Why Are My Eyebrows Thinning?

Eyebrow thinning is far more common than you might expect and occurs for a wide range of reasons, from injuries and overplucking to autoimmune conditions and hormonal imbalances.

Understanding the contributing factors can be essential to correcting thinning or eyebrow hair loss. That is because the therapies or treatments we recommend might depend on whether your eyebrow thinning is due to a form of alopecia, is being caused by age-related shedding or is temporary and likely to regrow in time.

Today, we’ll provide insights into the possible causes of eyebrow thinning, some of the steps you can take to prevent or slow down the pace of hair loss, and the treatment options and strategies available from the leading hair restoration specialists at KSL Clinic.

Understanding the Causes of Eyebrow Thinning

One of the very first questions we ask clients with eyebrow thinning or hair loss is whether this applies to one or both eyebrows—and, if both, whether thinning is consistent or more prevalent on one side or the other.

While not a decisive answer, this can provide a clue as to why your eyebrow hair growth might have changed and ensure we have clarity about the right first steps to restore your eyebrows to thick, full, and even growth.

Alopecia and Eyebrow Hair Loss

Alopecia is a wide-scope term for hair loss linked to your immune system, where your body attacks hair follicles and stops them from growing.

Eyebrow thinning could be linked to alopecia areata, which typically impacts your scalp but can affect your brows, and frontal fibrosing alopecia, a type of hair loss that begins at the front of the temples and commonly causes hair loss to the eyebrows.

Determining whether eyebrow thinning is due to alopecia can be meaningful since some treatments, including eyebrow transplants, should only be performed when the condition is inactive and when there is a good degree of certainty that the transplanted follicles will thrive and grow.

Nutritional Deficiencies and Thinning Around the Eyebrows

In some cases, prolonged deficiencies in certain nutrients can impact the health of your eyebrows. While less common, there are scenarios where a lack of B vitamins, vitamin C, iron and omega-3 fatty acids can contribute to or worsen the speed of eyebrow thinning.

Skin Complaints Connected to Eyebrow Thinning

Conditions that impact the health of your skin, especially around your face and eyes, can directly affect the growth of your eyebrows. These include:

• Eczema, or atopic dermatitis, which causes the skin to become irritated, itchy and red – with side effects that mean the follicles can become compromised or that damage to your skin inhibits new hair growth.
• Psoriasis, an autoimmune disorder, affects the texture of your skin as skin cells multiply, often forming red, painful, and irritated patches. Like eczema, it can block the hair follicles in your eyebrows from producing new hairs.
• Contact dermatitis, linked with allergic reactions or sensitivities to irritants, can have temporary but significant impacts on your skin, including sensations of irritation, burning, and severe itchiness. If it affects areas close to the follicles, this can impact your eyebrows.

Each of these issues is primarily associated with the skin. Still, the longer your symptoms continue untreated and the closer the affected areas are to your eyebrows, the more likely you are to see some signs of thinning.

Eyebrow Thinning, Hormones and Stress

Periods of intense stress or ongoing and chronic mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression can have a marked impact on your hair, with physical complications such as reductions in the oxygen that flows to your follicles, carrying with it nutrients.

In much the same way, pregnancy can affect your eyebrows. Many mothers see thicker, richer, and more lustrous hair on their scalps and eyebrows during pregnancy, followed by periods of expedited shedding.

This is all down to your hormones, with significant swings in hormone levels interrupting normal hair growth and resting cycles.

Temporary periods of hair loss and shedding are normally due to something called telogen effluvium, where stressors like anxiety, hormonal fluctuations, and even medication side effects prompt hair to shed or new hairs to stop forming.

While telogen effluvium is usually short-term, the duration of the damage to the follicles can influence how quickly hair growth returns to normal, if at all.

Your Age and Lifestyle and the Impacts on Eyebrow Thinning

Unfortunately, slower hair growth is common when we reach around our 40s. This occurs because the levels of testosterone in men and oestrogen in women drop.

However, a more common issue is linked to make-up products, harsh scrubs and cosmetic products, and excessive over-plucking.

Removing eyebrow hair through plucking, sugaring, or waxing can cause cumulative trauma to the follicles, which normally means that over time, hair will not grow again from the targeted areas—this also applies to the long-term use of some cosmetic products.

Treatments and Therapies to Tackle Eyebrow Thinning

Fortunately, there are several potential ways forward, depending on the extent of eyebrow thinning, the reasons behind this, and the results you’d like to see.

They can include topical medications like minoxidil, which can slow age-related thinning or restore health to your follicles, and corticosteroids to address any underlying skin conditions that are affecting your eyebrows.

Other alternatives might include platelet-rich plasma therapy, which reactivates dormant follicles in your eyebrows, or a bespoke eyebrow transplant, where the damage to the follicles or the reasons for eyebrow thinning means that your existing hair will not regrow without intervention.

If you are worried about eyebrow thinning, unsure of the causes, or want to explore the best ways to return your eyebrows to a perfect arch and address thinning or hair loss once and for all, you are welcome to book an obligation-free consultation with any KSL Clinic location. We will be happy to advise further.