Sali Hughes on beauty: worried about hair loss? Here’s a treatment that actually works

I’m 51, perimenopausal, and somewhere between the newly distended stomach and the urge to pick fights with fellow passengers on public transport (why have people stopped wearing headphones?), came hair thinning. Brilliant.

It’s not as though I could claim an abundance in the first place. However, hair-loss products were at least something I could explore professionally, so I tested and tested, figuring there must be a column in there somewhere. There wasn’t.

In the end, I did what I’d previously told my closest friends to do: I signed up to Hair+Me, a £34.99 monthly subscription service, staffed by clinicians dispensing proved hair-loss medications such as Minoxidil (prescribed across genders) and Finasteride and Dutasteride (for biological men only) in tablet or ointment form.

I knew it could work. I’d got my best friend, Cait, on to it when she, who’d always prided herself on an enormous thatch, stopped hair-washing because the sight of large clumps on the shower floor ruined the next week. She signed up, uploaded her photos and their nightly tablets (topical ointment is not usually prescribed to pet owners as it’s toxic to some animals), performed near miracles. Within a couple of weeks, baby hairs were forming, the shedding had slowed to normal and Cait was herself once more. Ditto two other girlfriends who followed my same advice.

Aside from my very different base level (my hair has always been thin and flat), my trajectory on Hair+Me/Minoxidil has been identical. After two months, new hair is visibly growing (as well as on my chin, a common side-effect, so I’ve upped my tweezing).

I tell you all this not by way of medical advice (I’m not qualified to give it), but to explain that real, evidence-backed help – not rosemary shampoos and dubious tech gadgets promoted uncritically online – is out there. Even for free via your GP, if s/he is sympathetic. In which case, my congratulations. But with appointment times shaved to the bone (assuming they can be secured at all), it may save time and tears to explore a paid subscription for the same treatment.

Anxiety around hair loss is not some frivolous, vain “champagne problem”. It can be a misery at a time when our plates are already too full. Even friends who barely wear moisturiser, let alone engage with any non-invasive cosmetic treatments such as Botox, have found age-related thinning to be their line in the sand and opted to shed the guilt, not the hair.