HAIR LOSS & BALDNESS

Hair is important because without it we lose too much heat through our heads.  Each hair grows from a follicle under the skin and takes 3 years to grow. Around 10% of hair is able to fall out at any one time but we lose only about 100 a day. Women have more hair than men and it is men that suffer from baldness.

There are many reasons why hair loss can occur, but these reasons apply to women as well as men. Women can gain hair during pregnancy and this can be a worry when after childbirth the extra hair falls out in handfuls. Major surgery or severe illness can cause hair to fall out several weeks after the event, some prescription drugs can cause hair to fall out, chemotherapy, birth control pills and iron deficiency can all cause hair loss. Androgenic alopecia is often called male & female baldness and this is the most common hair loss where the hair thins from the front to the back and this type of hair loss runs in families.
 
Male hair loss has been treated by doctors injecting oestrogen, the female sex hormone as it was discovered that high doses of oestrogen given to men encouraged the hair to grow. Unfortunately the side effects were breast enlargement and lack of sex drive.

Baldness, in men, can start between 18 and 35 but surprisingly the baldness gene is passes through the female, not the male line, so a bald father doesn't mean a bald son. around 65% of the mal population will suffer some degree of baldness during their lifetime.
 
  Hair loss inn men is triggered by the hormone, androgen. This hormone stared to decline at around 30 years of age so if a man reaches 50 years with a full head of hair, he is likely to keep it.

Long term stress is another factor for balding in men, so men with very stressful jobs are more likely to suffer hair loss.

Women suffer hair loss too, often because of stress, because they produce more of the hormone androgen during stressful times. Menopause is another facture that increases hair loss in women. This is due to the reduction of oestrogen which means there is more androgen in the body than oestrogen and this increases hair loss.

If you are looking for hair loss information, the following links may also be of interest to you:

 

Thinning hair is often due to a poor diet when some of the body's essential nutrients are missing. iron, zinc and copper are important so a diet rich in these vitamins will help.

The company that comes up with a solution to hair loss will make millions. Minoxidil and Propecia are two drugs to encourage hair growth, the latter only being suitable for men.

Hair replacement surgery, called a Punch graft, takes the hair from where is is thickest, usually at the side and back, and transplanting it to the top and front where it is thinnest. It involves 4mm pieces of skin containing hair taken from one place to the other.

There are always risks with this type of operation that the grafts will not take and several operations may be needed to give a more natural look. 400-500 micorgrafts may be needed, they are done under a general anaesthetic, but the downfall is the cost of around £10 a each graft.

 
 
Try searching on the Internet for "hair loss information" and you will be amazed just how many pages are on offer. Try it for yourself by hitting the search button below!