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.

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.

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.

Old Style grafts are cir­cu­lar pieces of scalp con­tain­ing any­where from 7–15 hair fol­li­cles. This old-fashioned tech­nique, is not typ­i­cally used today, how­ever some­times they are com­bined with smaller min­i­grafts and micro­grafts to cre­ate a more nat­ural appear­ance. Since the 1970’s through the 1980’s hair trans­plan­ta­tion with Old Style grafts, or “plugs” as they are com­monly referred to, was the stan­dard method of sur­gi­cal hair restora­tion. Presently most hair trans­plants are accom­plished with min­i­grafts and micro­grafts alone. This tech­nique is also used to revise unsightly hair­lines caused by old tech­niques such as “plugs”.

Revi­sion of the hair line can be restored by a sur­gi­cal hair restora­tion sur­geon, with immense prac­tice of today’s inno­v­a­tive tech­niques. Meth­ods such as, stereo­scopic micro­scope dis­sect­ing gives sur­geons a greatly enlarged and, there­fore com­pletely clear view of the struc­ture of your hair and the way it is placed in its nat­ural state. This enables sur­geons to work with great pre­ci­sion between each fol­lic­u­lar unit and pre­serve not only the hair but also its vital struc­tures such as the seba­ceous glands and the hair roots. With­out the stereo­scopic micro­scope, there is a dan­ger that the sur­geon could cut through some of the hairs vital struc­tures and dam­age them in the process. Grafts trans­planted with the stereo­scopic micro­scope will be health­ier and there­fore will grow more vig­or­ously.

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.

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.