Hair loss that is con­nected to preg­nancy usu­ally occurs after deliv­ery. Rea­son for this is due to the fact that our hair grows and falls out in phases. Approx­i­mately 90% of your hair is grow­ing at any one time, while the other 10% enters a rest­ing phase and begins shed­ding. Dur­ing preg­nancy the rise in hor­mones pre­vents women from going through this rest­ing phase. After deliv­ery, hor­mones return to their nor­mal lev­els, and all the hair that was delayed from the rest­ing phase dur­ing preg­nancy may start to all fall out at once. Hair loss usu­ally peaks around 3 months after deliv­ery, the extent of hair loss may be exces­sive for a period of time, but for­tu­nately this hair loss is tem­po­rary and the hair returns to its nor­mal growth cycle within six to twelve months.

Tri­chor­re­hexis nodosa gives hair a paint brush like look. This is because the hair fiber has a defect that dam­ages the cuti­cle layer result­ing in the dis­rup­tion of the cor­tex; this is just one exam­ple of a hair shaft abnor­mal­ity. There are many types of hair shaft abnor­mal­i­ties; one of the most com­mon is Tri­ch­or­rhexis Nodosa. Tri­chor­re­hexis nodosa is a focal defect in the hair fiber. The cuti­cle layer is com­pletely absent, this cause a large num­ber of fry­ing and swelling nodes that are evi­dent in par­tic­u­lar spots along the length of the hair fiber. The cuti­cle is the layer that pro­vides phys­i­cal sup­port, and pro­tec­tion of the cor­tex. The expo­sure of the cor­tex layer to chem­i­cals in the envi­ron­ment leads to dam­age and diminu­tion of the strength of the hair fiber, the cor­tex becomes weak and the hair may split and fray into minute strands so defec­tively that the cuti­cle will break down and as you brush your hair the hair fiber may break. The cause of it can be con­gen­i­tal. Some indi­vid­u­als have nat­u­rally weak hair where the cuti­cle is not prop­erly pro­duced. It can also be acquired as a result of exces­sive hair manip­u­la­tion and over pro­cess­ing. Treat­ment for tri­ch­or­rhexis nodosa depends on the cause. If con­gen­i­tal it would be advised to seek treat­ment that improves the strength of the hair fiber and fol­li­cle. If the cause is acquired through exces­sive hair manip­u­la­tion obvi­ous treat­ment would be to reduce the amount of hair manipulation.

Types of Tri­ch­or­rhexis nodosa

·         Prox­i­mal tri­ch­or­rhexis nodosa

·         Dis­tal tri­ch­or­rhexis nodosa

The more severe of the two is prox­i­mal tri­ch­or­rhexis. Often if occurs in Afro-Caribbean peo­ple because their hair is very tight and curly.Distal tri­ch­or­rhexis nodosa occurs in straighter hair. The sur­face of the hair becomes dry and dull, for the rea­son that to the shaft is being defected by the nod­ules in the hair fiber.

It takes 8 months to a year to see the full results after a hair restora­tion pro­ce­dure. After under­go­ing a hair trans­plant the grafts go through a bit of an adjust­ment period. Hair has two main growth phases; Tel­o­gen which is the grow­ing phase and Ana­gen which is the dor­mant phase. When hair grows it grows con­tin­u­ously for a few years. Once this tel­o­gen phase comes to an end the hair goes into the ana­gen phase. Dur­ing this three to five month period the hair shaft not only stops grow­ing it actu­ally falls out. This can be at any time dur­ing the ana­gen phase and can even hap­pen at the end of the ana­gen phase due to the new hair regrow­ing in the old hair’s place and is push­ing the old hair out.

There is not a rea­son known for why a hair trans­plant actu­ally trig­gers the ana­gen phase (rest­ing phase) of a hair follicle’s cycle. This is why between three and five weeks post-op all the hair fall out. It is com­pletely nor­mal and patients should not be alarmed. The hair stays dor­mant for three to five months but some patients will sprout ear­lier. Once the hair starts to grow it doesn’t come in all at once. There are some areas that come in sooner than oth­ers so in the begin­ning the new growth will appear fuller in some areas. Around six months 60 % of the hair usu­ally starts to poke through and by eight to ten months all of the grafts should have come through. It’s impor­tant as a patient to under­stand the hair growth cycle, this way they have a much more clear under­stand­ing on what to expect. The more patients under­stand and obtain knowl­edge will decrease any con­cerns that may arise.

