not enough to trigger hair loss.
There’s also the belief that women athletes can start balding due to the use of steroids or similar performance-enhancing drugs. This is partially true, however, as the real reason is the sensibility to androgens.
The steroids notably increase the production of androgens within the body. If you happen to be very sensitive to them due to genes related to male pattern baldness, then yes, steroids will contribute to that. It can happen regardless of them if you have naturally high levels of androgens though.
Hair Transplant to Fix Women Athletes’ Hair Loss
For women with male-patterned maturation of hairline, an FUE hair transplant can fix the issue.
The follicular unit excision (FUE) hair transplant consists of extracting hair follicles from the back of your scalp. The surgeon then grafts them into the balding area via microincisions.
The procedure gives natural results since our surgeons make sure to make the graft follow the natural growth pattern of your hair.