My hair started thinning at 40, but at 50, it’s fuller and longer than ever - here's how I did it

If you had told me 10 years ago that at 50 my hair would be longer, fuller, and healthier than it was in my thirties, I would have thought you were lying. Back then, I genuinely believed I would never be able to get my hair's old condition back. Like for so many women, it has always been my comfort blanket, and while it wasn’t as thick as my mum’s or sister’s, it had always been long and full. So when it began to change, it hit my confidence hard.

I first noticed my hair thinning the year I turned 40. At the time, I was working as beauty director of Boots Health & Beauty magazine, and my kids were 11 and five, so I was well past the post-partum hair loss stage. I remember noticing my scalp far more at the front – it would also be visible when looking in the rearview mirror of my car. And once I noticed it, I couldn't unsee it.

Then I started noticing other signs. I was wrapping my hairband around an extra loop when I put my hair into a ponytail. The sides had lost all their volume and no matter what I did, it refused to grow. It kept breaking and was really dry. Frustrated, I chopped it into a shoulder-length bob – it hadn’t been that short for years!

Not long after I cut it, I had to have my pictures taken for a magazine photoshoot, and the makeup artist picked up on my paranoia about my hair. She said, "Look, I know that you're so paranoid about your hair today, so let's put a bold red lipstick on you to draw the attention away from it."

Now, 10 years later, I know that one of the main reasons why my hair was thinning was because I was entering perimenopause. Unbelievably, especially considering I now write about it all the time, perimenopause wasn’t a word I’d even heard of back then and, despite working in the beauty industry, I had no idea that I was entering this hormonal phase.

I now know, thanks to my own research and from interviewing experts like consultant dermatologist Dr Nicole Chiang, midlife hair thinning is inevitable for most women, thanks to all of those fluctuating hormones. “During perimenopause, our hair’s natural growth phase shrinks, meaning individual strands drop out sooner before they can reach their usual length,” she explains.

“At the same time, as our oestrogen levels drop faster than our testosterone levels, that hormonal shift allows the androgens – the hormones that can shrink the hair follicles – to take control.”

On top of all these hormonal shifts, midlife stress also plays a role, and personally, my forties were a huge decade of uncertainty and change. I moved with my husband and two sons to America, supported my mum and dad through health problems, "survived" Covid and struggled through financial issues. All of these life issues, Dr Chiang confirms, would have almost certainly impacted the health of my hair.

"Our hair follicles have cortisol receptors, which can push the hair more into the shedding phase,” Dr Chiang continues. “Plus, stress can cause a lot of inflammation; when we have scalp inflammation, our hair is going to fall out quicker, and it’s not going to grow as well."

While hair extensions provided a quick fix, the expense and maintenance led me to remove them after a couple of years. I then decided to shift my focus to the products I used and how my overall lifestyle impacted the health of my hair. Here's what I did...

1. Upgraded my shampoo and conditioner

In my mid-40s, I started treating my hair routine the same way I treated my skincare routine – I began to take notice of ingredients and quality. I stopped using shampoos with drying ingredients like sulphates and silicones, and picked more premium options from brands like Chãmpo, Living Proof and Kérastase that suited my scalp type as well as my hair.

"Always think why are you shampooing,” says Dr Chiang. “You want to cleanse your scalp, not just your hair, and to have healthy hair you need to have a healthy scalp. So definitely target your shampoo to your scalp skin, and then you choose conditioner for your hair.”

I also started advocating for myself by having honest conversations with my hairdresser. And when I voiced my concerns about breakage and thinning, he recommended the K18 Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask, which completely transformed my hair! It has a superior formula made from peptides that made it softer and stronger and I swear it helped me grow it to the length it is now – something that I’ve not been able to do since my early twenties.

2. Looked at my diet and lifestyle

Nearly two years ago, I made the decision to stop drinking alcohol. This completely reshaped my relationship with my health, which in turn, improved the quality of my hair. It also improved my sleep, motivated me to work out and led me to focus far more on my diet.

So I also began to eat more protein and, as Dr Chiang explained to me, a healthy, balanced diet is essential if you want to improve your hair health, because your body prioritises vital organs long before it sends nutrients to hair.

3. Added LED therapy to my haircare routine

I’d always been sceptical about red light therapy for hair, but after speaking to Dr Chiang, I decided to give it a try. "If you look at the evidence, red light therapy is usually mentioned as one of the treatments that has been shown to have some evidence to work for hair growth," she notes.

It’s hard to measure the benefits of LED therapy on your hair, especially when you are trying other things simultaneously to improve its quality. However, after wearing Beauty Pie’s H Wave LED Hair & Scalp Treatment every night for a few weeks (I find the caps far easier to use than bulky helmets), my hair is growing really quickly and feels more manageable.

Now, when I think back to that photoshoot over 10 years ago, I realise that you really can get your hair back into shape with the right routine and products. So if you’re currently in that space, take a deep breath, put a plan in place and give your hair time to respond. It will pay off – I’m proof of that!