The fact is, if you are start­ing to lose your hair then the ear­lier you start to deal with the prob­lem the longer you will be able to keep your hair. Like most other med­ical con­di­tions, if you treat the under­ly­ing prob­lem early it is much eas­ier, and much cheaper, than if you wait till it gets out of hand. As soon as you start to see extra hairs lay­ing on your pil­low in the morn­ing, or a clump in the shower drain, you need to have a plan to buy a hair loss treat­ment and start using it.

Of course, the big ques­tion then is which prod­uct or prod­ucts should you buy. Before you can answer that ques­tion you need to under­stand what is the under­ly­ing cause of your hair loss in the first place. Over 9 out of 10 men who expe­ri­ence early hair loss do so because of a hered­i­tary med­ical con­di­tion called Andro­genic Alope­cia. The com­mon name for this is Male Pat­tern Bald­ness. This name comes from the fact that men will tend to lose their hair in one of two pat­tern areas. Either they see thin­ning on the crown of the head which is the top, or they will have a reced­ing hair line above the fore­head. If left untreated these two areas will migrate toward each other and even­tu­ally combine.

The cause of this thin­ning is what you actu­ally need your hair loss rem­edy to treat. Within your body there are many hor­mones and hor­monal sub­stances. They actu­ally are the mes­sen­gers which keep your sys­tems oper­at­ing prop­erly. One of these, the male hor­mone testos­terone has many func­tions, but for our pur­poses we are inter­ested in what hap­pens when it is metab­o­lized by the enzyme 5-alpha reduc­tase. When this hap­pens a new sub­stance is formed called Dihy­drotestos­terone. This is actu­ally the metabo­lite which is respon­si­ble for male pat­tern bald­ness. Many hair replace­ment prod­ucts focus on the scalp and the health of the hair shaft, because this is eas­ier to do, and they neglect the real cause which is DHT. Any prod­uct you choose must deal with what causes hair loss at the root.

There are two meth­ods of slow­ing or stop­ping the affect of DHT. The first is to block the pro­duc­tion of it. The FDA has approved an oral med­ica­tion, Finas­teride, which seems to work well but it has many neg­a­tive side effects. These include loss of libido, sex drive, in men and poten­tial birth defects for preg­nant women. Because of this many peo­ple shy away from this drug. Two nat­ural alter­na­tives are Saw Pal­metto extract and Stingy Net­tle Root. Both of these also seem to limit the amount of DHT produced.

The sec­ond way of deal­ing with the prob­lem is to pro­tect the hair fol­li­cles, (hair roots) from attack in the first place. Another FDA approved drug, Minox­i­dil, does a good job of this by bond­ing with the recep­tors on the hair roots that the dihy­drotestos­terone would nor­mally bond to. This drug is actu­ally used by both men and women and it is applied to the scalp top­i­cally twice a day.

Start today to deal with your hair loss and be sure you are actu­ally treat­ing the root cause and not just the sur­face issues involved.

Alope­cia Bar­bae is also called bald­ness. This is the exceed­ingly rec­og­nized ail­ment encoun­tered by many today. The vic­tims of this dis­or­der belong to both gen­ders. How­ever, research reveals that the causative agents of Alope­cia Bar­bae are respon­si­ble for the appar­ently dif­fer­ent effects too in men and women.

Bald­ness is wide­spread across the globe, vic­tim­iz­ing 50% of males and a sim­i­lar per­cent­age of females above the age of 40 years. How­ever, in this group of females, 13% of pre­menopausal patients express only slight signs of the dis­ease. Nonethe­less, the chances of falling prey to Alope­cia Bar­bae increases after menopause that 75% women over the age of 65 years of age get affected by this prob­lem. Before reach­ing the age of 40 years, the suf­fer­ers bear signs of Alope­cia Bar­bae, and some depict this even before they turn 30. 

Alope­cia is a psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ment for the suf­fer­ers. Hair loss allows the head to be exposed to the UV rays, giv­ing rise in actinic inflic­tion. Car­diac ail­ments could be accel­er­ated by Alope­cia in males, and increase in mild pro­sta­tic hyper­tro­phy could be asso­ci­ated with this prob­lem too. If the ongo­ing research stud­ies evi­dence that the above rela­tions are valid, then the clin­i­cal impli­ca­tions with Alope­cia would increase too.

White males are the most affected by bald­ness in terms of fre­quency and sever­ity while the sec­ond most affected are Asians and African Amer­i­cans. The least affected are Native Amer­i­cans and Eskimos.

