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Maureen Nolan
Singer and Actress best known as one of the Nolan Sisters
She’s been performing since she was nine, hit stardom with her sisters as The Nolans and has since spent a career on stage singing and in key theatre roles including Footloose’ and ‘Blood Brothers’. But even though Maureen has always been known as ‘the pretty one’ of her sisters, she reveals that she was silently suffering with thinning hair for years and it wasn’t until she got married last year and had to resort to wearing hair extensions that she finally decided to do something about it.
“It’s great to keep yourself looking good and when you look good you feel good. But I think that when you’re younger you take all these things for granted don’t you. I’ve always had nice thick shiny hair so it wasn’t until it started falling out that I realised just how important it was to me.
“I think it started was when I was in Blood Brothers in 2005, in the West End and I stayed with my cousin for one of the two years that I was doing the show. She had light carpets and actually made a joke about all the hair she was finding on the carpet. My hair had probably been falling out for a while but because I was staying at my cousin’s house, I suddenly became more aware of it. I kept finding alarming amounts of it in the bath plughole and would have to keep cleaning it out. I’d find a thin dark layer on my pillow all the time and when I dried and styled my hair, it would come out on my brush and on the carpet.
“It was embarrassing and it used to make me panic. I’d think “Oh god, how much of it is going to come out, is it the beginning of alopecia?” When I put my hair up I’d think “Oh I look quite bald at the front” and styles I took for granted I couldn’t really have any more. My ponytail felt a lot thinner and my lack of black signature hair made me feel less attractive and confident. I knew that as men got older they might recede but I never knew women could suffer thinning hair too.
“I tried to style my hair differently by pulling it forward at the front to ensure I didn’t have a very wide parting. It was a bit like a Bobby Charlton comb over I suppose.
“To begin with I think my thinning hair was because of the menopause although at the time I had no idea that it was a common side-effect. I also think it had a lot to do with all the over-styling my hair was put through doing eight shows a week for two years straight. And now that I know that diet also affects the health of your hair I think that probably had an impact on it too. When you’re working so much it’s hard to find the time to eat properly. You just grab what you can and that could mean anything from a big muffin from the cafe next door, to a Burger King, because it’s convenient. I really started to notice my hair thinning again though after a particularly stressful period in my life.
“We had a big family fall out about three or four years ago and although the argument didn’t affect me, I was caught in the middle. And then in 2009 we did our fantastic reunion tour but my sister Anne wasn’t included which caused great family arguments and my two older sisters (Anne and Denise) didn’t speak to me for over a year. I’m so close to all of my sisters that I felt very stressed by the situation – like it was up to me to sort it out.
“It’s funny because I’ve read in all of my sister’s books that I’m known as the mediator in the family and actually I suppose I am. I don’t like arguments and if I’m there and two of my sisters are arguing then I’ll say, “Oh she meant it like that you know”. One of my eldest sisters even said to me at the time “I can’t believe you can’t sort this out...you’re the only one that ever will”. Whether that’s because I’m a middle child, (as much in the middle as you can be with eight of us) but I think in life generally I am a mediator.
“My sisters had much bigger things to worry about and I felt that complaining about my thinning hair was selfish and petty so I didn’t say anything to them.
“I tried thickening shampoos but there’s only so much help they can give you in making your hair feel fuller. They of course didn’t stop my hair falling out or encourage it to grow and I became terrified of getting very visible bald patches.
“I finally decided to do something about it after I got married last year to my long-term partner Ritchie and had to resort to wearing extensions in my hair. I started to look online for solutions and came across Viviscal, a natural food supplement that feeds the hair follicles from within. I’d had no luck with topical products so I decided to give it a try. You basically take one tablet in the morning and one in the evening and even after a few months I started to notice a difference in the quality of my hair.
“I feel much better about my hair now. I feel like I’ve got my thick shiny hair back and it seems so much healthier. I definitely won’t take it for granted anymore so I’ve continued taking Viviscal to ensure my hair gets all the nutrients it needs.
“I’ve learnt that thinning hair in women is much more common than you think but there are things you can do to address it – my own experience shows that. I also think it’s important to talk about it with friends and family because the more you bottle it up and stress about it, the more that stress is likely to make your thinning hair worse. I just wish I’d mentioned it sooner to my sisters. I might not have experienced anywhere near the kind of thinning hair that my sister Bernie did recently during her chemotherapy treatment but when you’re going through it, it feels truly awful. It knocks your confidence and affects your whole approach to life.”
Watch Maureen's interview with Mark Cagney & Sinead Desmond on Ireland AM, TV3, July 2011.
Listen to Maureen Nolan's interview on Sunshine radio July 2011
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