Dealing with hair thinning problems in women has always been a problem for two reasons. First the number one hair loss treatment for men is a drug that has been approved by the FDA as an actual treatment that helps assist in hair thinning and balding issues but it is not approved for women. Finasteride has shown itself to be very effective at slowing down hair loss and actually helping some of the affected hair follicles to start producing hair again. It was originally developed as a treatment for male urinary problems but was also shown to be effective as a treatment for male pattern baldness. Unfortunately, this drug tends to cause horrific birth defects in male babies so no women of child bearing age should even touch the tablet let alone ingest it.
So that leaves the number one prescribed drug for hair loss out. The other problem has been when trying to use a hair transplant for women procedure. Women tend to have thinning hair over their entire head when they suffer from androgenic alopecia which is the same condition noted above with the common name male pattern baldness for men. For women this condition is called female pattern hair loss but there really is not a pattern like in a mans symptoms.
Men, when developing this problem, will generally see their hair loss in a pattern on their head. They often have a receding hair line or hair loss at the crown and vertex or some variation of these. This generally leaves a thick hair growth at the back of the head. Luckily for men, this means there is a good donor area for removal of hair transplants grafts to be implanted into the bald spot. Hair transplants women, on the other hand, can not come from an area of thick hair growth because of the thinning over the entire head. If you take hair follicles from one area it will just make that spot look even balder.
To get around this problem with hair transplants for women there is a new procedure called follicular unit extraction. This process is just what the name implies. The individual hair follicles and associated support structures are removed individually from the skin instead of in a large strip like in the normal hair transplant procedure. This means hairs from other parts of the body can be used as donor hairs to implant into the scalp where it is thinning.
These body hairs are not the same texture as the scalpel hair and are often times slightly off color. There is a big enough difference that the hairs are not recommended for hair line reconstruction. Where they do well is as filler hairs within the main body of hair. The are mostly unnoticeable as far as being different but they do a very good job of filling in and covering the scalp.
Now that hair implants for females are available this opens up a whole new possibility of treating hair loss in women. Where before the only option was to wear a wig or scarf, the females of our population who experience hair loss can now treat it with hair transplant. Women who utilize this method have enjoyed great results.