Hair loss affects both men and women, but bald­ing remains a fate reserved mostly for men. If addressed early Bev­erly Hills Hair Restora­tion can help find the right treat­ment, we have made it entirely pos­si­ble for men to pre­vent bald­ness and even re –grow lost hair. Early signs of hair loss symp­toms include thin­ning hair on top of the scalp and the grad­u­ally appear­ance of a bold spot (devel­op­ing a widow’s peak, or diffuse-spread hair loss over the entire scalp). If there’s a fam­ily his­tory of male or female pat­tern bald­ness, it is likely to increase the chance of devel­op­ing this con­di­tion. Pre­ven­tion treat­ments are avail­able at Bev­erly Hills Hair Restora­tion. Male pat­tern bald­ness is by far the most com­mon con­di­tion that Bev­erly Hills Hair Restora­tion deals with. Depend­ing on the stage of hair loss, var­i­ous com­bi­na­tion of clin­i­cally proven hair loss treat­ments are pro­vided to our patients. Hair growth booster prod­ucts and sup­ple­ments may be pre­scribed by Dr. Kahen if he feels his patient will achieve the best pos­si­ble results with this type of pre­ven­tion option.

Graft­Cyte improves the heal­ing process after a hair trans­plant in sev­eral ways.

                                                      Effect of Graft­cyte on Growth Trans­planted Hair

                                                        (0 = none, 1 = mild, 2 = mod­er­ate, 3 = extensive)

It is used as a post – oper­a­tive reg­i­men, it aids in faster heal­ing of the trans­plants and ear­lier regrowth of the hair. Graft­Cyte is a cop­per – pep­tide prod­uct, when a Graft­Cyte dress­ing is placed on the trans­planted grafts it enhances heal­ing of the fol­li­cle shaft. It also results in less post – oper­a­tive shed­ding along with more imme­di­ate hair growth. Some patients can expe­ri­ence new hair growth in 6 weeks, ver­sus the nor­mal 10 to 14 weeks when not using Graft­Cyte. The amount of weeks a patient expe­ri­ences crust­ing is greatly decreased from the nor­mal 10 to 14 days to just 5 days.  Patients have even reported that the use of Graft­Cyte made their hair have greater body, shine and texture.

There are a lot of health issues that start to occur when you have Hypothy­roidism. The prob­lem that causes the most con­cern is hair loss.

Hypothy­roidism can cause many prob­lems; one of the most com­mon prob­lems is hair loss. The sever­ity of hair loss varies, it may be as small as the hair thin­ning, to large chunks of hair falling out, or it could be just a change of tex­ture mak­ing it become dry, brit­tle and coarse. Hav­ing hypothy­roidism under con­trol is the first step towards pre­vent­ing hair loss. Luck­ily it is very easy to treat; there are many med­ica­tions that restore the thy­roid gland func­tion. How­ever, treat­ment of the hypothy­roidism may not always result in re-growth of the hair. Here are a few ways to stop hair loss with hypothy­roidism before it hap­pens. Make sure it’s not your thy­roid drug. If your are tak­ing lavothy­roxin (i.e., Syn­throis) as your thy­roid hor­mone replace­ment, and still los­ing hair you should talk to your Doc­tor about alter­na­tive med­i­cines if in fact the med­ica­tion is the cause of your hair loss. Exces­sive hair loss may be a side effect of Syn­throid. Not being at the right TSH or not tak­ing the right drugs can cause hair loss so it is very impor­tant to be prop­erly treated. Nat­ural herbs are an alter­na­tive to med­ica­tion that aids in hair loss pre­ven­tion, the fol­low­ing vit­a­mins are an exam­ple of a few.

