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.

Hair plays an impor­tant role in the female world. Many women are defined by their outer appear­ance. Hav­ing beau­ti­ful healthy hair is a part of the equa­tion that women use to mea­sure their beauty and appear­ance. Although hair loss in women is just as com­mon as it is in men, it is more dif­fi­cult to deal with. Hair loss occurs for a wide vari­ety of rea­sons and there are a hand­ful causes at the cen­ter of this problem.

One doc­u­mented med­ical con­di­tion know to com­monly to cause hair loss in women is menopause. When a woman begins to enter menopause the lev­els of estro­gen in the body begins to decrease. Estro­gen is needed to help pro­duce testos­terone. The cor­rect lev­els of testos­terone make it pos­si­ble for hair to con­tinue to grow and main­tain a healthy cycle. With­out enough estro­gen and testos­terone the growth of hair begins to slow result­ing in hair loss.

Women pat­tern bald­ness is typ­i­cally the thin­ning of the hair on the top of the scalp. For many, it can get quite thin, leav­ing women feel­ing very inse­cure and try­ing dif­fer­ent hair­styles to con­ceal the prob­lem. Unfor­tu­nately, they usu­ally opt for styles which can fur­ther dam­age hair fol­li­cles, lead­ing to more thinning.

In the past, women teased their hair, pulled it back in pony tails, or permed it to hide their secret. But, now there is some­thing that can be done to treat this prob­lem. In fact, if it is caught in time, hair can be regrown by using the proper treatment.

When it comes to hair loss the male and female pop­u­la­tion will have expe­ri­enced it before the age 30. How­ever, the process of hair bald­ness dif­fers for each indi­vid­ual. For a num­ber of peo­ple, bald­ness is a genetic con­di­tion like andro­genic alope­cia or pro­gres­sive hair thin­ning, which is a com­mon type of hair loss.

Hair­line in women will not recede as com­pared to men; how­ever, the hair becomes thin­ner all over the head and it may lead to total bald­ness. While men at age 20 or even less get reced­ing hair­lines that look like a let­ter M, wherein hair thin­ning will start at the crown and around the sides of the head.

Another con­di­tion or type that causes hair loss is the alope­cia areata; it is often called spot hair bald­ness and occurs in all areas of the body caus­ing loss of hair, espe­cially on the scalp. There are two types of alope­cia: while alope­cia totalis is a total hair loss on the scalp, the alope­cia uni­ver­salis is a total loss of all body hair.

What­ever term suits the descrip­tion or dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of hair loss, hair bald­ness, or hair bald­ing, the fact still lies that at some point in an individual’s life the process of going bald may occur. Dev­as­tat­ing as it may seem there are solu­tions and var­i­ous options for hair loss suf­fer­ers and if prop­erly treated in the early stages the pro­gres­sion can be put to a halt.

Hair restora­tion pro­ce­dures have changed in the decades since they were first done. The ear­lier meth­ods of using hair plugs were not accept­able to soci­ety. Hair trans­plant patients appeared to have doll like hair. Now hair trans­plants are more nat­ural look­ing due to the inno­v­a­tive meth­ods being used, such as micro grafting.

In gen­eral, most hair trans­plant surg­eries today involve micro graft­ing. Micro grafts hold about 1–3 or four hair fol­li­cles. Older style hair grafts often held on aver­age a dozen hair fol­li­cles. These new micro grafts are only pos­si­ble because skilled sur­geons have refined their method of extract­ing them.

Micro grafts are use­ful in hair trans­plant surgery because they can give the hair a quite nat­ural appear­ance. The hair emerges from the scalp in the most nat­ural way, with the same num­ber of hairs that nature intended. If the pro­ce­dure is done cor­rectly, no one can tell the difference.

Pre­vi­ously, when hair plugs were used, doc­tors did the hair trans­plant surg­eries much dif­fer­ently. They used an instru­ment called a trephine to cut cir­cu­lar grafts from 2mm to 5mm in diam­e­ter. These plugs were inserted into the bald­ing area.

Finally, the micro grafts will be fin­ished by being divided into indi­vid­ual grafts by using a stere­omi­cro­scope. The sur­gi­cal team will make a vari­ety of grafts from eight-shaft mini grafts to one or two shaft micro grafts. These will be moved dur­ing hair trans­plant to the recip­i­ent sites so that the hair will have a nat­ural hair­line with full­ness on top.

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.

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.

Hair Fol­li­cles

Hair has two dis­tinct struc­tures — first, the fol­li­cle itself, which resides in the skin, and sec­ond, the shaft, which is what is vis­i­ble above the scalp.

