Female and losing your hair? You’re not alone.
Posted 15 days ago MARIA, CEO OF ÉVOLIS, SHARES HER PERSONAL HAIR THINNING JOURNEY.
When you’re a woman and your hair really starts falling out, it’s easy to imagine you’re the only one. That’s why Maria, the CEO of évolis, wants women struggling with hair loss to know they’re not alone. In fact just after turning 40, Maria was anxious to discover thin patches in her hair that showed more of her scalp than usual. With a lot of patience and persistence (and worry), Maria worked through her struggle and came out the other side with a healthy lot of hair.
We interviewed her to find out more about her journey. Here’s her story.
How did you first realise you were losing your hair?
“I had just turned forty. Everything was going really well in my life but over some weeks I noticed that my hairbrush was full of hair after shower. At first I wasn’t worried, but very soon I started to see thinning on my scalp. When I tried styling my hair in the morning I could see my scalp right through the top of my head and that was pretty worrying. I started to use a lot of styling products and hairspray to make my hair look thicker.”
How did losing your hair make you feel?
“I was very distressed and ashamed. Also, I felt like I’m getting old. Healthy thick hair is associated with youth, and while I always had very fine hair, I had a lot of it. Noticing my hair was thinning just after turning forty wasn’t great, but it was even more worrying to find it was getting worse. I panicked as I couldn’t see the end of it. Every morning I spent more and more time trying to cover up with more styling products, even though I knew it wasn’t helping.”
How did you go about trying to fix the problem?
“With my medical and scientific training, the first thing I did was went to my family doctor. She knew me well, assured me that the hair loss was normal and temporary. She made me take a blood test to assess my thyroid function, zinc, vitamin B and iron levels. These were all normal so she ask me to come back in four weeks if I didn’t improve.
While my hair loss didn’t get worse, it didn’t get better either. I was still losing excessive amounts of hair and continued thinning. My GP referred me to a dermatologist, who said that even though my zinc levels were normal, I should take zinc supplement and use Nioxin. Unfortunately neither of these helped.
Seeing no improvement, I went to a hair clinic next, where I was told that my condition wasn’t quite bad enough for hair transplant, but if it gets worse, I should come back. In the meantime, I was given a minoxidil solution and Toppik (a fibrous product aiming to make the hair thicker, similar to dry shampoo but feels much stickier). Needless to say I wasn’t prepared to hear that I might need a hair transplant, I only went there to see if a hair specialist has better advice, not to get “plugs”.
I started to use the minoxidil solution, although it was quite smelly and made my already fine hair look greasy. By the time I put the Toppik on every morning I looked like I was wearing a badly fitted wig or my hair is glued onto my head. It wasn’t easy to use the minoxidil solution without it getting on my face or my white shirt neck (which then turned yellow) either. But more disconcerting was that I started to shed even more hair after a couple of weeks.
Some months into my hair loss journey it was clear that none of this helped and I gave up using any products. I used a very gentle shampoo, stopped colouring my hair and tried to style it so it didn’t show my scalp. My hair became very thin and my scalp was visible all the way around from the forehead to the crown. It wasn’t just that I had less hair, but the quality was very poor. It was brittle and whispy. Eventually my hair loss stabilised; it didn’t get much better but it didn’t get worse either, so I accepted that it will keep thinning over time.
I used a lot of hair products, such as conditioners and hairspray, to try to make it look thicker and myself feel better about my hair. I visited a friend in San Francisco once, and she was wearing all these great hats - she basically never left the house without one. So I tried that too. Unfortunately being in a corporate job, wearing a hat constantly wasn’t really sustainable. At the end I gave up and just cut my hair short.”
How did you did you eventually get your thinning hair to improve?
“It was two years later that I first encountered évolis, while on a trip to Japan. I really liked the science behind the product and was excited about the opportunity , especially with my personal history of hair loss.
At first it was difficult not to be sceptical about whether the product would work for me, as nothing else did in the past. Nonetheless I started to try it. It was much better than my normal shampoo and gave an instant increase in volume; something I didn’t get from any other product before.
Some three months went by with me travelling with my évolis shampoo. I spent the Christmas holidays in Europe, and was very busy flying around the world in the following weeks. While in Budapest, I noticed one morning that I didn’t have quite so much hair in my hair brush. I didn’t have to throw my hairbrush out throughout my entire trip (normally I would buy a new brush every 3-4 weeks as they got so full of hair; even though I cleaned them I didn’t feel comfortable using them after a while).
When I returned to Sydney at the end of January the next year I went to see my hairdresser, who was well aware of my hair loss journey. He asked me what I had done to my hair. And of course I said “nothing”. I was expecting him to give me a hard time about not caring enough for my hair, however this time he said there were a lot of new hairs growing. In fact, he hadn’t seen that much new hair on my head for a very long time.
As I was still sceptical if évolis was really working for me, my first thought was to think through what could possibly be the reason; what I ate or if my stress levels dropped. In the absence of any other change I had to accept that the new hair growth had to be évolis.
After that day, I started to use the tonic, which is more concentrated. Over a period of some months my hair returned to its normal state. But the simple fact that I was losing less and less hair early on gave me so much confidence that I stopped worrying about it on a daily basis!”
What words of advice would you like to give women going through the experience of hair loss or thinning hair?
“Don’t give up and don’t listen to those who tell you to do so. Persistent hair loss is a complex process that can have many causes. Your doctor can tell you if you have an underlying medical condition, such as vitamin deficiency or thyroid dysfunction, so it is important to sort that out first. If you have no obvious medical issues then start using a safe, topical product first, such as évolis, while you are figuring out the reason.”
What do you wish more women knew about hair loss and thinning hair?
“That they can do something about it. I wish I knew that at the very beginning; it would have saved me a lot of anxiety! Of course évolis is new technology and wasn’t around when I first needed it, but women should be aware that it is available now.”
If evolis was a person, who would it be?
“Cate Blanchet; professional, smart, real and no fuss.”
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