What Causes Thinning or Sparse Eyebrows?
Written by Dr. Griffin
The hairs on your eyebrows are just like the hairs on your scalp in that it’s possible for them to become thinner or simply stop growing. Since the brows are such an important and noticeable feature that frames a face, it’s difficult to hide issues such as uneven arches and crookedness due to a brow mishap. If you’ve recently noticed that your brows are diminishing, there could be many possible causes for this, such as infections, skin conditions, hormonal changes, an overactive immune system, nutritional deficiencies, physical trauma, or emotional stress. Much like the hair on your head, it’s also possible to restore fuller hair on the eyebrows using hair grafts. Eyebrow transplants from our Philadelphia-based practice are a transformative procedure that can be beneficial for patients who want to restore thicker brows—especially for those who have experienced burns on the eyebrow areas, or who have scars, alopecia areata, hypothyroidism, or other conditions that prevent healthy, normal hair growth on these areas.
In this post, we explore some of the common reasons why patients have patchy or receding eyebrows and what can be done to prevent it.
Normal Aging
Aging causes hair on our heads, eyebrows, eyelashes, and elsewhere to become sparser than it used to be because the hair shafts become smaller and the follicles begin to “shut down.” This commonly begins in our 40s when our hormone levels change. Although there’s no way of fully preventing this, you can avoid habits that are known to contribute to hair loss.
Stress and Anxiety
Chronic stress can cause less oxygen to get to the hair follicles and also cause our hormones to go haywire, resulting in thinner eyebrows. Use techniques to reduce stress such as yoga and meditation.
Overplucking
Tweezing has been known to have a bad effect on the hair growth cycle. Each time you pluck your brows, minor trauma is caused that may eventually cause the hair to not grow in certain spots. If you’re tempted to pluck your eyebrows constantly, it’s best to go to a professional for eyebrow shaping instead and avoid tweezing them in between appointments.
Get more advice on eyebrow transplants from the Griffin Hair Restoration Center of Philadelphia. Give us a call at (215) 561-9100 or submit a contact form to request a consultation if you’re curious about the benefits of surgical and non-surgical hair restoration treatments.