Most cases of hair loss have roots in hormones. Your hormones are the mechanisms largely responsible for regulating hair cycles, which is the source of both lustrous, shiny hair and thinning, lifeless hair. Hormones are also responsible for regulating your body’s sex drive… and a dive or rise in your libido can correspond to your hair’s life cycles.
What Drives Your Libido?
Your body’s hormonal processes primarily determine sex drive. Although there are obvious external factors, such as attraction, emotional responses, and physical health, hormones typically determine how active or inactive your sex drive is. The more testosterone present in males, the higher the sex drive, while women with higher testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen levels experience higher sex drives.
Countless factors go into determining the health and consistency of your hormone production, including mental and physical health. Depression, for instance, can interfere with hormone production and sex drive, which impacts other bodily systems—including your hair follicles.
The Common Thread Between Libido and Hair
Irregularities in these hormone productions can set your hair loss into overdrive, resulting in thinning hair and bald patches, and can also lead to dry or inflamed skin. In both men and women, hormone production begins to decrease with age, resulting in the natural thinning of hair as you grow older. Other influences can also take a toll on hormone production—including your genetic background—which can lead to premature hair loss as early as your teens or twenties.
Thinning Hair, Hormones, and Differences Between Sexes
Higher levels of testosterone usually denote a higher sex drive. One type of testosterone also leads to hair loss, which could mean that men with higher sex drives are more likely to lose their hair than men with lower sex drives (and correspondingly lower testosterone production), though extremely low testosterone production can also result in hair loss. In women, a higher sex drive may actually suggest lower levels of hair loss, as the hormones associated with a high sex drive are also associated with a fuller head of hair.
Although hormones influence sex drive and hair loss, you do not have to sacrifice one for the other. A man with a high sex drive does not have to face lower testosterone levels in order to retain hair, nor does a woman with a lower sex drive have to tolerate thinning hair. Instead, maintaining a healthy, balanced diet can help both sexes maintain both healthy hormone levels and healthy sex drives. Certain hair loss treatments have the ability to decrease hair loss without affecting hormone levels, as well, making it possible to enjoy a full head of hair and a healthy romantic life.
[expand title=”References“]
Everyday Health. Accessed 10/10/17.
NCBI. Accessed 10/10/17.
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