You probably haven’t spent too much time in your life thinking specifically about your eyebrows. Unless that is, you have experienced hair loss in this area. The average person has about 250 eyebrow hairs per brow and these hairs fall out regularly because the follicles continuously go through growth and rest cycles. In certain cases, however, people experience eyebrow loss that is more dramatic and noticeable than the standard four-month shedding and regrowing cycle.
In this blog, we will take you through our top eyebrow tips and discuss reasons for eyebrow loss, before providing some key solutions.
The Importance of Eyebrows
Humans originally developed eyebrows in order to protect the eyes from sweat, water, and other debris on the brow. These useful hairs also force rain to wash over the sides of our face, instead of directly into our eyes. Over time, humans evolved to lose most other body hair, but the eyebrows remained.
This longstanding facial feature has become vital to human communication, social expression, and facial recognition. In fact, studies carried out by researchers at MIT found that participants only recognized about 46% of celebrity faces when they were shown pictures of them with their eyebrows digitally removed. This experiment included highly recognizable people such as Richard Nixon.
Tips for Healthy Eyebrows
Like any other hair on your body, eyebrow hair can be sensitive to some factors, and respond well to others. Here are our top tips for healthy eyebrows.
- Don’t over-pluck
Leaving your eyebrows alone is the best way to ensure that they stay healthy and avoid any damage. While light maintenance, such as plucking a few stray hairs, is fine, we suggest avoiding over-plucking, which damages the follicles and will lead to thinner regrowth over time. Try to use your tweezers far away from your eyebrow – they should be used to clean up the areas around the eyebrow, not to shape the eyebrow itself. - Eat healthy food
All hair growth is dependent on a healthy, balanced, and nutritious diet. Eat a broad range of foods such as eggs, fish, spinach, sweet potatoes, nuts, seeds, and lentils. This will lead to healthy hair growth from your scalp to your brows! - Moisturize
Don’t be afraid to moisturize your brows with an SPF protective moisturizer. The skin under the hairs will benefit from this, leading to a healthier overall brow area. Adding SPF moisturizer to your skincare routine will help you to avoid premature aging, sun damage, fine lines, and sagging skin. These factors can all affect your eyebrow shape.
Eyebrow Loss
If one or both of your eyebrows is thinning, there are many possible causes. Eyebrows can thin due to infection, skin conditions, hormones, nutritional deficiencies, physical trauma, emotional stress, or more. Talking with your doctor is the first step to discover the source of the problem. We’ve outlined a few of the most common causes, below:
- Alopecia Areata
Alopecia is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the hair follicles which grow your hair, which slows down and eventually halts hair production. Alopecia Areata causes random spots of hair loss, which may affect your eyebrows. Alopecia Universalis is the full loss of hair across the entire body. Frontal fibrosing alopecia causes scarring of the scalp along with balding and eyebrow loss. - Aging
Thinning hair is very common from your 40s onwards, and many people experience their eyebrows becoming thinner as a result. This is due to reduced levels of estrogen in women and reduced levels of testosterone in men. - Damage to the hair follicle from plucking
Persistent over-plucking causes trauma to the hair follicle, which may eventually stop the hair from growing in that area. - Stress
Stress and anxiety are common causes of eyebrow loss, as these experiences reduce oxygen flow to the hair follicle. This results in slower and interrupted hair growth. - Thyroid disease
Thyroid disease is a common cause of eyebrow hair loss. The thyroid is responsible for producing hormones. When this gland produces too much or too little of these hormones, the body’s balance is disrupted and typical processes such as hair growth are impacted.
Solutions for Eyebrow Loss
The right solution for you depends on the type of hair loss you are experiencing. A range of solutions have been developed, and this could be anything from corticosteroids to minoxidil or an aesthetic option such as microblading. Here at Look Natural Hair Restoration, we offer cutting-edge FUT procedures for eyebrow restoration.
FUT for Eyebrows
The expert team at Look Natural Hair Restoration are able to accurately assess whether an eyebrow transplant may be right for you. Eyebrow procedures at our facilities are performed using the FUT method. This involves a small strip of scalp being removed from the back of the head. Grafts are carefully selected and implanted into the eyebrow area. The hair on those grafts is left slightly longer in order to see the curve of the hair and perfectly match it to the natural growth of the eyebrow. Once the healing process is complete, the restored eyebrows can be trimmed, dyed and waxed just like your original brows.
If you are experiencing loss of hair in your eyebrows, we recommend reaching out to your doctor. From there, reach out to the Look Natural Hair Restoration team for a free consultation about your options and the solutions that we can offer you.
