Wellness & Women Facebook ad: “They told me it was just normal. It wasn't.”

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1940139733238583

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Hair Care

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Menopause hair loss is not "just normal." It is neglect. I wasn't always willing to say that out loud. I'm 64. And I genuinely wish someone had said this to me six or seven years ago when I first started noticing things weren't right. Because nobody did. Not my doctor. Not anyone. What I got was: this is normal for your age. What I should have gotten was an actual answer. The first time I really noticed was sometime in my late 50s. A little extra in my brush. A little more in the drain. Normal shedding, I told myself. Everyone sheds. It's fine. But this last year or so, it stopped being fine. There's a patch near the back of my crown where you can just see the scalp now. Clearly. I can't style my way around it, not anymore. My daughter noticed it first. Didn't say a word, but I caught her looking and I knew, and then I couldn't unknow it. I bought a hat the next day. I wear a hat almost everywhere now. I'm 64 years old and it has basically become my whole personality, except it's not a personality, it's hiding. My husband hasn't seen my head uncovered in close to a year. We've been married 31 years. We sleep in the same bed every single night. And still. I arrange things around it. Go to bed late. Up before him. You figure out the logistics when you have to. I stopped going to the pool with the grandkids last summer. We used to make it a whole thing, the whole family, every few weeks. I started saying my back was bothering me. My back is fine. My youngest granddaughter asked me at some point why Grammy always wears her hat in the water. I made something up that didn't quite make sense and changed the subject. That one sat with me for a while. My college roommate had her retirement party last spring. Big dinner, everyone dressed up, people I hadn't seen in years. I RSVP'd yes and then two weeks before, I texted her a lie about a family conflict and stayed home. I stayed home from my best friend's retirement party because of my hair. I have never said that out loud before. That one I've been carrying by myself for a long time. So I tried. For years I tried. Biotin for almost a year, the expensive kind, not the drugstore brand. My nails were genuinely great. My hair did not respond. Rosemary oil rubbed into my scalp every single night before bed. My husband thought I was seasoning myself for something. Did nothing. A salon treatment, some kind of keratin thing, that my hairdresser recommended and cost me $200. My hair looked temporarily great and then went right back to exactly where it was within three weeks. Collagen powder in my coffee every morning for five or six months. The coffee tasted wrong the whole time. My hair continued to not care. I even tried minoxidil. My doctor basically told me to just grab some off the pharmacy shelf, like it was the most she had to offer me. I used it every single day for almost eight months. And okay. Some stuff did come back. I'll give it that much. But you have to use it forever. The minute you stop, everything you grew falls right back out. That's not really fixing it. About six months ago I was sitting in my hairdresser's chair and she mentioned something almost offhand while she was working on me. She said she had another client, around my age, who'd come in a few months back and the woman's hair had genuinely transformed. Said she'd done some kind of assessment first. Kept emphasizing that part, that it wasn't just buying something, it was an actual assessment that looks at your specific situation before recommending anything. I asked a few questions. She didn't know all the details. She just said: "I see a lot of women dealing with this and most of the things they try don't work. I just know what I saw on her." Then she went back to doing my hair. I want to be honest with you: I almost ignored it. I've spent enough money on hope to be pretty much done with it. Biotin. Rosemary oil. $200 keratin treatments. I have a whole shelf in my bathroom that I'm not ready to think about. But I kept coming back to what she said. My hairdresser doesn't recommend things lightly. She is the same woman who talked me out of a permanent color change two years ago because she said it wouldn't suit me, and she was completely right. She just tells you what she actually sees. So two weeks later I did the assessment. Real questions. Not just "how bad is your shedding" and then here's a product. And behind all of it, apparently, is a whole team of leading expert dermatologists and trichologists. Not a general skin clinic. Not a hair brand that treats this as a side item on the menu. This, specifically. I heard later that some of them had turned down opportunities with pharmaceutical companies because they didn't want this turned into some mass-produced thing. The whole approach starts with figuring out what is actually happening with you. Which sounds obvious, but is apparently not how it usually works, given that "just grab something off the pharmacy shelf" is the best most of us ever get. I went in expecting nothing. I had genuinely made peace with lower expectations. Week 6, the shedding basically stopped. I cleaned my brush one morning and just stood there for a second because there was so much less than I was used to. Less than there'd been in years. I didn't say anything to anyone. I was still waiting for the other shoe. Week 12, my part line started filling back in. I remember doing a literal double take in the bathroom mirror. My actual hair. Growing back in. The patch at my crown, covered. Not dramatically, not overnight. Just there. Actually there. My hairdresser pulled up a photo on her phone from an appointment almost a year ago, she keeps pictures at every visit, and held it next to my head without saying a word. I looked at the before photo for a long time. I didn't really recognize the part line in it as mine. Which is a sentence I could not have imagined saying to anyone six months ago. I wore my hair uncovered to dinner last month. My husband's favorite little Italian place, nothing special, just a regular Tuesday night out. He noticed before we even got to the car. Didn't make a big deal of it. Just looked at me and said "you look really beautiful tonight" in this quiet way he has sometimes, and that was it. He still doesn't know the whole story. I'll tell him eventually. I took the grandkids to the pool two weekends ago. First time in over a year. My six year old asked if I forgot my hat. I said no baby. Grammy doesn't need it today. I have not stayed home from anything because of my hair since. I still have bad days. My husband still cannot find the butter in the refrigerator when it is right there in front of him. I still have a mortgage and a body that doesn't do what it used to in all kinds of ways. None of that changed. But this specific thing, the thing I had been quietly managing, hiding from everyone including the person I sleep next to, building my whole daily routine around for years, that changed. I didn't realize how much weight I'd been carrying until it started lifting. I don't plan my mornings around my hair anymore. I don't wear a hat to the pool. I don't have a shelf full of things that didn't work. I think a lot about what I would have told myself at 57 when this started. When my doctor shrugged and said "it's normal" and I just nodded and left and didn't push back. I would have told her: it is not just normal. It is not something you have to manage around for the rest of your life. It is not something you just accept because no one has a better answer for you. And you don't have to stop going to things. Anyway. I'm only writing all of this out tonight because of what my hairdresser said almost offhand six months ago, and how it ended up changing something for me that I had been quietly carrying for years. So I figure I pass it along. It's an actual assessment, not something you buy blind off a shelf. They look at your specific situation, your specific history, before recommending a single thing. Took me five minutes total. Link is below if you want to see what it says about you. Never thought I'd be writing three pages about hair at 64, but here we are. - Margaret

Where the ad sends people

quiz.oelabeauty.com

They told me it was just normal. It wasn't.

Right now, follicles that are still alive are being pushed out early — forced to shed before they've finished growing. Every month this continues, fewer of them come back. Some stop coming back at all. This formula shuts that process down at the root.