Onset of the Ailment

Alope­cia Bar­bae begins slowly. In men, it starts with hair loss in the tem­po­ral region which reshapes the pos­te­rior hair­line. Then, it devel­ops with the usual ante­rior and apex hair loss. While in case of women, it begins with scat­tered hair loss in the crown. The tem­po­ral hair loss is sim­i­lar to men, but gen­er­ally, females retain their ante­rior hairline.

Phys­i­cal Changes

The suf­fer­ers of both gen­ders expe­ri­ence the tran­si­tion from healthy, pig­mented ter­mi­nal hair to weak, short and scat­tered hair. The end result is stunted, flimsy, non-pigmented hair in the affected areas. With time, the ana­gen step decreases while the tel­o­gen part is unaf­fected. It gives rise to the hair fall among the vic­tims. Though it pro­vides a gen­er­al­ized pic­ture, the dif­fer­ences in the devel­op­ment of ail­ment always per­sist among dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als. In case of females, usu­ally, the patch of hair loss can­not be spec­i­fied. Gen­er­ally they lose hair in all areas over the crown. The core dif­fer­ence is that the ante­rior hair­line is safe in case of females while that is lost right at the onset of the prob­lem in case of males.

Men and women who lose their hair, are either expe­ri­enc­ing hair thin­ning, com­plete bald­ing, or in most cases suf­fer­ing from a genetic con­di­tion known as andro­ge­netic alope­cia. This is pre­pon­der­ance for los­ing one’s hair on cer­tain areas of the scalp that is passed from one gen­er­a­tion to the next. It used to be believed that the bald­ing prob­lem was only passed down through the mother’s genes but that is no longer true. Now we know that this form of hair loss, or alope­cia, is not deter­mined by one par­ent or the other.

Andro­ge­netic alope­cia, also known as pat­tern bald­ness or pat­tern hair loss, is caused by a sit­u­a­tion that actu­ally stops the hair fol­li­cles from pro­duc­ing hair shaft mate­r­ial. The fol­li­cle can be thought of as the hair fac­to­ries in one’s body. The fol­li­cle is con­nected to the blood sup­ply which pro­vides it with oxy­gen and nutri­ents which are essen­tial for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of hair. When pat­tern bald­ness is active a hor­monal metabo­lite known as DHT is pro­duced in the body and even­tu­ally makes its way to hair fol­li­cle. The DHT bonds to the hair fol­li­cles and causes a dis­rup­tion in the pro­duc­tion of hair mate­r­ial. Nor­mally a hair fol­li­cle will pro­duce hair in a cycli­cal man­ner. It goes through growth and rest stages that can last sev­eral months. The DHT short­ens the growth phase of the fol­li­cle to the point that it can no longer pro­duce a healthy hair shaft and the shaft falls out. If not treated quickly, the pat­tern bald­ness will ren­der the fol­li­cle com­pletely ineffective.

The best hair restora­tion sys­tem involves deal­ing with the affect of DHT and also trans­plant­ing new hair fol­li­cles into the balded area. There are two hair loss treat­ment drugs that have been approved by the US FDA and have proved effec­tive at slow­ing down the loss of hair but they will not do much to re-energize the fol­li­cles that have stopped pro­duc­ing so these hair fol­li­cles must be replaced. Of the two drugs only one, Minox­i­dil, is approved for both men and females. This is a top­i­cal solu­tion that is applied to the scalp and helps to allow the hair fol­li­cles to con­tinue to pro­duce as needed. The sec­ond drug, Finas­teride, is only pre­scribed for men as it can cause birth defects. This drug actu­ally works to limit the amount of DHT that is pro­duced in the body. Hair restora­tion doc­tors will usu­ally use one or both of these drugs to keep what hair there is still grow­ing along with hair implan­ta­tion to pro­vide replace­ment hair fol­li­cles for the bald­ing that has already occurred.

The part of the sys­tem that causes the high­est hair restora­tion costs is the implan­ta­tions. Thus if a per­son can start the treat­ments early to save what hair they still have the hair restora­tion price will be much lower. As is usu­ally the case, the sooner a prob­lem is addressed the cheaper it is to deal with.  Apply­ing the cor­rect hair replace­ment sys­tems can get you the head of hair you deserve. Start today to deter­mine your path to a full head of hair.

If you’re start­ing to get wor­ried because you think you’re los­ing your hair or just won­der­ing if the amount you’re los­ing is nat­ural, take a small hand­ful of hair in your hand and tug it as hard as you can. If you have more than six strands of hair in your hand then you are los­ing hair. A nat­ural loss would be less than six strands of hair a day. The “how to tell if you are los­ing your hair” test is the best way to make the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between nor­mal shed­ding and per­me­ate hair loss.