Two sheaths, an inner and outer sheath, sur­round the fol­li­cle. These struc­tures pro­tect and form the grow­ing hair shaft. The inner sheath fol­lows the hair shaft and ends below the open­ing of a seba­ceous (oil) gland, and some­times an apoc­rine (scent) gland. The outer sheath con­tin­ues all the way up to the gland. A mus­cle called an erec­tor pili mus­cle attaches below the gland to a fibrous layer around the outer sheath. When this mus­cle con­tracts, it causes the hair to stand up which also causes the seba­ceous gland to secrete oil.

Hair Shafts

The hair shaft is made of a hard pro­tein called ker­atin and is made in three lay­ers. This pro­tein is actu­ally dead, so the hair that you see is not a liv­ing struc­ture. The inner layer is the medulla. The sec­ond layer is the cor­tex and the outer layer is the cuti­cle. The cor­tex makes up the major­ity of the hair shaft. The cuti­cle is a tightly formed struc­ture made of shingle-like over­lap­ping scales. It is both the cor­tex and the medulla that holds the hair’s pig­ment, giv­ing it its color.

Hair Growth Cycle

Hair on the scalp grows about .3 to .4 mm/day or about 6 inches per year. Unlike other mam­mals, human hair growth and shed­ding is ran­dom and not sea­sonal or cycli­cal. At any given time, a ran­dom num­ber of hairs will be in one of three stages of growth and shed­ding: ana­gen, cata­gen, and telogen.

Causes of hair loss induced by scalp infections.

Fol­li­culi­tis

Fol­li­culi­tis is a term for inflam­ma­tion of hair fol­li­cles. It looks like acne with lit­tle rings of inflam­ma­tion sur­round­ing the open­ing of a hair fol­li­cle. In the early stages of a fol­li­culi­tis, the hair fiber may still be present, but as the fol­li­culi­tis pro­gresses the hair often falls out. There are non-infectious forms of fol­li­culi­tis, such as those caused by oils and greases applied to the skin that clog up the hair fol­li­cles, but fol­li­culi­tis is usu­ally due to a bac­te­r­ial infec­tion. Non­pre­scrip­tion top­i­cal antibi­otics such as bac­i­tracin, myc­i­tracin, or neomycin can be used to treat minor folliculitis

Piedra

Piedra (tri­chomy­co­sis nodu­laris) hap­pens when the hair fibers are infected by a fun­gus. The vis­i­ble indi­ca­tor of a piedra infec­tion is devel­op­ment of hard nod­ules on hair fibers. Indeed, “piedra” is Span­ish for stone. Piedra infec­tion may affect hairs of the scalp, body, and gen­i­tal areas. Usu­ally the infec­tion is rel­a­tively benign. In parts of Malaysia, the nod­ules of black piedra are con­sid­ered attrac­tive and tra­di­tion­ally women encour­aged its growth by sleep­ing with their hair buried in the soil. Treat­ment gen­er­ally involves shav­ing off affected areas. Anti-fungals such as keto­cona­zole or terbinafine are also used.

Demodex fol­licu­lo­rum

Demodex is a lit­tle worm-like crea­ture that likes to live on skin and in hair fol­li­cles. It feeds on dead skin and oils, so it par­tic­u­larly likes to live in hair fol­li­cles where there are lots of both.

Humans are born free of Demodex, but dur­ing child­hood, through con­tact with oth­ers, the skin can become infected with it. For the most part, we never know they are there. They are benign, if repul­sive, lit­tle crea­tures. The most com­mon prob­lem with Demodex is that they may cause irri­ta­tion, par­tic­u­larly in the eye­lashes. If you have itchy eye­lashes, Demodex may be the problem.

Mis­tak­enly thought to be a strictly male dis­ease, women make up a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of Amer­i­can hair loss suf­fer­ers. In female pat­tern hair loss some excess loss of hair is noted, but grad­ual thin­ning is the rea­son women seek pro­fes­sional advice from a physi­cian hair restora­tion spe­cial­ist. Nor­mal hair shed­ding is approx­i­mately 100–150 hairs per day, in female pat­tern hair loss the shed­ding sub­stan­tially increases and becomes more evi­dent. The affected areas uni­formly grow back smaller in diam­e­ter (minia­tur­ize). The hair that takes place in the affected area will appear fuzzy and invis­i­ble (peach fuzz).

Pat­terns of female bald­ness can vary con­sid­er­ably in appear­ance. Pat­terns that may occur include:

• Dif­fuse thin­ning over the entire scalp
• Dif­fuse thin­ning other the entire scalp, with more notice­able thin­ning toward the front of the scalp

Hair loss in women can be absolutely dev­as­tat­ing for self image and emo­tional well-being. For­tu­nately, with the new inno­v­a­tive tech­niques hair restora­tion has to offer women are now able to achieve per­ma­nent growth with the new fol­lic­u­lar unit and min­i­graft techniques.