From the founders of HALO Hair
Your HRT did not fix your hair. The reason is on your own chin, and it takes ten seconds to check.
Four minutes. Then you will know whether this is you, and what actually works on it.
Whichever of these is you, you are in the right place.
- Your HRT sorted everything else and left your hair as it was.
- It helped for a while, then stopped helping.
- Your hair started going after you began HRT.
- You have testosterone too, and it got worse.
- You cannot take HRT at all, or you were refused it.
Those look like five problems. They are one.
Give me the next three minutes.
By the end of them you will know why your hair is going, why your HRT did not stop it, and what actually works on it. No scrolling past my life story to get there — it starts in the next paragraph.
And I think you will be quite cross that nobody told you sooner. I was.
First, go and look at your jaw
Is there a coarse dark hair on your chin that was not there five years ago? One that comes back within a fortnight, however you deal with it?
Almost every woman I have asked says yes. Mine live in the car door.
That hair is your proof. Your body just grew a thick dark one overnight, and it will do it again in a fortnight.
So it has not run out of anything. It can still make hair. It is making hair right now, on your face.
It is just putting it in the wrong place.
Which means everything you have bought was for the opposite problem. Biotin, collagen, the shampoo — all of it is food, and all of it assumes you have run out of something.
You have not run out. You have a chin hair to prove it.
Your hair is not starving. Something is shrinking it. That is a different job.
What is actually going on
You have probably heard of DHT. What nobody explains is what it is up against.
Every hair grows out of a root under your skin, and that root gets told what to do. Two hormones do the telling, they want opposite things, and it has been a fight since you were about fifteen.
DHT says: get smaller. You knew that bit.
Oestrogen says: keep going. That is the bit nobody mentions.
Oestrogen never grew your hair. It just won the fight — every day, for twenty-five years.
Then one of them walks off
Nothing new turned up in your forties. The oestrogen is the one that went.
The DHT did not get stronger. There was just nobody left to argue with it.
So every time a hair grows back, the root comes back a fraction smaller and the hair comes back a fraction finer. Do that for four or five years and what grows out is too fine to be hair.
And here is what your HRT does about it
It puts the oestrogen back. Properly. That is your sleep, your mood, your knees on the stairs.
It does not touch the DHT. That was never in the box. It is not what the medicine is for.
But the prescription said hormones. So I read that and thought, right, hormones are sorted — and spent two years and nine hundred and fifty-two pounds buying vitamins.
Your HRT put one fighter back on the mat. Nobody has ever touched the other one.
Every amount printed. Nothing hidden behind the word “blend.”
So the only thing left is to bring the DHT down
That is the whole job, and two plants do it at two different points.
Pumpkin seed oil. Your body turns testosterone into DHT. This slows that down, so less of it gets made.
Saw palmetto. The DHT that does get made has to land on the root before it can shrink it. Saw palmetto gets there first and takes the spot.
Neither is a hormone. Neither goes near your HRT. Neither goes on your head.
And the amounts are the whole thing, because this is where every other bottle falls over.
- 1,000 mg cold-pressed pumpkin seed oil. Not powder. Four hundred is the only amount properly tested, and we went above it rather than below.
- 320 mg saw palmetto, standardised to 85–95% fatty acids. Without that word, saw palmetto on a label can mean almost anything.
- 100 mcg of biotin. Not ten thousand. A day needs fifty. The rest does nothing, and high doses can throw off a thyroid blood test.
And I will be straight about the pumpkin seed research, because nobody selling this ever is. It was done on men. Same hormone, same process — but nobody has run the same trial in women.
Two softgels a day. Nothing changes about your HRT.
£24.99 for a month · £49.99 for three · 90-day money-back guarantee · Keep taking your HRT
How I worked it out, which was an accident
At forty-nine they added testosterone to my HRT, for energy. Within weeks the shedding got worse — and thick dark hair started coming up on my legs, in the exact patch where I rubbed the gel in.
That is the chin thing again, except this time on my leg — and I could watch it happen week by week, from one tube.
So I asked my doctor. She said yes, it is well known — the extra testosterone turns into DHT, and DHT is what shrinks the roots on top of your head.
Two years. A GP and a £250 trichologist. And that was the first time anybody had said the word DHT to me.
I nearly came off the testosterone over it, because I thought I had to choose. Energy, or hair. You do not have to choose.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO CHOOSEKeep your HRT. Keep your testosterone. Deal with the DHT separately.
What actually happens, and when
The first thing is that you stop finding it everywhere. Less on the pillow, less in the brush. That is what nearly every woman mentions first, and it is what happened to me.