Hair loss is a big con­cern for many men, women and chil­dren. There are many causes. You may know that you have rapid hair loss already or even a lit­tle loss and won­der what is caus­ing it. Maybe you already have a patch of hair loss. You may not be sure so here’s a good way to tell if it’s abnor­mal or not.

What do you do about it?

First of all try to deter­mine if it’s related to any cur­rent med­ical diag­no­sis you have right now. Then take a look at any med­ica­tions you may be tak­ing in case it’s tem­po­rary and related to med­ica­tions, med­i­cines or drugs.

If you’re a man then male pat­tern bald­ness could be a pos­si­bil­ity espe­cially if you notice a reced­ing hair line. Symp­toms could be related to preg­nancy if you’re preg­nant. It could be a thy­roid issue. If you are los­ing in big chunks it could be alope­cia areata. There are many causes for hair loss.

In any case you’ll want to learn how to stop or pre­vent it. There are many ways to learn through blogs, forums and dis­cus­sion groups. How­ever one must be care­ful there because there is a lot of mis­in­for­ma­tion and guess­ing going on. It’s always bet­ter to get med­ical advice from experts in the field, espe­cially if pro­gres­sion is a mat­ter of concern.

With the busy agen­das we push our­selves to accom­plish daily, we are bound to be stressed out and exhausted. We for­get to slow down and take care of our­selves, which results in other stress related con­di­tions to occur. When you get up in the morn­ing and are get­ting ready to work, if you were to run your hand through your hair, it will come away with mul­ti­ple strands, more than the usual. And again when you wash your hair, more hair loses. Such is the human body, it acts and reacts to every­thing we do and eat. There­fore, it is essen­tial to take care of our body and try keep­ing calm and relaxed to avoid hair loss con­di­tions. Some of the other causes could be hor­monal imbal­ance, thy­roid lev­els are not cor­rect, indi­ges­tion, tak­ing of cer­tain med­ica­tion or addicted to drugs. If you are under treat­ment for some other ail­ment and have been tak­ing med­ica­tion con­tin­u­ously and notice hair loss, you will also see it stops when you stop tak­ing the pills. So, this is just a tem­po­rary con­di­tion and noth­ing major. Peo­ple have today real­ized the value of using nat­ural prod­ucts since they have lit­tle or no side effects and are effective.

1.  Alter your diet

A sure shot way by which one can pro­mote hair growth is to watch their diet. Every time you eat a chip or take a drag of a cig­a­rette, you need to remem­ber you are harm­ing your body. There­fore, by keep­ing track of what you put into your mouth, you can help cleanse your sys­tem and help hair grow bet­ter. If you are over­weight, you will need to con­trol the amount of food and the kind of food you con­sume, and this will grad­u­ally reflect on your hair’s health.

2. Avoid using chem­i­cals and chang­ing brands

If there is any cer­tain sham­poo or serum that you have been using on your hair based on your hair expert’s opin­ion, do not change the brand sud­denly.  You might see mul­ti­ple adver­tise­ments and pro­mo­tions for sham­poos that pro­mote hair growth, or give you long lus­cious hair, don’t get tempted by these and fall for them. You might be sub­ject­ing your hair to stronger doses of chem­i­cals. Instead opt for aloe vera or pro­tein rich sham­poo with a good con­di­tioner to keep the nutri­ents intact and help the scalp get more blood.

There are sham­poos which are made using wal­nut bark or kelp oil that will help keep your scalp clean and stop the prob­lems of thin­ning or bald­ing. When you are done wash­ing your hair, it will not be dry, but will have cer­tain essen­tial oils remain­ing in the strands to help them grow better.

3. Hor­monal balances

Upon con­sult­ing your endocri­nol­o­gist, you will be pre­scribed med­ica­tion that will bring your hor­mones into con­trol, and curb pro­duc­tion of DHT. This will auto­mat­i­cally aid in hair growth.

Genetic fac­tors may pre­dis­pose males to hair loss, this is con­di­tion is often referred to as male pat­tern bald­ness. Male pat­tern bald­ness is more sus­cep­ti­ble in males who have high lev­els of DHT (dihy­drotestos­terone) a gene that is found to be the cul­prit of bald­ing. Pre­vent­ing hair loss should be a mat­ter of con­cern for those who are more sus­cep­ti­ble to hair loss and begin­ning to expe­ri­ence male pat­tern bald­ness. Obtain­ing knowl­edge and a clear under­stand­ing of the envi­ron­men­tal and genetic fac­tors that go into crest­ing this con­di­tion is imper­a­tive oth­er­wise, if not addressed, can lead to baldness.

