Hypothyroidism is a Common Cause of Hair Loss

July 28, 2023

Ladies, are you noticing a lot of hair loss in the shower or on your hair brush? Hair loss can be very upsetting. It is an important part of your appearance and you want to look your best. If you’ve been struggling to find a solution, there may be one option you haven’t yet considered: low thyroid function. In this podcast transcription and video, Dr. Steven Hotze addresses how hypothyroidism is a common cause of hair loss that can be treated.

Podcast Highlights:

0:38: Women, after they shampoo, notice they have a lot of hair in the sink, and it’s not localized in one particular spot, it’s generalized hair loss.

1:02: This is commonly caused in females by hormonal imbalance due to low thyroid function at the cellular level.

1:11: Men also get hair loss, and it’s called male pattern baldness…male pattern baldness is caused by elevated levels of dihydrotestosterone.

1:26: Testosterone is converted as men age into dihydrotestosterone, and as those levels build up, they adversely affect a man’s hair growth, and particularly in the top of the scalp and over the temples.

2:32: So this is the way that hypothyroidism can affect your skin, your scalp, your fingernails. So it can lead to premature baldness in women. They just have a diffuse loss of hair. The hair becomes very fine and coarse and dry. They lose the lateral third of their eyebrows, get hair loss over their legs and arms, loss of eyelashes. They can have eczema, psoriasis. They get dry skin.

4:13: If you have hair loss and you’re concerned about it, you need to be evaluated for a thyroid condition, and that’s not just by a blood test.

5:46: So it’s a very common feature that if you ladies are having hair loss and thinning of your scalp, it’s very common to find, after we do a clinical history, that you benefit from a therapeutic trial of thyroid hormone even when your blood tests fall within the normal range.

6:05: Now, oftentimes women have antibodies…men can have this too, but it’s more common in females, antibodies to their thyroid hormones and their thyroid gland. It’s called autoimmune thyroiditis…and that adversely affects the thyroid hormones ability to produce thyroid hormones, and it also affects the ability of the thyroid hormone to properly get assimilated into the cells where it does its work.

7:38: My philosophy is this, if you have signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism, you deserve a therapeutic trial of thyroid rather than some pharmaceutical drug that isn’t the cause of your problem and won’t solve your problems, it may simply mask the problem.

Podcast Transcription:

Dr. Steven F. Hotze: Hello, I’m Dr. Steve Hotze. Welcome to today’s program.

I want to discuss with you a problem which many men and women face over their lifetime, and that’s hair loss. There are really three major classes of hair loss. One is generalized hair loss, which we commonly see in women and that’s when there’s overall shedding. Women after they shampoo notice they have a lot of hair in the sink, and it’s not localized in one particular spot. It’s generalized hair loss. And they also know that the hair oftentimes gets dry and it doesn’t grow as well, doesn’t take a permanent as well, it doesn’t hold its figure. And the hair just isn’t healthy.  This is commonly caused in females by hormonal imbalance due to low thyroid function at the cellular level.

Men also get hair loss, and it’s called male pattern baldness. You might just look at me and I’ve got that. Male pattern baldness is caused by elevated levels of dihydrotestosterone. You hear the name testosterone in that hormone. Testosterone is converted as men age into dihydrotestosterone, and as those levels build up they adversely affect a man’s hair growth. And particularly in the top of the scalp and over the temples. Doesn’t usually affect any of the side, which is interesting why that works that way, but that does.

So that’s male pattern baldness. And, guys, you got to learn to live with it. There are some preparations, prescription preparations and non-prescription items that are said to help promote hair growth. And that may be the case. We have some here. I haven’t tried them. I just learned to live with it and shaved the top of my scalp because I have some fuzz on it and I’ll leave it alone so it isn’t a great concern to me.

But in women, I know it’s a big concern when they begin to lose their hair. And that’s a common feature of low thyroid function. So this is the way that hypothyroidism can affect your skin, your scalp, your fingernails. So it can lead to premature baldness in women. They just have a diffuse loss of hair. The hair becomes very fine and coarse and dry. They lose the lateral third of their eyebrows, get hair loss over their legs and arms, loss of eyelashes.

