Why Your Hair Is Falling Out Now and What It Could Be Telling You
From stress and hormones to GLP-1s and aging, OMI founder Naomi Whittel explains why women lose hair, where it shows up first, and why your strands are trying to tell you something important.
-
Click here to listen to this article - Share via
LA Times Studios may earn commission from purchases made through our links.
Naomi Whittel, founder of OMI, a peptide-based hair health brand, was in Calabria, Italy, when she snapped a photo of herself and didn’t like what she saw. She was telling Live + Well podcast host Melissa Magsaysay on a recent episode that her part line was four times as wide as she’d been telling herself it was. “I guess I had been sort of hiding it from myself,” she said. “And my hairdresser was doing the same thing. This photo didn’t lie.”
That moment sent Whittel on a search for answers. From New Zealand research labs to clinical trials, and eventually to a broader reckoning with what hair loss actually means. “Hair isn’t just something we style,” she says. “It’s biological tissue. It’s a message of what’s going on within our body.”
Whittel was born with a peptide disorder that affects how her follicles hold onto hair, which means she’s spent much of her adult life thinking about something many women only start paying attention to once something has already gone wrong.
What Causes Hair Loss in Women: Stress, Hormones, and Nutrient Depletion
Whittel goes on to share that chronic stress can disrupt the hair growth cycle, “pushing follicles out of their active phase and triggering shedding that can show up weeks or even months after the original cause,” she explains. That delay, she says, is part of what can make losing your hair disorienting. By the time you’re finding more strands in the shower, the trigger may already be behind you.
RELATED: Can Natural Skincare Really Work? Tata Harper Weighs In
The number two reason women are losing their hair, according to Whittle, is hormonal. Whittel describes hair follicles as highly sensitive to fluctuations in estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, which is why she says loss tends to spike during postpartum recovery, perimenopause, menopause, and, less obviously, during hormone replacement therapy.
Discover how peptides for hair growth combat thinning and breakage. Listen as Naomi Whittel reveals the secret to retaining fuller hair.
“I can’t tell you how many girlfriends I have that lost a bunch of their hair when they went on their HRT,” she told Magsaysay. She explains that when testosterone rises in the body, it can accelerate shedding through a process involving an enzyme called DHT (dihydrotestosterone), something she says women on HRT may be navigating without realizing the connection. During peak hormonal shifts, she adds, the experience can feel overwhelming. “You’re in this hyper zone of like, oh my gosh, freaking out.” According to Whittel, women can lose up to three times more hair per month than usual during these transitions.
RELATED: Inside Kris Jenner’s Peptide Routine: Can Hair Growth Really Be Biohacked?
There’s also a newer conversation she’s having with clients, tied to one of the most talked-about categories in health right now. GLP-1 medications like Ozempic don’t cause hair loss directly, Whittel says, but what often accompanies rapid weight loss can. “Anyone dealing with weight loss needs to be cognizant of nutrient depletion.” She puts people on GLP-1s, vegetarians, vegans, and anyone not eating enough protein into the same category. People whose follicles, in her view, may be under-resourced. Hair is not essential tissue, she explains, so when the body is running low, it prioritizes vital organs first and the follicle gets what’s left.
Where Hair Loss Starts in Women and How It Shows Up
For many women, Whittel says, hair loss doesn’t follow the clean, visible pattern associated with male pattern baldness, which is part of why it can be so easy to miss until it isn’t. The most common places she sees women first notice thinning are the temples, the part line, and an area at the back of the scalp. “There’s a whole group of women, that’s where they thin out the most,” she says. Rather than a defined bald patch, the change often feels more subtle. And then there’s what Whittel describes as the factor that builds over time.
That growing sense of “I don’t care anymore” isn’t random. It’s rooted in real neurological changes that come with perimenopause and midlife.
Hair is largely made up of keratin peptides, structural proteins that the body produces naturally from birth. “As we age, like with everything, it declines,” she explains. As those levels drop, she says, follicles become less active, growth cycles shorten, and hair comes in finer and slower to replace what’s shed. It’s also her explanation for why so many women feel like their hair won’t grow past a certain length. “It’s because of our internal health,” she says. “When you start nourishing...all of a sudden it’s like, okay, I can go further.”
Hair Loss in Women as a Health Signal: What Your Body May Be Telling You
Environmental exposure, Whittel tells Magsaysay, adds another layer that often goes unexamined. “This is the most sensitive tissue you can imagine,” she says of the scalp and hair fiber. Unlike skin, she explains, it doesn’t repair itself in the same visible way, so damage from UV exposure, pollution, and microplastics can accumulate without obvious warning signs. “When we go out in the sun and we’re like, okay, I’m putting my SPF on, this tissue is also suffering.”
RELATED: Thinking About Increasing Your GLP-1 Dose? Read This First
Whittel’s view, and what makes her conversation with Magsaysay worth a full listen, is that hair loss is information. “We’re just beginning to understand that it’s this holistic system,” she says. “This is a message of what’s going on within our body.” It can reflect hormonal imbalance, chronic stress, nutritional gaps, or metabolic shifts, often before other signs appear.
Speaking at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Tina Knowles reflects on the parenting decision she made long before it was widely accepted, and how it helped shape her daughters’ relationship.
The problem is that most women don’t recognize it as such. Growth cycles are long, shedding is delayed, and early changes are easy to dismiss as a bad hair day. “Out of the 365 days in a given year, 156 of those are bad hair days for an average woman,” Whittel explains. “We’re kind of starting from a place where we don’t fully understand what’s happening.” And the reason, she tells Magsaysay, is rarely just one thing. “Hair loss in women is almost never just because of one thing.” Once you understand what’s actually going on, she says, you can start to do something about it.
Listen to the full episode of Live + Well with Melissa Magsaysay on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
MORE LIVE & WELL
