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.

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.

With today’s advances in cos­metic surgery hair loss suf­fer­ers can regrow the hair they lost with a hair trans­plant pro­ce­dure, but the harsh real­ity is not every­one is a can­di­date. To be a pos­si­ble can­di­date you must have a suf­fi­cient amount of donor hair. The most com­mon donor site for hair trans­plant surgery is on the head.  If the sides and back of your head have full lus­trous hair, you are in luck.  This hair can be used as donor hair to replace hair you have lost on your bald­ing spots.  If your hair in these areas is not healthy, you face a dif­fi­cult problem.

If you have lost your hair due to genet­ics, or a fam­ily his­tory, you will likely be a good can­di­date for hair trans­plant surgery.  Men who have hair loss in their fam­i­lies usu­ally have a good idea of the way the bald­ness pat­tern will play out.

Your rel­a­tives may have had hair that went bald into a horse­shoe pat­tern and held at that stage.  If this is the case, your sur­geon will know what to expect.  Then, he can take hair from the sides and back of your head as donor hair and per­form the hair transplant.

If you have lost your hair because of some kind of trauma or burns, you will also make a good can­di­date for hair trans­plant surgery.  This is because the hair you still have will prob­a­bly still be healthy.  It will pro­vide good donor hair for your hair trans­plant.  The most likely sit­u­a­tion is that you will have enough hair to make this pos­si­ble.  How­ever, if you have lost too much hair, a hair trans­plant may not be possible.

Hair loss suf­fers can ben­e­fit greatly from hair trans­plant surgery. The first step towards find­ing out if you’re a good can­di­date is sched­ul­ing a con­sul­ta­tion with at hair restora­tion sur­geon. At the time of the con­sult the Doc­tor will make a com­plete assess­ment and dis­cuss the options best to fit your indi­vid­ual needs.

Hair restora­tion rever­sals are usu­ally designed to repair poor hair trans­plants rather than return a patient to his orig­i­nal bald state. In most cases, the “rever­sal” actu­ally involves more grafts being added to the pre­vi­ous trans­plant. Today, most pro­fes­sion­als refer to hair trans­plant rever­sals as “repairs” to be more pre­cise about the nature of the operation.

There are two types of hair-transplant rever­sal. A real rever­sal involves the phys­i­cal removal from the head of the hair plugs or grafts. A hair repair, on the other hand, adds more hair to alter the hair­line and hide the poor work­man­ship of the first trans­plant. The effects of hair-transplant rever­sals vary widely depend­ing on why the first trans­plant did not work. If you are sim­ply unre­cep­tive to the process, you may end up deal­ing with more of the same prob­lems if only part of the hair “takes” or you do not get the nat­ural look you hoped for. On the other hand, if the ini­tial prob­lem was a lack of skill on the part of the sur­geon, a rever­sal will likely solve the prob­lem by hid­ing the scars or other cos­metic issues the first trans­plant did not solve.

There are sev­eral vari­a­tions avail­able and the most pop­u­lar and effec­tive of which include:

Hair Trans­plant Surgery

Hair trans­plan­ta­tion is a pro­ce­dure in which the sur­geon removes areas of hair-bearing scalp from the back or sides of the head and inserts the grafts  to the bald­ing areas. The rec­og­niz­able term for this tech­nique is ‘graft­ing’. The newly relo­cated hairs grows in the trans­planted areas that were pre­vi­ously bald. Once the hairs are trans­planted they are per­ma­nent and can be treated such as you would normally.

Hair flap surgery

Best choice for men with severe bald­ness. It involves a large flap of skin, on which hair is alive and grow­ing, to be pulled from the back and sides over the top sur­face area of the bald spot. It is then sur­gi­cally attached into place. The hair re-roots and begins to grow from its new loca­tion, ulti­mately elim­i­nat­ing any hair­less area.

Scalp tis­sue expansion

A balloon-type mech­a­nism is care­fully inserted under the scalp through an inci­sion. A salt-water con­coc­tion is added to slowly fill this bal­loon over time even­tu­ally caus­ing a swelling and stretch­ing of the scalp. The loose­ness actu­ally causes new skin cells to grow. After about two months this skin can be relo­cated to the area of bald­ness effec­tively mov­ing the hair to cover the spot.

Scalp reduc­tion surgery

 Also known as ‘advanced flap surgery’ since it is sim­i­lar in prin­ci­ple except a sec­tion of the bald scalp is actu­ally removed; rather than just pulling the skin over the hair­less spot. With the reduc­tion the sur­round­ing areas are actu­ally pulled up and con­nected in place of the absent scalp.

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.