They can have eczema, psoriasis. They get dry skin. Puffiness under the eyes. They get wrinkles on their hands and their face. Their nails become brittle, they become ridged. Oftentimes, they’ll have problems with fungal infections under the nail beds. So these are all common features we see when individuals have low thyroid conditions and the effect that it has on the hair. And low thyroid, of course, is what causes a person to have low energy levels.

Symptoms of Hypothyroidism

So the other symptoms associated with hypothyroidism or low thyroid, are:

• fatigue
• difficulty thinking clearly
• difficulty losing weight
• cold sensitivity
• cold hands
• cold feet
• joint and muscle aches and pains
• sluggish bowel function
• recurrent and chronic infections
• hair loss
• puffiness under the eyes
• enlargement of the tongue
• puffiness on the skin

All these are common features of low thyroid.

If you have hair loss and you’re concerned about it, you need to be evaluated for a thyroid condition, and that’s not just by a blood test.

Why a Blood Test Is Not the Most Accurate Way to Diagnose Hypothyroidism

Blood tests will tell you 95% of the time that your thyroid hormone falls within this very wide range of normal, where 95% of the people’s thyroid falls. That’s how the lab companies determine what they call normal. Wherever 95% of the people fall, it’s the bell-shaped curve. So you get an average of the last 1,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 thyroid tests that were done, you get the average range, and then you add two standard deviations to it, and that takes you when you add two standard deviations to the mean or to the average, that gives you where 95% of the lab values will fall. They call anybody that’s within that 95% normal. So it’s as tall as the Empire State Building, as wide as the Grand Canyon.

So your level may have been optimal when you were younger and your thyroid hormone is up here and it can drop by 50 or 75% and still be within this wide range of normal. But since thyroid governs your metabolism and you’re only getting half as much or a quarter as much of thyroid into your cells as you used to, your metabolism is going to have fallen by half or by three quarters.

And that thyroid governs your body’s energy production. That affects your brain function. It affects your heart. It affects every organ and body. It affects your skin. It affects your hair. So it’s a very common feature that if you ladies are having hair loss and thinning of your scalp, it’s very common to find, after we do a clinical history, that you benefit from a therapeutic trial of thyroid hormone even when your blood tests fall within the normal range.

Now, oftentimes women have antibodies…men can have this too, but it’s more common in females, antibodies to their thyroid hormones and their thyroid gland. It’s called autoimmune thyroiditis. So they get antibodies that glom on to the thyroid and that adversely affects the thyroid hormones ability to produce thyroid hormones, and it also affects the ability of the thyroid hormone to properly get assimilated into the cells where it does its work. It’s like a spark plug within the cells that enables your cells to produce energy, electrical energy, within the mitochondria of the cells, the power plant of the cells. So when you have antibodies to the thyroid gland, they float in the blood and they’ll glom onto the thyroid hormones.

This is a common feature and we see that maybe in about 25% of the females that we see in our practice have antibodies to their thyroid gland. And that adversely affects their ability to utilize thyroid hormone and they have all these symptoms of thyroid, one of which can be hair loss.

So if you’re having a problem with hair loss, then I would recommend give us a call. Come into our center, Hotze Health & Wellness Center. Go to our symptom checker, by the way. You can go to hotzehwc.com, that’s spelled H-O-T-Z-E-H-W-C.com. Go to our website and do a symptom checker and see if you have all the symptoms or any of the symptoms of low thyroid.

My philosophy is this, if you have signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism, you deserve a therapeutic trial of thyroid rather than some pharmaceutical drug that isn’t the cause of your problem and won’t solve your problems, it may simply mask the problem.

Complimentary Copies of Dr. Hotze’s Books

That’s the story on hair loss. Think low thyroid, ladies. And if we can help you, don’t hesitate to give us a call at our office, 281-698-8698, and I have a copy of my book for you if you’d like it,  Hormones, Health, and Happiness. I have a chapter on thyroid here that will help you understand how the thyroid works. I also have another book, Hypothyroidism, Health & Happiness, and you can ask for that book. Simply give us a call at the office, tell them you heard me on the podcast or on this program, and then ask them to send you a book and we’ll send that to you complimentary and free of any shipping charge. Thank you so much for joining us today. I’m Dr. Steve Hotze.

Click here to subscribe to Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution Podcast today!

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