Is hair loss normal after 60?
Ask most people and they will tell you thinning hair is part of getting older. For a man, Dr. Martin agrees. He is thinning himself, and he says so. For a woman he draws a hard line, and he draws it a long way out.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 798It's normal for a man. It's not normal for a woman. Ladies, unless you're 90, it's your glory.
So a woman of 62 or 68 whose part is getting wider, or whose ponytail is half what it was, is not in his view just looking at her age. She is looking at a symptom. And the first place he sends that symptom is the thyroid.
This episode is about what he called thyroid distress syndrome, the cluster of signs he saw over and over in women whose thyroid was struggling. Hair loss was number two on his list.
What he looked at in the office
Dr. Martin describes himself as observant, and he says his father taught him to be. When a patient came in, he looked before he asked. Skin, hair, nails, under the eyes. With women he paid particular attention to the eyebrows, and he would tell a woman straight out that thinning there was not normal.
He also looked for patches. Not just an overall thinning, but areas where the hair had gone thin, and when he saw that his thought went straight to the thyroid.
The other signs on his list sit alongside the hair, and many women will see themselves in more than one:
- Fatigue, because the thyroid is the gas pedal
- Weight gain, even when eating well
- Dry skin and brittle nails
- Cold hands and cold feet
- Constipation
- Low mood, low libido, unexplained itchiness and muscle cramps
When the blood work comes back normal
This is the part of the episode that matters most for a woman told her thyroid is fine. The standard screening test is TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. Labs commonly report a reference range of roughly 0.4 to 4.0 or so. That range is the lab's, not his, and he thinks it is far too wide to be useful on its own.
He saw thousands of thyroid results a year come back within normal limits, and he would not take that as the answer.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 798But I never accepted that. I never accepted that because everything that you have learned generally about your thyroid is wrong.
His objection is to what the word normal means on a lab report.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 798It's normal meaning in their opinion there's no pathology, but it's not normal if you're not feeling good.
He also points out that TSH is only the signal. The hormone the body actually runs on is T3, and the body makes very little of it, about one teaspoon a year by his count. If the conversion to T3 is not happening well, a woman can feel every sign on the list while the screening number sits in range. He covers the TSH range in more depth in what is a normal TSH for a 60 year old woman.
"That's why symptoms, what you're feeling, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck, ladies. It's a duck. It's the thyroid."
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 798Why women and not men
He puts the split at roughly 95 to 5. Men have the same hypothalamus, the same pituitary, the same thyroid and the same T4 to T3 conversion. What men do not have, he says, is ovaries, and that is where the complication comes from.
Estrogen and progesterone, in his teaching, have to be in balance. He says he has never seen a woman with too much progesterone. What he saw constantly was too much estrogen compared to progesterone, which he calls estrogen dominance.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 798If it's not equal, your thyroid ain't going to work properly.
He gives the example of a woman after having a baby, who can lose her hair, gain weight and feel low even with normal blood work, because her progesterone never came back up to match her estrogen. The point he makes is the balance itself, whatever knocked it out. He goes deeper on it in estrogen dominance after 60.
He is just as clear about men. When a man loses his hair, he says, it is not the thyroid.
The liver, stress and iodine
The thyroid, he says again and again, does not work on its own. He calls it a puppet with a lot of strings attached. On this episode he names three more of those strings.
The first is the liver. Most of the conversion of T4 to T3 happens there, which is why he wants the liver emptied of fat.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 798I want to empty your liver so your liver works properly and you can convert T4 to T3 in your liver.
The second is stress. He says cortisol and stress pour fuel on a thyroid that is already struggling, and stress also gets in the way of that T4 to T3 conversion.
The third is iodine. He says the thyroid does not work without it, and he blames flour. In his account, flour used to be processed with iodine and is now processed with bromine, which cancels iodine out.
What to do if your hair is thinning
Start with what he would do: look. Look at your hair, your eyebrows, your skin and your nails, and be honest about whether they have changed.
Then put it next to the rest of the list. Thinning hair plus tiredness, plus weight that will not move, plus cold hands, is the picture he would call a thyroid in distress. Take that picture to your doctor along with your blood work, not instead of it.
And think about the strings. His approach on this episode is the liver, the balance between estrogen and progesterone, stress, and getting off the flour. You can see how the other outward signs show up in does a slow thyroid make you look older.
Common questions
Is it normal for a woman over 60 to lose hair?
It is common, but Dr. Martin says it is not normal. Unless a woman is 90, he reads thinning hair as a sign that something, most often the thyroid, is not working properly.
Can a thyroid problem cause hair loss if my blood work is normal?
In his view, yes. He says a TSH inside the lab range only means there is no pathology in the lab's opinion. If you have the symptoms, he would not stop at the number.
Why do women lose hair from the thyroid and men do not?
He puts it down to the ovaries. When estrogen is too high compared to progesterone, he says the thyroid will not work properly. When a man loses his hair, he says it is not the thyroid.
What else affects the thyroid besides the gland itself?
On this episode he names the liver, where most T4 to T3 conversion happens, stress and cortisol, cholesterol from animal foods, and iodine, which he says flour no longer supplies.
Support the gas pedal
Dr. Martin calls the thyroid your metabolism, your gas pedal and your thermostat. Martin Clinic Thyroid Support is the formula he built for it.
60-day money-back guarantee. Formulated in clinic.These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always consult your healthcare practitioner before starting a new supplement, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition.
