“Suddenly getting dark hair on my chin. Hormonal problem?”

It is not unusual for some women who undergo menopause to start to develop darker hair on the chin, this typically occurs due to drop of estrogen levels during peri menopause and menopause. Generally, this is a benign condition. However is the hairs are growing very coarse and fast and very spread out, this can be a sign of an adrenal problem and should be investigated. It never hurts to see an endocrinologist and have them run your blood work to make sure it’s the former.

Usually course hair is seen in postmenapausal state. If unusually thick and everywhere would have the hormones tested to make sure do not have any secreting tumors.

This is a significant symptom of insulin resistance. You may have noted skin tags or darkening of skin on the back and sides of the neck, below the breasts or in the armpits and groin, or increasing abdominal girth, these are some of the symptoms of the same. This is a prediabetic condition which slowly zaps your pancreas and makes you develop type 2 diabetes. In the process that usually takes 15 years, your body ages rapidly and there are risks of heart attacks and stroke. One of the features of this
condition is increase in male hormone and reduction in female hormone, which messes up menstrual cycles and makes the ovaries bigger and cystic. We call that polycystic ovaries. This condition is very easy to treat with a proper diet and minimum medications. Please consult an endocrinologist. Rarely we may need to image your ovaries to make sure there is no tumors there that could be responsible for this condition as well.
Hope this helps!
Dr Sunil

Most likely this is a hormonal problem, usually related to excess androgens (male hormones). In the case of menopausal women, it is often that with failure of the ovary, estrogen falls more than testosterone creating a relative excess. There are a number of relatively inexpensive safe drugs, such as spironolactone, that can combat the effect of testosterone on your skin to slow down or stop male pattern hair growth. Testosterone and adrenal androgens should be measured prior to initiating therapy, to make sure there are no other causes.

You are in the age of developing or going through menopause and because of this a hormonal evaluation is in order. And of course the treatment of this problem is based on what is found on the laboratory testing.

What you are seeing is a normal phenomenon with aging especially in females. What has happened is that with menopause, you have lost your estrogen secretion. This let the testosterone predominate & gives you some masculine characteristics. Men & women have both male & female hormones. Its a matter of balance. After menopause women can get an imbalance because of loss of estrogen. Men who take certain drugs for prostate enlargement that block testosterone can then have an imbalance with too much estrogen & get some female characteristics such as breast development. You probably have no disease but see your Dr and be sure.