Alope­cia is what doc­tors and other med­ical experts call hair loss that has been caused by genet­ics. In just about every case, this alope­cia is andro­genic in nature, mean­ing that there are hor­mones within the body that inter­act with hair fol­li­cles of the scalp. In some males, these fol­li­cles become sen­si­tive to DHT (dihydrotestosterone).

There is also sev­eral other genetic or envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors that go into mak­ing up the con­di­tion that cre­ates andro­genic alope­cia, and although it is referred to as “male pat­tern bald­ness” women are just as sus­cep­ti­ble. One such envi­ron­men­tal fac­tor has been iden­ti­fied that relates the kinds and qual­ity of aer­o­bic exer­cise to the bald­ness though the link is still some­what unproven.

At any rate, many men and women are con­fronted with grad­ual loss of the hair on top of their heads and quite often become alarmed by it. There are ways, through, to help pre­vent such loss these days. New prod­ucts– mostly nat­ural in nature – have come into the mar­ket that show great promise in help­ing men and women to keep what they already have on their head and maybe even add a lit­tle bit more to it.

Most of these new prod­ucts are com­posed mainly of vit­a­mins, herbs and min­er­als into sup­ple­ments that are taken orally and some­time are com­bined with a top­i­cal appli­ca­tion. Those who sus­pect or fear that they will become vic­tims of alope­cia can begin tak­ing these vit­a­mins and herbs as soon as they begin to expe­ri­ence hair loss. They do not have to accept exces­sive or per­ma­nent hair loss, espe­cially with all of the pre­ventable prod­ucts on the mar­ket today.

Sci­en­tist and doc­tors have for­mu­lated var­i­ous drugs, pills, solu­tions, and sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures just to stop hair loss. In many cases sci­ence has suc­cess­fully con­trolled the rate at which DHT has been caus­ing hair loss with prod­ucts. Many of these prod­ucts are also used to stop the onset of hair loss caused by cer­tain body hor­mones such as DHT. These prod­ucts included:

• Provil­lus
• Rogaine
• Nioxin
• Fol­li­cle revitalizers

While these treat­ments may stim­u­late faster hair growth there may be also some side effects that users have to antic­i­pate. Aside from the pro­duc­tion of hair-regrowth sub­stances, doc­tors have also devel­oped hair trans­plant surgery as a means to stim­u­late new hair growth. Hair trans­plant surgery involves trans­fer­ring fol­li­cles from areas where there are no pres­ence of DHT to the bald­ing areas of the head. For patients who pre­fer a nat­ural solu­tion, there are treat­ments that don’t involve the use of tech­nol­ogy or med­ica­tions. Aloe Vera, sting­ing net­tle green tea red pep­per and dong quia are some of the many herbal based treat­ments that users can either apply to their scalp or ingest. It is pointed out that these herbal – based treat­ments also con­tain sub­stances, which inhibit the spread of DHT. How­ever, no mat­ter what treat­ment option is cho­sen, it is always rec­om­mended that hair loss patients con­sult with a doc­tor to get the par­tic­u­lar med­ical diag­no­sis of his/her hair con­di­tion. The specifics of the patient’s case are vital so that he/she can get the most suit­able hair regrowth treatment.

While the loss of hair from the scalp- hair thin­ning, male pat­tern bald­ness, a reced­ing hair­line, and alope­cia– is a very com­mon and frus­trat­ing prob­lem among both men and women, some indi­vid­u­als suf­fer from loss of over­all body hair. There are five main causes of body hair loss– skin con­di­tions, hor­monal dis­or­ders, med­ica­tions and other med­ical ill­nesses, stress, and diet. Cer­tain skin con­di­tions, such as eczema, pso­ri­a­sis, der­mati­tis, skin injury, and burns, cause dam­age to the hair fol­li­cles and sur­round­ing cells mak­ing hair growth impos­si­ble. In some of these instances, espe­cially in the case of severe skin burns, the cell dam­age can be irre­versible so the body hair loss is also permanent.

Aside from hor­monal dis­or­ders and skin injury, cer­tain other med­ical ill­ness can lead to loss of body hair. Can­cer, dis­eases that affect the immune sys­tem, and con­di­tions that dis­rupt organ func­tion can all cause tem­po­rary lapses in the nat­ural hair growth process. In most cases the body hair loss is restricted to one or two areas most affected by the dis­ease or ill­ness, but in some cases the hair loss can be seen all over the body.

Because there are so many dif­fer­ent rea­sons that you may be los­ing the hair all over your body it is imper­a­tive that you see a doc­tor at the first sign of this hair loss. If the hair loss is a result of an under­ly­ing med­ical con­di­tion it is impor­tant that you receive treat­ment for the dis­ease not just the hair loss.

