Excess Facial Hair
Excess facial hair (hirsute), also referred to as male pattern hair growth, is when coarse hair grows on the chin, upper lip, cheeks, around the nipples and between the breasts, the buttocks, lower back, and the lower abdomen. Not all hirsutism is caused by high androgen levels, however, and the amount and distribution of hair is an inherited trait. As a rule, dark-haired women and dark-eyed women naturally have more body hair than fairer women or Asian women.
Signs which indicate androgen excess can include acne and/or increased male-pattern hair growth at puberty, accompanied by delayed menarche; or when women are past menarche, changes in the amount and coarseness of body or facial hair, especially when this is also accompanied by menstrual irregularity.
Stress upsets our digestion of food and it affects the reproductive system in many ways. The more your adrenals are under siege the more testosterone production can be triggered due to adrenal burnout.
It appears overweight women have more circulating testosterone in their blood and with increasingly bad symptoms such as an excess of hair. It is a chicken and egg situation. Do the high levels of testosterone create the weight gain or does the weight gain cause the hormone imbalance? Excess insulin leads to increased appetite, which can cause overweight. The more circulating insulin, the more the ovaries produce testosterone and so the cycle continues.
Recommendations
Reducing weight or maintaining an ideal weight will help to control androgen levels when women are overweight.
• Balance your blood sugar levels.
• Ensure that your body can excrete excess hormones efficiently by working on liver function.
• Improve certain lifestyle factors, such as stress and exercise.
• Exercise can improve hirsuitism because the fitter you become the lower your body fat and the better your insulin and glucose control. This in turn reduces the amount of testosterone produced in your ovaries and the amount of testosterone circulating in your blood stream.
Morning exercises, such as a brisk walk or multiple repetitions of weights that increase the heart rate also increase the rate of weight loss.