With hair loss becom­ing a com­mon cause of con­cern amongst mil­lions of peo­ple across the world, every year a large num­ber of med­ica­tions, herbs, spices, nutri­tional sup­ple­ments, oils, sham­poos etc comes up in the mar­ket each claim­ing itself to be the panacea for hair loss. Each year, men suf­fer­ing from hair loss spend bil­lions of dol­lars in an attempt to treat their hair loss. Unfor­tu­nately, a large per­cent­age of all prod­ucts being mar­keted in the less than eth­i­cal hair loss treat­ment indus­try are com­pletely inef­fec­tive for the major­ity of those who use them.

If you are going bald you should seri­ously con­sider hair loss med­ica­tion treat­ments to halt or even reverse your hair loss. While there is no cure for hair loss drugs can often stop or even reverse alope­cia aer­ate in most peo­ple. Med­ica­tion for treat­ing hair loss slows thin­ning of the hair and increases cov­er­age of the scalp by grow­ing new hair and enlarg­ing exist­ing hairs.

Types of Med­ica­tions for Hair loss Treatment

Today there are two FDA approved med­ica­tions for hair growth – minox­i­dil which is sold over the counter as Rogaine, for both men and women, and Finas­teride, a pre­scrip­tion pill sold as Prope­cia, for men only. Two other drugs have been recently approved for hair growth and include a high-estrogen oral con­tra­cep­tive and Aldac­tone (How­ever, these two med­ica­tions are only for women due to their fem­i­niz­ing side effects.

Both these med­ica­tions slow thin­ning of the hair and increase cov­er­age of the scalp by grow­ing new hair and enlarg­ing exist­ing hairs. How­ever, the effec­tive­ness of finas­teride or minox­i­dil depends on your age and the loca­tion of hair loss. These med­ica­tions do not work for every­one, and you should not expect to re-grow a full head of hair.

1. DHT Hair Loss: A Chem­i­cal Process

Dihy­drotestos­terone (DHT) is a nat­ural metabo­lite in the human body that is the main cause for hair loss.  The trou­ble starts once testos­terone com­bines with an enzyme present in the oil glands found in hair fol­li­cles. DHT shrinks the hair fol­li­cle which causes the hair fol­li­cle gets smaller and finer. This is referred to as minia­tur­iza­tion with which the hair ulti­mately falls off. This is how DHT is respon­si­ble for about 95% of hair loss. The men or women who lose more hair are those who are genet­i­cally pre-disposed in pro­duc­ing more DHT than others.

2. Mir­a­cle Hair Care Prod­ucts for Baldness?

 There is no mir­a­cle hair care prod­uct that will stop bald­ing. How­ever, if a prod­uct blocked enzyme pro­duc­tion in the oil glands and DHT it should result in block­ing the hor­mone that causes balding.

3. FDA Approved Prope­cia for DHT Hair Loss

 Finas­teride is a drug that was used to treat prostate can­cer but the FDA has tested this drug and found that it reduces the pro­duc­tion of the enzyme 5 alpha thereby reduc­ing DHT lev­els. Hair loss is pre­vented when using this drug, how­ever it is only intended for males to use as a pre­ven­ta­tive hair loss solution.

Hypotri­chosis is a rare con­di­tion that is con­gen­i­tal; which means indi­vid­u­als suf­fer­ing from this con­di­tion were born with­out hair in the affected area, and will not have hair in the affected area unless opt­ing to undergo cor­rec­tional surgery. Hypotri­chosis is a con­di­tion that can be described as the scalp never hav­ing any hair growth. Alope­cia describes any con­di­tion where there was once hair growth, but as a symp­tom of the dis­ease the hair falls out. Hypotri­chosis is a syn­drome in which there was never exist­ing hair to begin with, the affected area remains bald through the life span of the indi­vid­ual affected by this dis­ease. It is a con­gen­i­tal dis­ease, due to genetic aber­ra­tions or defects of embry­onic development.

There are three types of Hypotrichosis

Tri­an­gu­lar alopecia

Tri­an­gu­lar alope­cia is usu­ally appar­ent from birth. A tri­an­gu­lar patch of skin and hair above the tem­ple is affected; this affected area does not grow hair. For­tu­nately this area can be sur­gi­cally removed or hair can be trans­planted to the area.

Con­gen­i­tal atrichia

Con­gen­i­tal atrichia is genetic and runs in fam­i­lies; it is also a gene defect that can spon­ta­neously develop in the embryo dur­ing preg­nancy. Peo­ple in some cases can be born with a full head of hair but, in early child­hood they lose all their hair and it never regrows

Apla­sia cutis congenital

Apla­sia cutis con­gen­i­tal is a devel­op­men­tal defect. The skin of the infant in the mother’s womb doesn’t totally develop. Babies are some­times born with a patch of skin that is like an open wound. How­ever if the defect is large it usu­ally requires and oper­a­tion. Dur­ing the oper­a­tion a Sur­geon will cut out the affected area and close up the skin.