A reader wrote in with a further suggestion for the woman worried her chin hair is mounting a steady takeover:
Have the chin hair person tested for PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome). It’s how mine started, and nipping that shit in the bud is the best way to prevent crazy weight/all-over body hair issues/infertility.
That’s a good idea! I’ve noticed that many, many women I read online have been diagnosed with PCOS over the last five years, and of those women, most had to fight to have their symptoms taken seriously by health care professionals (“Be less fat!”) If you’ve just got some stray chin hairs, this advice probably isn’t for you, but if a few different niggling concerns start falling into place, go get checked out.
Good advice. I was trying to get pregnant and wasn’t getting my period for eight months, but also wasn’t conceiving. My dipshit gynecologist just kept telling me to take pregnancy tests, everything was probably fine. As if I wouldn’t know if I was eight months pregnant. I went out of network and paid $300 to see a specialist, who in the first five minutes said I probably had PCOS, which I had never heard of before. Endocrinologist confirmed it. Went on Metformin, got pregnant almost instantly. No thanks to my gynecologist, who had probably never heard of PCOS either.
I also second this suggestion. PCOS is actually quite common, but the symptoms can seem pretty normal if you don’t know what to look for. Excessive body and facial hair, acne, weight gain, and irregular menstrual cycles are all symptoms. Other symptoms can include depression, infertility, inability to loose weight, and hair loss on your head. All of which are super fun. Basically PCOS sucks, especially if you are experiencing symptoms without a diagnosis which is pretty common. I was diagnosed pretty easily, but I’ve heard stories from people who went to doctors for years trying to figure out what their symptoms meant. Unfortunately, most doctors standard advice is “Lose weight!” which is pretty fucking difficult when a major symptom is weight gain/the inability to lose weight. It’s like the disease ouroborus. After I figured out what I had, I talked to friends, and it turned out one of my college roommates and a girl that lived across the hall at PCOS.
I had the opposite happen. I went to see an endocrinologist because of various symptoms mostly related to SSRI withdrawal. But I had had excessive thirst for awhile which set off every doctor’s diabetes alarm (FINALLY got an explanation for that years alter… it’s actually dry mouth not thirst and totally unrelated). Anyway, the fancy upper east side endocrinologist was shocked that my glucose level was low to normal because I was 10 lbs overweight and couldn’t possibly not have diabetes and told me I had PCOS that was giving me chin hairs. She suggested various medication options in addition to the birth control I was already on, but I went with tweezers.
(it’s actually possible I do have something hormonal similar to PCOS but my symptoms seem very different from most people I know with it. I just felt like that doctor really missed a lot of what was going on with me at the time and had some judgment issues going on.)
Can we also talk about how when you’re a lady in your twenties and you have menstrual irregularities (or in my friend’s case just general, unexplained nausea) as one in a list of symptoms, most doctors (esp. male) will just ask you repeatedly if you’re pregnant and you don’t know it? UGH.
I quit going to my endocrinologist for my thyroid when his P.A. pulled this. I found a very nice GP who ACTUALLY LISTENS instead.
Uuugh. I had an inner ear infection go undiagnosed for 6 months in college because my symptoms were vertigo and nausea. Every single time I went to student health they asked, “is it possible that you’re pregnant?”, and I had to say “well, I’m on the pill but I guess it’s possible.” and then they’d give me a pregnancy test and send me away. “Come back in two weeks if it’s still a problem.”
I read this as getting the chin hairs tested for PCOS and I was excited because I’ve had to undergo so many intrusive tests for PCOS and testing some hairs sounds way better. 🙁
Apparently you have to have 2 out of 3 symptoms of PCOS to be diagnosed, 1 being actual ovarian cysts. Since I don’t have those, and my blood work shows that my hormones have stabilized (thank you herbs and supplements and metformin), my doc doesn’t consider my chin hairs evidence of high testosterone. “You have to have more than a few,” she says.
A few bristly chin hairs is a few too many!!!!
Hm I never had ovarian cysts, but I was diagnosed. Trying to remember now what symptoms they used for my diagnosis…
ALSO great info: http://gokaleo.com/2012/11/01/my-pcos-story/
ALSO great info: http://gokaleo.com/2012/11/01/my-pcos-story/
Josie Long IS AMAZING
I am a very hairy girl and definitely have more than my share of chin/neck hairs. However, while I do have ovarian cysts I do not have PCOS. It’s a good thing to get checked for, but as other commenters have said, you have to have a few more symptoms than just general wolfgirlyness.
I'm late to the game here, but part of the problem with diagnosing PCOS (at least, according to my endo and the endo I saw in Germany; make of those sources what you will) is that it's not as much a disorder as it is a set of symptoms that manifest in different ways. So it's possible to have elevated testosterone and chin hair and not have cysts and still be diagnosed; it's also possibly to have cysts and no chin hair and hormones that are wonky another way. Dysmenorrhea shows up in some women and not others; some PCOS women don't have fertility issues. It's not the most common endo disorder because a ton of women have the same set of symptoms, but rather because there are so many symptoms that can add up to the same (or a very similar) result.
Diagnosis is sometimes also tricky because there are a few other endo disorders that present similarly, including atypical forms of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (the atypical forms don't involve ambiguous genitalia — know that right now if you decide to google it). Some of the therapies are the same, so unless the patient really pushes to know which syndrome is behind their symptoms, an endo might not differentiate. Typical (ha) CAH is much more immediately diagnosable.
A good piece of advice here. I had a similar problem and it ate considerably into my esteem. I realized I was tearing myself away from friends and avoiding socials. It took me several visits to my obs/gyne to realize what was wrong.