Nanogen x The Better Menopause: Why better hair in midlife might start in your gut

This Hair Loss Awareness Month, we’re partnering with The Better Menopause to explore the surprising connection between gut health and hair health. As we navigate perimenopause and menopause, hormonal changes can affect everything from our gut microbiome to the way our hair grows, sheds and feels. So, while we often focus on what we can do for our hair from the outside, what’s happening within our bodies matters too.

In this expert-led article, Joanna Lyall, Nutritional Therapist and co-founder of The Better Menopause, explores the gut-hair connection and shares how supporting your gut health could play a role in supporting your hair through midlife.

Why better hair in midlife might start in your gut: the gut–hormone connection in menopause

Written by Joanna Lyall, Nutritional Therapist and co-founder of The Better Menopause Dip Nut, mBANT, CNHC

If you're reading this, chances are you already take good care of your hair from the outside. But if you're in your 40s or beyond and you've noticed your hair changing — thinning, shedding, losing its old texture — there's another part of the story worth knowing about. It's happening on the inside, and it starts somewhere you might not expect: your gut.

First, what's happening with your hormones

Through perimenopause and menopause, oestrogen and progesterone stop rising and falling in their familiar monthly rhythm and begin to fluctuate — sometimes wildly — before gradually declining. Oestrogen helps keep hair in its growth phase for longer, so as it falls, hair can spend less time growing and more time resting and shedding.¹ That's why so many women notice a change in their hair at this stage of life. It's common, it's hormonal, and it's not vanity to care about it.

But your hair is only one part of the picture. Those same fluctuating hormones are having a profound effect somewhere else too.

What perimenopause does to your gut

Your gut is lined with receptors for oestrogen and progesterone — which means that when those hormones swing, your digestive system feels it. It's why so many women find their gut suddenly seems to have a mind of its own in their 40s: bloating that appears from nowhere, sluggish or unpredictable digestion, and foods you've eaten happily for years no longer agreeing with you. If this sounds familiar, you're not imagining it — and you're certainly not alone.

It goes deeper than day-to-day digestion, too. All that hormonal fluctuation disrupts the gut microbiome — the trillions of bacteria that call your gut home — and as oestrogen declines, the diversity of those bacteria declines with it.² That disruption doesn't stay neatly contained in your digestive system either: an unbalanced microbiome has been linked to many of the symptoms women know all too well at this stage — bloating and IBS-like symptoms, low energy, disturbed sleep, brain fog and mood swings among them. And when the bacteria that help you break down fibre are depleted, even healthy staples like vegetables, lentils and pulses can suddenly leave you windy and bloated. A disrupted, less diverse microbiome is simply a less resilient one: less able to support digestion, nutrient absorption, immunity and hormone balance at exactly the moment you need all four.

In other words, perimenopause and your gut are in a two-way conversation. Your hormones affect your gut — and your gut, it turns out, affects your hormones right back.

Your gut is where the raw materials come in

Hair is one of the most nutrient-hungry tissues in the body — and one of the first to lose out when supplies run short, because your body will always prioritise essentials first. The nutrients hair relies on, including protein, iron, zinc and B vitamins, are absorbed through your gut. A well-functioning gut helps you actually take up the good things you're eating; a struggling one can mean even a great diet doesn't deliver what it should.

Meet the estrobolome

Here's where it gets really interesting. Within your gut microbiome lives a community of bacteria with a job so specific it has its own name: the estrobolome. These bacteria play a key role in how oestrogen is metabolised, recycled and circulated around the body. It works like this: once your body has used oestrogen, the liver deactivates it and sends it to the gut for removal — but the bacteria of the estrobolome can reactivate some of it, releasing it back into circulation. Your gut, in other words, helps decide how much oestrogen stays available to you.³ At the exact moment your levels are naturally shifting, that makes your microbiome one of the systems helping to manage the change — and supporting it has never mattered more than it does now.

And then there's inflammation

A balanced, well-supported gut microbiome helps keep systemic inflammation in check — the low-level background kind that quietly works against almost everything, including your skin and hair, feeling its best. None of this is a quick fix. Think of it as the foundation: what happens on the outside builds on what's going on within.

Looking after your gut through perimenopause

The good news: your microbiome responds to how you treat it, at any age. Here's where to start.

1. Eat enough fibre — aim for 30g a day (most of us manage only 15–20g), from as wide a range of plants as you can: vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, beans, nuts, seeds, ground flaxseeds. Fibre feeds your beneficial bacteria, and diversity on your plate builds diversity in your microbiome — the very thing declining oestrogen puts under pressure.⁴

2. Add fermented foods — live yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, kombucha. Little and often beats occasional and heroic — and introduce them gradually if your gut is sensitive.

3. Prioritise protein at every meal — protein builds hormones, neurotransmitters and hair itself, and needs rise through midlife. It's also worth knowing that around 90% of your serotonin — the mood-boosting neurotransmitter — is made in your gut.⁵

4. Don't fear good fats — oily fish, avocados, nuts and seeds support hormone production, brain function, skin and hair, and keep you fuller for longer.

5. Move daily and manage stress — even 20 minutes of movement supports digestion, while stress flips your body into fight-or-flight and slows the gut right down. Your gut and your stress response are in constant conversation; protect your sleep and build in moments of calm.

6. Take a targeted probiotic — this is the step that matters most at this stage of life. A generic probiotic isn't built for what perimenopause asks of your gut. Better Gut is different: a highly concentrated 50-billion CFU formulation of six carefully selected bacterial strains, created specifically for the gut health needs of perimenopausal and menopausal women. One capsule a day, supporting your microbiome — and everything that's built on it — from within.

The inside-out approach

Great hair care and great gut health aren't competing ideas — they're two halves of the same picture. Nanogen are the experts in what helps on the outside. We spend our days on what's going on within. That's exactly why we've teamed up.

Win the full inside-out reset. We've joined forces with Nanogen to give one winner a prize worth over £300: six months of Better Gut, plus Nanogen's Luxe Shampoo, Conditioner, Root Boost and three Growth Serums. It's free to enter and takes 30 seconds.

Enter here → 

Joanna Lyall is a Nutritional Therapist and co-founder of The Better Menopause, the award-winning, doctor-led supplement brand she founded with Debbie Wosskow CBE — helping women through perimenopause and beyond, starting with the gut.

References

1. Ohnemus U, Uenalan M, Inzunza J, Gustafsson JA, Paus R. The hair follicle as an estrogen target and source. Endocrine Reviews. 2006;27(6):677–706.

2. Peters BA, et al. Menopause is associated with an altered gut microbiome and estrobolome, with implications for adverse cardiometabolic risk. mSystems. 2022;7(3):e00273-22. See also: Peters BA, et al. Spotlight on the gut microbiome in menopause: current insights. International Journal of Women's Health. 2022;14:1059–1072.

3. Baker JM, Al-Nakkash L, Herbst-Kralovetz MM. Estrogen–gut microbiome axis: physiological and clinical implications. Maturitas. 2017;103:45–53.

4. Makki K, Deehan EC, Walter J, Bäckhed F. The impact of dietary fiber on gut microbiota in host health and disease. Cell Host & Microbe. 2018;23(6):705–715.

5. Yano JM, et al. Indigenous bacteria from the gut microbiota regulate host serotonin biosynthesis. Cell. 2015;161(2):264–276.