Hair and pregnancy: the forgotten silicon clue

Almost every woman notices it, and almost nobody looks for the full explanation. For nine months, the skin brightens and the hair grows thicker, glossier, fuller. Then, in the months following birth, it all recedes at once. The hormonal explanation is the only one anyone offers. It is correct, and it tells only half the story.

The standard explanation, and what it actually describes

Hair lives in cycles. A growth phase lasting several years, a brief transition phase, then a resting phase at the end of which the hair falls. At any given moment, part of your hair is growing and part is resting. Two populations coexist.

During pregnancy, the substantial rise in oestrogens extends the growth phase. Fewer hairs switch to resting, so fewer hairs fall: the hair looks denser because it is renewing less. After birth, hormone levels drop quickly, and the hairs whose exit had been deferred for nine months switch to resting almost all together. Hence this hair loss after childbirth, massive and striking, which usually begins between two and five months after the birth. Dermatologists call it postpartum telogen effluvium.

This explanation is correct. But look closely at what it describes: it describes a timetable. It tells you when hair grows and when it falls. It says nothing about what hair is built from — nor about the skin, whose transformation during pregnancy cannot be explained by a hair growth cycle.

Three measured facts nobody connects

Organic silicon is the third most abundant trace element in the human body. It concentrates in connective tissues — bone, cartilage, vessel walls, skin — and in keratinised tissues, hair and nails. Its requirements and its availability shift at every age of life. Research into it, however, has been carried out almost entirely on the bone side. And that is where three results sit, never brought together, which bear directly on maternity.

Silicon flows from mother to child

A Spanish-German team measured serum silicon in 66 pregnant women, in their children's umbilical cord and in 44 newborns. Silicon in the full-term newborn significantly exceeds that of the cord, which in turn exceeds that of the maternal vein. The authors conclude that a positive silicon gradient runs from mother to foetus. A Cambridge team finds the same direction: silicon in the cord vein exceeds that of the maternal vein by 52 %, and in the umbilical artery by 235 %.

Pregnant women take up more silicon

This is the most striking result, and it is recent. A Swedish study compared 89 men, 42 non-pregnant women and 60 pregnant women. Over 24 hours, young men excreted 7.8 mg of silicon, non-pregnant women 7.6 mg — and pregnant women 12.4 mg. Since that excretion serves as an indirect marker of intestinal absorption, the authors' reading is straightforward: pregnancy involves temporary physiological changes, among them increased intestinal absorption of silicon. They describe the finding as novel and call for further work. The same team went on to follow the question after childbirth, but with bone in view. Nobody, to date, has connected this finding to the state of skin and hair.

In women, blood silicon has a peak — and it is not where people think

You often read that the body loses its silicon from the age of thirty. The largest reference series available, established on 1,325 healthy subjects, says something different about women: the median rises from the 18-29 band to the 30-44 band, where it reaches its maximum, then falls in the 45-59 band. The turning point is not in the thirties. It is perimenopausal — and recent reviews stress that this age-related decline is particularly marked in women. The woman aged 30 to 44 — the one who, statistically, bears her children — sits at the peak of her curve.

A French lead, forgotten since 1971

That leaves the question of why pregnancy would change the body's relationship with silicon. Two French physiologists asked exactly that question more than fifty years ago, and their work is now almost impossible to find outside specialist bibliographies — none of their papers has been digitised.

In 1971, Y. Charnot and G. Pérès published in Lyon Médical (1971, 226(13), pp. 85-89) a study titled «Modification de l'absorption et du métabolisme tissulaire du silicium en relation avec l'âge, le sexe et diverses glandes endocrines», completed that same year in the Annales d'Endocrinologie (1971, 32, pp. 397-402) with a «Contribution à l'étude de la régulation endocrinienne du métabolisme silicique», and presented in 1977 at a Nobel Symposium. Their thesis: silicon is not an inert mineral that enters and leaves the body at the mercy of meals. Its uptake and its distribution in tissues are under hormonal control.

That hypothesis, long isolated, has since received several independent confirmations. In animals, the effect of silicon on bone turnover appears only if the ovaries are intact: it is reduced or abolished after their removal. In humans, in the American Framingham cohort, a higher dietary silicon intake goes with better bone density in women before the menopause — and not at all after it. A finding that led researchers to investigate the interaction between silicon and oestrogen status specifically.

Our reading, offered as a hypothesis

We write it as such, because that is what it is: a reading, not a demonstrated conclusion. No study, to date, has measured silicon together with the state of skin or hair around maternity. The connection is ours.

Pregnancy is the oestrogenic peak of a woman's life. If silicon uptake really is governed by hormones, then pregnancy places the body in its best regime for making use of this element — at the very moment when the organism is building an entire connective tissue, that of another human being, and giving part of its own away through a measured gradient. Skin and hair, tissues rich in silicon, would benefit along the way from that exceptional regime.

What happens after birth would then not be one event but two, simultaneous. The hair timetable resets abruptly — the well-described telogen effluvium. And the hormonal regime that made silicon fully usable withdraws at the same time. Two distinct mechanisms falling in the same month, which would explain why this period is experienced with such intensity — and why it concerns the skin as much as the hair, when the hair cycle on its own says nothing about skin.

The menopause, in its own way, plays the same scene again: the Framingham data show that the bone benefit associated with silicon disappears after it. Maternity would be the brief, reversible rehearsal; the menopause, the lasting version.

Why this file interests us

Organic silicon has been our subject from the start. The molecule we use, monomethylsilanetriol (MMST), belongs to a French lineage: its first synthesis is owed to Norbert Duffaut, a chemist at the University of Bordeaux, in 1957, and its pharmaceutical development to Philippe Voisin, a pharmacist and expert to the Ministry of Health. We are the only ones guaranteeing 1,200 mg/L stable within a complete holistic range founded on traditional Chinese medicine, through the ARK Quantique Process®. It is that same concentration you will find in Silicium Organique Forté and in Silicium Organique Vitalis, the latter enriched with chestnut ellagitannins.

What we take from this scientific file is not a promise. It is a way of looking at the great transitions in a woman's life — maternity, the menopause — as periods in which connective tissue reorganises itself, and in which the attention paid to that tissue takes on a particular meaning.

Frequently asked questions

How long does hair loss after childbirth last?

It most often begins between two and five months after the birth and resolves on its own, generally within a few months. Its duration varies a great deal from one woman to another. Hair loss that clearly continues beyond that, worsens, or comes with other signs warrants a doctor's opinion.

Does silicon really decline with age?

Reference data show, in women, a maximum serum median between 30 and 44 years of age, then a decline from the 45-59 band onwards. The widespread idea of a drop starting in the thirties does not match those measurements.

What is the difference between Silicium Organique Forté and Vitalis?

Both rest on the same MMST base at 1,200 mg/L stable. Vitalis is enriched with ellagitannins from French chestnut, which gives it a characteristic tannic taste and a distinct composition. The complete guide to organic silicon sets out the composition and origin of each.

Alain Ledroit, CEO Laboratoire Géomer, Usui Reiki Master, creator of the ARK Quantique Process®.