I had been buying drain unblocker every single week for about three years. Then one day, three months in, I went to get some and realised I did not need any. I stood there in the aisle feeling a bit peculiar about it.
And that was the thing, really. Not my hair. It was that I had stopped checking. I used to look at the pillow every morning before I got out of bed, and then one day I realised I had not done it in weeks.
The bobble went from four times round to three at about week eight. And at week twelve my hairdresser asked what I had been doing, before I had said anything to her.
But here is what nobody tells you about when it starts working. What changes first is not your hair. It is your morning. You stop counting the ones on the pillow. You stop angling the bathroom mirror so you cannot see the top of your head. You stop choosing seats that are not under the overhead light. You walk past a window and you do not check your reflection. The wind picks up and your hand does not go to your hood.
And that is the real before-and-after. Not a photograph. It is the morning you get up and go downstairs without looking.
The first five weeks are dead quiet, though. Nothing happens. That is where everybody gives up, and it is the single reason nothing has ever worked for you — because a root has to finish the cycle it is already in before it can start a better one.
STOP CHECKING YOUR PILLOWThe ritual stops before the hair comes back. That is the first thing you notice.
And why it works, which comes down to the amounts
Everything in this category uses roughly the same two plants. The difference is how much of them, and in what form, and that is where nearly every bottle on the shelf quietly cuts back.
Turn over whatever is in your cupboard. You will find pumpkin seed powder rather than the oil, because ground seed is cheap. Saw palmetto with no amount next to it, just the word blend. And a big biotin number on the front, because that is the bit they can afford to shout about.
None of it is illegal — nobody has to print how much of a plant is in a bottle. But once you know, you cannot buy one the same way again.
That is the whole difference with ours. Two things that do something, both at an amount that means something, and nothing padding it out.
And I will be straight about the ceiling, once, and then leave it alone. This is not going to give you the hair you had at thirty. Mine has not. But four years of it only ever going one way, and then it stops — that is what I was actually after by the end, and that is what I got.
What women on HRT say
Eight months of thinking I had to pick one or the other. This is the only thing I have read that explained why both were happening at once and did not just tell me to stop taking it. I have kept everything exactly as it was and added this alongside. The parting has stopped getting wider, which after four years of it only going one way I will absolutely take.
On HRT and testosterone
That is my whole review really. Every Sunday, down the plughole, for about three years. I have not had to do it since around week ten. My hairdresser asked what I had changed before I had told her a thing. I am not going to say it is back to what it was at thirty, because it is not. But something is finally going the right way.
Hairdresser noticed
They tell you upfront that nothing happens for over a month, and it did not, and because I had been warned I did not throw the bottle in the bin at week four like I have done with every other thing I have bought. Week nine is when the bobble went from four to three. It is the first number that has moved in the right direction since about 2021.
Nearly quit at week 4If the bobble has not moved by day ninety, email us and we give you your money back.
What it costs
| 1 bottle · one month | £24.99 |
| 3 bottles · £16.66 a month | £49.99 |
| 5 bottles · £15.00 a month | £74.99 |
Most people take the three
Three months is fifty pounds. The biotin on my receipt was twenty-four, and it was the cheapest thing on it. Three months because hair runs about three months behind everything you do. Not a subscription.
Count your bobble tonight — how many times it goes round. Count it again at ninety days. If it has gone the wrong way, or not moved at all, email us and we give you your money back. And if it simply holds where it is, after four years of only going one way, we count that as it working.
I WANT TO STOP COUNTING£49.99 for three months · 90-day money-back guarantee · No subscription
Keep taking your HRT. It is doing a job nothing on this page does. Then deal with the DHT, which is the bit nobody covered.
Your HRT gave you your life back. It was never going to do this bit, and that is not its fault or yours.
There is one hormone making your hair thinner. There are two plants that get in its way. There is one bottle with both of them at the right amount. And there is a morning, a few weeks from now, where you get out of bed and go downstairs without looking at the pillow first.
That morning is the whole point.
DEAL WITH THE BIT NOBODY COVERED£49.99 for three · 90-day guarantee · Keep your HRT exactly as it is
— Ellie
Went on HRT at forty-seven, spent the following two years and £952 aiming at the wrong problem, and kept every receipt. Still on the gel, the pessary and the testosterone.
Ellie’s older sister. Read the thirty labels, and is the reason there is a standardised extract in the bottle rather than a blend.
P.S. Food supplement. Not a medicine, and not a replacement for anything you have been prescribed. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, taking prescription medication or being treated for a hormone-sensitive condition, speak to your GP or pharmacist first. And do not change your HRT because of anything you have read here.