Argi­nine

Cys­teine

Green Tea

Polysor­bate 80

Prog­es­terone

Saw pal­metto

Tri­chosac­caride

Vit­a­min b6

Zinc

Each Strand of Hair con­sists of three Layers:

1. An inner­most layer or medulla
2. The mid­dle layer known as the cor­tex. The cor­tex pro­vides strength and both the color and tex­ture of hair.
3. The outer layer is known as the cuti­cle. The cuti­cle is thin and col­or­less and serves as a pro­tec­tor of the cortex.

Hair Grows in three phases –The first is the ANAGEN phase also known as the growth phase, approx­i­mately 85% of all hairs are in the growth phase at one time.  The growth phase can vary from two to six years rang­ing any­where from approx­i­mately 6 to 10 cm per year. The Sec­ond phase is the CATAGEN phase, this lasts about one or two weeks. Within one or two weeks, 25% of the hairs are in a tran­si­tional phase at one time. Dur­ing the sec­ond phase the hair fol­li­cle shrinks to about 1/6 of its nor­mal length. The third phase is the TELOGEN phase (rest­ing phase) and lasts about 5–6 weeks. 13% of all hairs are in the rest­ing phase at one time but this per­cent­age can vary from 4% to 24%.  Dur­ing this time the hair does not grow but stays attached to the fol­li­cle while the der­mal papilla stays in a rest­ing phase. Hair growth from the trans­planted fol­li­cles gen­er­ally begins at 2.5 — 3 months. Some of the hairs can begin to grow as quickly as one month. The remain­der of the hair will start to grow within the year fol­low­ing your pro­ce­dure, patients will see the full results within 8 to 12 months.

Smok­ing does con­tribute to many health issues includ­ing hair loss. This is due to the fact that smok­ing con­tains almost 4,000 lethal and dam­ag­ing chem­i­cals that can cause hair loss. What hap­pens is smok­ing stops the flow of an ade­quate amount of oxy­gen and nutri­ents through your blood, which is what causes the hair to fall out and brake off.  Dr. Kahen rec­om­mends if at all pos­si­ble quit­ting smok­ing and chew­ing tobacco the week prior to surgery. Smok­ers should avoid or min­i­mize nico­tine and second-hand smoke for 48 hours prior to surgery. Nico­tine is found in tobacco prod­ucts such as cig­a­rettes, cig­ars, pipe and chew­ing tobacco.

Alope­cia Uni­ver­salis can be char­ac­ter­ized as hair loss through­out the body. Alope­cia Uni­ver­salis can be defined as the most severe alope­cia con­di­tion, indi­vid­u­als with this con­di­tion expe­ri­ence total hair loss of the scalp and body.  Many indi­vid­u­als with alope­cia uni­ver­salis are born with the con­di­tion but are healthy oth­er­wise. There are not enough stud­ies to ver­ify specif­i­cally what causes alope­cia uni­ver­salis, what has been dis­cov­ered is that this dis­or­der is inher­ited as an auto­so­mal reces­sive trait.  It is caused by a muta­tion in a gene, the “hair­less” gene only found in peo­ple with this dis­or­der. Aside from genetic ten­den­cies, the con­tribut­ing causes of alope­cia uni­ver­salis are not known. Fin­ger­nails and toe­nails can also be affected. Symp­toms in the nails are pinprick-like inden­ta­tion to sever dis­tor­tion of the entire nail. The lack of body hair leaves area like scalp, eyes and nasal cav­ity par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble, it is impor­tant that those with the dis­or­der take extra care to pro­tect them­selves from the sun and bac­te­ria to avoid get­ting infec­tions or skin cancer.

After receiv­ing hair restora­tion shed­ding may occur and this often wor­ries the patients, when actu­ally it is very nor­mal and your hair will grow back.Typically, the major­ity of the newly trans­planted hairs will fall out within the first 2 to 4 weeks. This is per­fectly nor­mal and patients should be informed prior to their pro­ce­dure that shed­ding is com­mon, and should not be a cause of any con­cern. It must be under­stood that although, the trans­planted hair falls out the fol­li­cle is still at the root and will start to sprout in 3 to 4 months. There are ways to min­i­mize the effects of post-operative shed­ding. The best way to min­i­mize this effect is with med­ica­tion, Prope­cia reverses the minia­tur­iza­tion process which will decrease shedding.