Top 5 foods for Healthy Hair

When it comes to healthy hair, it’s not just what prod­ucts you use that con­tributes to its heath. Hav­ing healthy hair also includes hav­ing a healthy diet. If you were born with fine, thin hair, you’ll never have rope-thick tresses — no mat­ter what you eat — but a well-balanced diet that includes plenty of growth-promoting pro­tein and iron can make a dif­fer­ence. Read on for the top 5 foods that should be the foun­da­tion of your healthy hair diet.

1. Salmon

When it comes to foods that pack a beauty punch, it’s hard to beat salmon. Loaded with omega-3 fatty acids, this high-quality pro­tein source is also filled with vit­a­min B-12 and iron.

2.     Dark Green Vegetables

Spinach, like broc­coli and Swiss chard, is an excel­lent source of vit­a­mins A and C, which your body needs to pro­duce sebum. The oily sub­stance, secreted by your hair fol­li­cles, is the body’s nat­ural hair con­di­tioner. Dark green veg­eta­bles also pro­vide iron and calcium.

3.     Beans

Legumes like kid­ney beans and lentils should be an impor­tant part of your hair-care diet. Not only do they pro­vide plen­ti­ful pro­tein to pro­mote hair growth, but ample iron, zinc, and biotin. While rare, biotin defi­cien­cies can result in brit­tle hair.

4.     Nuts

Brazil nuts are one of nature’s best sources of sele­nium, an impor­tant min­eral for the health of your scalp.Walnuts con­tain alpha-linolenic acid, an omega-3 fatty acid that may help con­di­tion your hair. They are also a ter­rific source of zinc, as are cashews, pecans, and almonds. A zinc defi­ciency can lead to hair shed­ding, so make sure nuts are a reg­u­lar on your healthy hair menu.

5.     Poul­try

Chick­ens and turkeys may have feath­ers, but the high-quality pro­tein they pro­vide will help give you the healthy hair you crave. Poul­try also pro­vides iron with a high degree of bioavail­abil­ity, mean­ing your body can eas­ily reap its benefits.

Hair loss is one of the most con­found­ing con­di­tions a woman could ever expe­ri­ence. Women con­sider their hair as kings con­sider their crown; an impor­tant part of one’s iden­tity, an impor­tant part of one’s self. With that in mind, woman may often believe what­ever they hear and do what­ever they can just to sus­tain healthy hair.

In most cases when women notice increased hair loss and thin­ning it can be dev­as­tat­ing and affects their emo­tional state of con­fi­dence. How­ever women should not despair – hair loss can be pre­vented and stopped once you know what causes it and what you should do to.

There is a lot of infor­ma­tion that may dis­pel the “myths” of women’s hair loss but some of these so-called “myths” do have a basis for truth. I have exam­ined many of these pop­u­lar “myths” to facil­i­tate a bal­anced response.

 Myth Num­ber One: Fre­quent sham­poo­ing con­tributes to hair loss. It is rec­om­mended that extra care should be taken for frag­ile and thin­ning hair. These mea­sures include using gen­tle sham­poos; heav­ily med­icated sham­poos can affect the scalp. So, it’s not so much how fre­quently you wash your hair but what you wash your hair with!

Myth Num­ber Two: 100 strokes of the hair brush daily will cre­ate health­ier hair. Brush­ing your hair does stim­u­late the glands on your scalp to pro­duce oil that will keep your hair healthy. How­ever, a hun­dred brush strokes on thin­ning and frag­ile hair will be more dev­as­tat­ing than help­ful. It is impor­tant to look after thin­ning and frag­ile hair. Gen­tle brush­ing may be suf­fi­cient to the con­di­tion of your hair as well as sep­a­rat­ing tan­gles with your fin­gers. (Try­ing to brush out tan­gles may con­se­quently pull out your hair).

Myth Num­ber Three: Stand­ing on one’s head will cause increased cir­cu­la­tion and thereby stim­u­late hair growth. Although poor blood cir­cu­la­tion may cause some hair loss, increas­ing blood cir­cu­la­tion just does not stim­u­late hair growth either.

Myth Num­ber Four: Shav­ing one’s head will cause the hair to grow back thicker. This is just not true. In fact, if you are suf­fer­ing from andro­genetiic alope­cia, this will actu­ally severely quicken your hair loss.

Myth Num­ber Five: Hair loss does not occur in the late teens or early twen­ties. Although rea­son­ably rare this is not true. Alope­cia or hair loss may hap­pen to any­one regard­less of their age.