Thanks for being here today. I hope we can have some meaningful discussions. When hair loss begins in a woman, the first thing to do is start with a general medical evaluation to see if there are any underlying medical problems. To contrast that, if your hair's falling out from too much hair styling or hair pulling or from over-treatment, that would be more of a lifestyle or a situational problem. The major difference in female-pattern hair loss is that the actual distribution of hair loss on the head is different.
Women tend to retain their frontal hairline and lose their hair on the top and the side.
It's similar to male-pattern baldness in that it appears to be hormonally influenced. One of the things the show brought out is that in women it's not something you expect. It's taken for granted that most men at some point will lose their hair, but for women it tends to be unexpected. I think the fact that it affects fewer women than men is one of the reasons why there hasn't been a lot of research into female hair loss, and there certainly aren't a lot of treatments. A number of people in our audience ask if the alopecia gene is hereditary.