If your blood type requires you to eat meat, you are likely to degenerate on a vegan diet quite fast, whilst on a vegetarian one there could be many years passing by until you see the symptoms.

For example, I have type O blood which requires meat-eating. Type A blood can last on vegan diets the longest. Type B can survive without meat quite long too.

Also, people from certain parts of the world with meat-based diets will degenerate faster than those who are from places like India, where people eat large amounts of grains.

Vegan and vegetarian deterioration

Listen to “Watch This if You’re Vegan or Vegetarian With Thinning Hair and Accelerated Aging” on Spreaker.

After the age of 30, having been vegetarian for around 13 years, I did experience the thinning of hair and a visible loss of collagen in my skin.

Thankfully, I soon realized that this was because of not eating meat, so I introduced fatty fish and red meat into my diet, and my skin recovered quite a lot. Here’s an article with pictures of my skin changes before and after starting to eat meat.

However, my hair is still thin, so I was thinking a lot about why it’s not recovering. When I focus on something, usually the Universe leads me to the right source. And this time It did this again.

The lack of estrogen causes early aging and thin hair in women

So recently I discovered why my hair is still thin. It’s because my body produces less estrogen due to me being a vegetarian for such a long time.

Estrogen should decrease only at around the time of menopause in women, yet it reduces in vegans and vegetarians because the body is busy trying to keep the body functioning in other ways; thus hormone-production required for beauty and reproduction is reduced.

That’s why vegans and long-term vegetarians suffer from premature aging and have thin hair. The body produces smaller amount of hormones. And you can’t restore collagen in your skin unless there’s enough of estrogen produced, because skin repair due to collagen production can only happen if there’s enough estrogen.

Here’s how it works:

Estrogen supports collagen through its receptors, tiny “locks” that exist all over the body which are activated by “keys”: the estrogen molecules. These receptors are known to exist in skin; in fact, there are more estrogen receptors in the skin of the face than the skin of many other parts of the body.

Veneffect.com

How to know if your estrogen levels are low

You can check your estrogen levels by doing a blood test, but here are the symptoms of low estrogen:

• Frequent urination
• Burning urine
• Bladder problems
• Painful sex due to vaginal dryness
• Frequent urinary tract infections
• Irregular periods
• No periods
• Mood swings
• Hot flashes
• Depressive moods
• Anger
• Headaches
• Worse existing migranes
• Breast tenderness not related to menstruation
• Trouble focusing
• Fatigue
• Dry mouth
• Thinning and drying of skin around eyes
• Dry eyes
• Weak bones
• Frequent sprains
• Weak joints
• Age spots
• Thinning hair
• Loss of hair
• The increase of hair on chin
• Deeper voice
• Flatter chest
• Fat collects around the abdomen
• Less fat on face and arms, leading to skin sagging
• Fast aging when exposed to the Sun
• No or decreased sex drive

Masculine look

When estrogen production decreases, androgen hormone starts dominating, leading to more male-like look, the growth of facial hair, the deepening of voice and the flattening of the chest.

Also, as estrogen production decreases, DHT, a derivative of testosterone (male hormone), attacks hair follicles, causing them to get smaller (thus the hair starts thinning) and eventually destroying some of them completely, leading to irreversible hair loss on some parts of the scalp.

Webmd explains:

Since hormones operate best when they are in a delicate balance, the androgens, as male hormones are called, do not need to be raised to trigger a problem. Their counterpart female hormones, when lowered, give an edge to these androgens, such as DHT. Such an imbalance can also cause problems, including hair loss.

Webmd

It is well known that vegan women start looking more masculine the longer they stay vegan. This happens because the body stops producing normal amounts of estrogen which keeps them looking feminine.

That’s the reason transgenders use HRT (hormone-replacement therapy). The intake of female hormones makes them look feminine. So when in women female hormones are reduced, they will gradually start looking more masculine; they will lose hair volume, waist curve will be reduced, and facial hair growth will become more abundant.

What to do if your body produces less estrogen

If many of the symptoms of low estrogen are present in you, you may choose to do a blood test to know for sure. It’s entirely up to you whether you choose to do the test or not, and it’s entirely up to you whether you go to see a doctor or not.

If you don’t know your body, probably the best thing is to see the doctor whom you trust. Most doctors, however, are money-oriented and prescribe unnecessary medicines making people more sick and dependent on drugs. So I avoid doctors like the plague.

I’m 33 now and I never had anything serious happen to me. But that’s because I care about my body and read a lot as soon as some negative symptom manifests. This helps me to take timely action to prevent any disease or the necessity of seeing a doctor.

So after much reading I have made the decision to use estrogen supplements. It’s my third day now and I’m already noticing positive changes. That’s what people often report – within days of starting the supplements they feel better.

I also use progesterone because women with an intact uterus should use these two in combination. Again, you need to do much research before starting HRT (hormone-replacement therapy).

There are different kinds of estrogen supplements. They come in pill, patch and cream forms. I don’t want to take any pills to bypass digestion and the tiring of internal organs.

The skin itself absorbs the hormone into the blood stream so a patch or cream work fine. At the moment I’m in Spain and here I can’t find estrogen in a cream form. I would prefer using that, because it’s a pain to remove the patch.

Also, whatever form you choose to use, you need to carefully read the instructions so that you know how to dose it and how often to use it.

Why early estrogen supplementing is a wise thing to do

When the body starts decreasing estrogen production, it’s just a matter of time when it stops producing it completely. So if you wait until no estrogen is produced, you have missed your window of opportunity and now taking estrogen will no longer help you.

So the wisest thing to do is to start supplementing when the body starts decreasing its production. It takes five to ten years for estrogen to stop being produced completely (from the time its production is reduced), at least when this reduction is caused by the approach of menopause.

I don’t know if vegetarianism-caused reduction of estrogen is permanent or not; I will know if I get symptoms of overdose. Then I would go off the supplements and see what happens.

Again, it’s so important to be attuned to how your body feels so that you maintain your health. My lifestyle is pretty much stress-free, that’s why I’m aware of how my body feels most of the time.

It’s up to you whether you want to supplement. This is your choice. Please read a lot, do much research, and then decide. Most doctors would only prescribe estrogen to post-menopausal women or those going through it, but sometimes then it can be too late.

Also, there’s a lot of inaccurate information circulating about estrogen creating cancers and so forth. Such claims are based on faulty studies. There are no certain links between estrogen supplementation and cancer.

Who should not take estrogen

Some women take estrogen for decades and die very old without any negative symptoms of taking this hormone. But if your lifestyle is unhealthy, then any kind of change can be the final blow to the body, causing the disease.

If you are obese or pregnant, estrogen should not be taken. There could be other health conditions, like excessive blood clotting, which would not qualify you for hormone therapy.

Women who smoke may be more at risk of something going wrong when they start HRT. Please research this more so that you know you have no risks in taking this hormone.

Finally, HRT reduces the likelihood of dementia, so it’s recommended for people who have this condition running in the family. It also prevents bone-density loss which is very common in women going through menopause.

If you have taken estrogen and have some experience to share, please do so in the comments. If you have questions about this, you can ask, but I can’t promise to know as I’m not an expert on this. I’m just sharing my personal research.