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.

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.

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.

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.