I get a lot of emails from women who have hair that is shedding and / or thinning, and this cycle is becoming noticeable.  Of course, they are self conscious about this and want to do something to restore their self esteem and confidence.  Hair extensions often come up because they are quite acceptable and visible now with many celebrities using them.  However, most people do realize that they are not without risk, which is where the doubt can come in.  Badly or wrongly done, they can make your hair loss quite a bit worse.  And they are most certainly only a short term fix.  I will discuss this more in the following article.

Hair Extensions For Thinning Hair: It used to be that extensions would mostly be used for length or as a way to give you more to work with for up dos or for special occasions.  Now though, many manufacturers have begun to explore extensions for women who have problems with thinning or inadequate volume.

If you have a short term problem like shedding due to a medical condition that will right itself soon where you know that some time in the near future you are going to have normal regrowth that will help your hair to fill back out, extensions can be a possibility to help you fill the gaps.  However, if you are not sure why you are thinning or if you don’t know if or when the thinning will end, you should be aware that these can actually hurt your cause, which I will discuss below.

When Hair Extensions May Not Be A Good Idea To Camouflage Hair Loss:  These extensions are going to need something to latch onto.  There are a few ways that this can be accomplished. The hair can be braided or woven into your own hair. This process causes a lot of pulling and damage – not only to your hair, but also to your scalp. You can imagine how tight the weave needs to be.  I have had so many people tell me that when the stylist finally took out the weave, so many hairs fell out as the result because the braids were so tight, they pulled the hair right out.

Even the extensions that “piggy back” or are glued or bonded to your strands cause tension and weight that can pull out hair that is already vulnerable.  You only have to look at celebrities like Britney Spears and Nicole Richie without their extensions in to see evidence of this. (This is often especially noticeable at the temples.)

Another concern is that you have to be so careful with your hair and scalp with these pieces. If you are having genetic or androgen driven loss or even if you are not sure why your loss is happening, you will need to be very diligent about keeping your scalp healthy and very clean.  In short, washing every day is optimal and this is often discouraged with cosmetic and additional hair.  You don’t want for anything to keep you from placing scalp health as your top priority.

However, the best idea is to only use supplemental hair as a temporary fix until you can fix what is wrong. There is only so much you are going to be able to do if you don’t have enough to work with in the long run.  The best case scenario is getting a cosmetically acceptable head of hair back.  But until then, there are some much nicer options than there were in the past.

Another concern is getting a natural look. Often women with long term thinning have fine or miniaturized hair as the result of this process.  The hair used to make extensions is often from India and is often quite course, dark, and thick.  Trying to blend in two different textures of hair is very difficult and it’s often easy to tell your real, much more fine hair from the extensions.

If this is your situation, you will often have to go with custom or European hair to get the blend that you are after.  If you’re going to go to this trouble, you are often much better off with a piece or pieces that you are able to remove and do not have to sleep in or wear constantly.  This can save a lot of wear and tear on your scalp and your hair.

How do I know all of this? Because I lived it. My hair shed and thinned for entirely too long before I become serious about addressing it. I never did get extensions. The horror stories scared me and I decided I was better off trying to regrow my own hair. In my quest to end my hair loss, I looked at my triggers, my iron, my thyroid, my adrenals, my hormones, and my scalp. It was a long, hard, frustrating journey which all but wrecked my self esteem but I finally found something that helped quite a bit.