Master Hairdresser With 22 Years Experience: "I Tell Every Client With Thinning Hair The Same Thing"

This Hairdresser Kept a Secret Notebook on Her Clients' Hair Loss for 7 Years — What She Discovered in It Is Changing Everything | The Beauty Desk
The Beauty Desk
Health › Women's Health › Hair Loss › Advertorial
This Hairdresser Kept a Secret Notebook on Her Clients' Hair Loss for 7 Years — What She Discovered in It Is Changing Everything
By SARAH MITCHELL, HEALTH REPORTER
A Melbourne hairdresser documented over 400 cases of hair loss. When a childhood friend — now a trichologist — spotted the pattern in the data, they developed a formula that's now selling out across Australia.
C laire Ashworth has been cutting hair for 22 years.
She's good at it. Her clients love her. Some have been coming to her since she opened her first salon at 27.
But there's one part of the job that's been quietly destroying her for two decades.
"It's the conversation," Claire tells me, her voice dropping. "You know the one. They sit down. They won't meet your eyes in the mirror. And then they say it: 'Can you do anything with… what's left?'"
She pauses.
"I've had women cry in my chair hundreds of times. Hundreds. And every single time, I had to stand there with my scissors and say something reassuring while knowing — honestly knowing — that nothing I could recommend would actually help them."
Claire Ashworth (left) and Dr. Helen Drayton in Claire's Melbourne salon, where Claire spent 22 years watching clients struggle with hair loss before deciding to do something about it.
For years, Claire did what hairdressers do. She recommended the expensive shampoos. The volumising sprays. The keratin treatments.
She sold them from her own shelves.
And she watched them fail. Every single time.
"I knew they didn't work," she admits. "Deep down, every hairdresser knows. We sell them because our clients are desperate and we want to give them SOMETHING. But I'd see them come back three months later and their hair would be the same. Or worse."
That guilt ate at her. Until she started doing something unusual.
THE NOTEBOOK
About seven years ago, Claire started keeping a notebook.
Nothing fancy. A battered Moleskine she kept in her station drawer.
Every time a client came in with thinning hair, Claire would jot down details. Their age. When the thinning started. What they'd tried. Whether they'd had children. Whether they were going through menopause. What medications they were on.
She photographed scalps — with permission — and taped the photos in.
Claire's original notebook. After 7 years, it contained over 400 documented cases of client hair loss — enough data to reveal a pattern nobody in the industry was talking about.
After a few years, the notebook was thick with entries. Over 400 women documented.
And Claire noticed something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
The women who'd tried the most products had the worst hair loss.
Not because the products caused it. But because every product on the market was treating the wrong thing — and while these women were busy coating, conditioning, and supplementing, the real problem underneath was getting worse.
Claire didn't know what that real problem was. She's a hairdresser, not a scientist.
But she knew someone who might.
THE SCHOOL REUNION THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
Claire and Dr. Helen Drayton grew up three doors apart on a quiet street in Melbourne .
They were inseparable at school. Did everything together. Then life happened — Claire went to cosmetology school, Helen went to university. They lost touch for nearly 20 years.
Then, at a school reunion in 2022, they found each other again.
Claire (left) and Dr. Helen Drayton at their class reunion in 2022 — the chance encounter that would change everything for both of them.
Helen had spent her career in trichology research — the science of hair and scalp health. She'd worked with dermatology clinics across the country and published papers on hormonal hair loss in women.
Over a glass of wine, Claire mentioned the notebook.
Helen's face changed.
"She went completely still," Claire remembers. "Then she said: 'Claire, can I see it? Can I see the notebook?' I brought it to her the next day. She spread the photos across her kitchen table and just stared."
Dr. Helen Drayton, trichologist and researcher, who identified the DHT pattern in Claire's 7 years of salon data.
What Helen saw in those 400+ cases confirmed something she'd suspected for years.
"Every single case showed the same pattern," Helen explains. "The follicle damage was consistent. The progression was consistent. And it all pointed to one thing: DHT."
DHT. Dihydrotestosterone.
The hormone that was strangling Claire's clients' hair follicles — and that not a single product on her shelves was designed to address.
'YOUR FOLLICLES ARE BEING STRANGLED'
Helen explained it to Claire over that kitchen table. And now, sitting in Claire's salon, she explains it to me.
"DHT builds up around the hair follicle over time," Helen says. "After pregnancy. During perimenopause. Through stress. Simply through ageing."
It wraps around the follicle like a weed strangling a plant.
It cuts off blood supply.
It starves the follicle of nutrients.
And slowly — strand by strand — your hair gets thinner, weaker, finer…
Until the follicle stops producing hair altogether.
How DHT strangles the hair follicle: cutting off blood supply, starving the root, and forcing the follicle into dormancy.
"This is why nothing Claire was selling worked," Helen continues. "Thickening shampoos coat the outside of the hair. That's like putting makeup on a dying plant. Biotin tablets get flushed through your digestive system before they reach the follicle. Scalp oils sit on the surface. None of them get to where the DHT is doing the damage."
Claire shakes her head.
"Twenty years," she says quietly. "Twenty years I was handing women products that couldn't possibly work. Because the whole industry was looking at the wrong thing."
But Helen told her something else that day. Something that changed everything.
The follicles aren't dead. In most cases, they're just dormant.
"They're starved, not gone," Helen explains. "Clear the DHT, feed them again, and many of them will wake up. Even follicles that haven't produced a hair in years."
Claire looked at her oldest friend across the kitchen table.
"Can we fix this?"
Helen smiled. "I think we can."
THREE YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT
What followed was three years of development. Helen brought the science. Claire brought 400 documented cases and a salon full of willing volunteers.
They needed a formula that could do four things:
Block DHT at the follicle level — help stop the strangling at the source.
Help restore blood flow to starved follicles — turn the nutrient supply back on.
Strengthen the hair from root to tip — help rebuild what DHT had weakened.
Help reactivate dormant follicles — wake up the roots that had gone to sleep.
And it had to be a roll-on. Not a pill. Not a cream. Not even a spray. A precision roll-on serum that delivers the actives exactly where they're needed — straight onto the scalp, bypassing the digestive system entirely. Up to 60% of any spray ends up on your shoulders, your collar, your face, or floating in the air. With a roll-on, every drop hits the target.
"And every time you roll the ball across your scalp, you're massaging the skin at the same time," Helen explains. "That stimulates blood flow on contact. Every application becomes a mini scalp treatment — the roll-on does in 30 seconds what those expensive scalp massagers claim to do in 10 minutes."
"That was my big question," Claire says. "I'd watched women take biotin tablets for years with no results. I kept saying to Helen: 'Why are we sending nutrients on a tour of the entire body when the problem is right here on the scalp?' Turns out I was right."
The final formula uses four natural ingredients that work together:
The four natural actives in Roota — each selected for a specific role in clearing DHT and reactivating dormant follicles.
✓ Rosemary Extra…

Text scraped from the landing page for research purposes. © respective owners. This text is sourced from the advertiser's public landing page; for removal, contact dmca@luba.media.