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.

Nor­mal hair loss can be char­ac­ter­ized as see­ing hair on your comb after using it. Every one of us loses hair on a daily bases, it is a part of the many renewal processes that are built into our bod­ies sys­tem.  But if you find your­self con­stantly hav­ing to clean your home because of hairs on the floor, it is time to become aware of proper hair care to pre­vent hair loss. The prob­lem could already exist, due to hered­ity rea­sons or hor­mones but it is pos­si­ble to reduce hair loss by sim­ply apply­ing these ben­e­fi­cial tips to your life.

Tips against Hair Loss

Pre­ven­ta­tive hair loss tips that you can apply to your every­day life.

• Comb hair every day gen­tly with­out pulling and break­ing the hair unnecessarily
• Avoid using excess hair gel and hairspray
• Brush hair when dry not when wet
• Con­sume a Healthy Diet
• Reg­u­lar exercise
• Do not ignore wash­ing of your hair every alter­nate day
• Know your hair type and then apply nec­es­sary prod­ucts on your hair
• Always avoid strong chem­i­cal hair products
• Mas­sag­ing the Scalp
• Proper Stress Management

Dan­druff causes fre­quent irri­ta­tion, inflam­ma­tion and itch­ing in the scalp. Indi­vid­u­als that that expe­ri­ence this type of irri­ta­tion and itch­ing in the scalp, often tend to scratch the area to relieve itch­ing. Scratch­ing the scalp fre­quently weak­ens the roots of the hair. This even­tu­ally leads the hair to fall out. A per­son can develop dan­druff due to sev­eral rea­sons such as, over intake of sugar and fats, exces­sive expo­sure to sun­light, per­spi­ra­tion, and in some case it may be due to genetic prob­lems. If the pres­ence of dan­druff is not due to genetic rea­sons, it can be treated effec­tively. The most effec­tive over– the– counter treat­ments avail­able are the anti-dandruff sham­poos and con­di­tion­ers which con­tain chem­i­cals such as zinc pyrithione and sele­nium sul­fide. After wash­ing hair with these par­tic­u­lar prod­ucts, the chem­i­cal is left on the scalp. These chem­i­cals pre­vent the regrowth of the fun­gus caus­ing the dan­druff on the scalp, and hence the hair is pro­tected from hair loss asso­ci­ated with the dandruff.

Hair loss occu­pies all of us. If we are not expe­ri­enc­ing hair loss, we have a close friend or rel­a­tive who does. In fact, mil­lions suf­fer from hair loss. It is only nat­ural that there are many mis­con­cep­tions about hair loss, and could be why so many have a dif­fi­cult time dis­tin­guish­ing fact from fic­tion. When deal­ing with hair loss con­cerns it is best to search out the more com­mon bald­ing myths and gain aware­ness of the facts. When becom­ing more aware of the facts you can then decide which hair loss treat­ment will be most effec­tive for your per­sonal require­ments. The fol­low­ing myths are 5 of the most com­mon hair loss misconceptions.

1. The myth – Wear­ing a hat may stim­u­late hair loss

The Truth – Unless your hat is so tight that it puts exces­sive ten­sion on the hair, it doesn’t mat­ter if you wear a hat every day.

1. The myth– Cut­ting  your hair will make it grow back thicker

The truth– Hair feels thicker after a hair cut because hair is thicker at the base but cut­ting your hair will not help pre­vent male or female-pattern baldness

1. The myth – Stress may cause per­ma­nents hair loss

The truth – In some cases, stress may only cause tem­po­rary hair loss

1. The myth– Only men expe­ri­ence hair loss

The truth– male pat­tern bald­ness is more com­mon but, a lot of women suf­fer from hair loss and thinning.

1. The myth– Peo­ple who do not suf­fer from hair loss have no shed­ding of hair at all

The truth– Every­one loses hair. Aver­age hair loss is about 50 per day.

There are a wide vari­ety of scalp infec­tions that can cause severe hair loss. For­tu­nately, most scalp infec­tion can be treated suc­cess­fully and have a sig­nif­i­cant effect on the hair growth. The main causes of scalp infec­tions are bac­te­ria, fun­gus, virus or par­a­sites. Fol­licul­tius is a bac­te­r­ial infec­tion which affects a large area of the scalp. If the infec­tion is deep in the hair fol­li­cles the dam­age may cause for a more exten­sive treat­ment but, if caught in time and treated it will heal quickly. An exam­ple of fun­gal infec­tion is Tinea Capits, which is cause by viral and par­a­sitic fol­li­culi­tis. Gen­er­ally it affects other hair grow­ing areas such as the body, beard, eye­brows, and eye­lashes. Pei­dra is another very com­mon scalp infec­tion that affects both curly and straight hair. It can lead to for­ma­tion of nod­ules on the infected hair, how­ever with care­ful exam­i­na­tion of these scalp infec­tions treat­ment can solve the hair loss.

Women expe­ri­enc­ing hair loss may have feel­ings of anx­i­ety and help­less­ness that could lead to men­tal dis­tress. Despite what you may think, as a woman – you do have options. Hair restora­tion is an option many women are opt­ing to undergo to cor­rect their hair loss and regain nat­ural healthy hair. Fol­lic­u­lar unit graft­ing is the most advance method being used in hair restora­tion to pin­point pre­ci­sion grafts in terms of place­ment. Each fol­lic­u­lar unit can con­tain up to four hairs. The sin­gle hair grafts are placed at the fore­front of the scalp, which cre­ates a very nat­ural appear­ance. The rest of the grafts are placed slightly behind the fore­front sin­gle hair grafts to cre­ate a dense and pro­found look on the female scalp.

Patients should be very care­ful if they pull scabs off and should be aware that they put them­selves at risk of remov­ing the graft. There are actu­ally two types of scabs; one of the two is stuck only to the hair and the other type is stuck to the actual sur­face of the graft. In a study it showed that for the first two days, pulling on a scab always resulted in a lost graft, the chances of the graft being com­pletely removed startes to decrease by the third day. Pulling on scabs that were stuck to the sur­face always resulted in a lost graft through day 1–5 how­ever, by days 10 – 14 post– op, grafts are at a lower risk of  being dis­lodged. You must be gen­tle with scabs if you are going to chose to pull them off, regard­less of the time frame you still risk the chance of pulling the graft out as well. If you fol­low the wash­ing tech­nique we out­line for you in our post-op instruc­tions the scabs should come off on their own. The use of Graft­Cyte which is a copper-peptied moist dress­ing, hydrates the area, as well as pro­vides micronu­tri­ents to speed the heal­ing of the fol­li­cles and will be able to elim­i­nate sur­face crust­ing while allow­ing the coag­u­lum that formed around the graft, to hold it firmly in place.