Hair Loss: What you need to know

If you are one of the many indi­vid­u­als con­sid­er­ing a hair loss treat­ment, here is an overview of the most impor­tant things you need to know, includ­ing the basics or hair loss and hair growth.

How Hair Growth Works

Hair is made up of a pro­tein called ker­atin (can also be found in nails) pro­duced in hair fol­li­cles in the outer layer of skin; fol­li­cles pro­duce new hair cells, the old cells are being pushed through the sur­face of the skin at a rate of about six inches a year.  The aver­age adult head has about 100,000 to 150,000 hairs and looses up to 100 of them a day-this is com­pletely normal.

Each fol­li­cle has its own life cycle and at any one time, 90% of the hair is grow­ing while 10% is rest­ing. The hair life cycle can be influ­enced by age, dis­ease and wide vari­ety of other factors.

Hair Life Cycle

Ana­gen- This is the growth phase that lasts between two and eight years. Dur­ing the ana­gen phase the growth cells in the papilla rapidly divide and pro­duce the hair shaft which becomes ker­a­tinized as it pushes up and out of the fol­li­cle into the pore. 

Cata­gen- the Ana­gen phase is fol­lowed by a brief two to four week Cata­gen phase or tran­si­tional phase. This is part of a renewal process where the fol­li­cle is lit­er­ally degraded and the hair stops grow­ing but does not fall out.

Tel­o­gen- The fol­li­cle then goes into the Tel­o­gen or rest­ing phase for two to four months, dur­ing this time the hair still does not grow but remains attached to the fol­li­cle while the der­mal papilla is in a rest­ing phase below. Approx­i­mately 10–15 per­cent of all hairs are in this phase at any one time.

Types of Hair Loss (Alope­cia) and Causes

Invo­lu­tional Alope­cia- is the nor­mal loss of hair around the crown and tem­ples, both in men and women, as the age starts advanc­ing. Men are a larger tar­get for this con­di­tion then women are.

Andro­genic Alope­cia (pat­tern bald­ness) — Accounts for over 90% of all pat­tern hair loss in both men and women. It is the pro­gres­sive and grad­ual loss of hair in cer­tain areas of the scalp. Affects men from early twen­ties and in some cases earlier-but gen­er­ally 40’s are the worst period. After menopause Women can also be affected. The hair fol­li­cles in cer­tain areas are thought to be affected by the hor­mone Dihy­drotestos­terone (DHT). Pat­tern bald­ness is hered­i­tary, can be inher­ited from either paren.

Alope­cia Areata (patchy bald­ness)- This con­di­tion presents itself as patchy areas of the scalp clearly defined. Both sexes can suf­fer from this. Large chunks can come off while brush­ing. The cause is believed to be ner­vous stress and mostly fol­low­ing infec­tious dis­eases such as pneu­mo­nia, influenza, typhoid. It can also fol­low oper­a­tions and child­birth. Hair will, in most cases grow back, usu­ally in white color first, regain­ing its nat­ural color gradually.

Tri­chotil­lo­ma­nia (Trac­tion alope­cia): Caused from abuse by pulling or twist­ing of the hair result­ing break­ing of the hair shaft. Chil­dren are most affected because of their habit of play­ing with their hair. Cer­tain hair dress­ing prac­tices such as hair curl­ing or straight­en­ing can also cause this condition.

Tel­o­gen Efflu­vium-Caused by cer­tain events in life that alter the hair growth and simul­ta­ne­ously force fol­li­cles start rest­ing phase. This can result in a molt or major hair loss that can be quite trau­matic. The con­di­tion may reverse in time leav­ing less dense hair in most cases.

Per­ma­nent hair loss

• Male-pattern bald­ness (andro­ge­netic alope­cia). For men, pat­tern bald­ness can begin early, even in the teens or early 20s. It’s typ­i­cally char­ac­ter­ized by a reced­ing hair­line at the tem­ples and bald­ing at the top of the head. The end result may be par­tial or com­plete baldness.
• Female-pattern bald­ness (andro­ge­netic alope­cia). Women with per­ma­nent hair loss usu­ally have hair loss lim­ited to thin­ning at the front, sides or crown. Women usu­ally main­tain their front hair­line and rarely expe­ri­ence com­plete baldness.
• Cica­tri­cial (scar­ring) alope­cia. This rare con­di­tion occurs when inflam­ma­tion dam­ages and scars hair fol­li­cles, caus­ing per­ma­nent hair loss. Some­times the patchy hair loss is asso­ci­ated with itch­ing or pain.

Tem­po­rary hair loss

• Alope­cia areata. Hair loss usu­ally occurs in small, round, smooth patches about the size of a quar­ter. Usu­ally the dis­ease doesn’t extend beyond a few bare patches on the scalp, but it can cause patchy hair loss on any area that has hair, includ­ing eye­brows, eye­lashes and beard. In rare cases, it can progress to cause hair loss over the entire body. If the hair loss includes your entire scalp, the con­di­tion is called alope­cia totalis. If it involves your whole body, it’s called alope­cia uni­ver­salis. Sore­ness and itch­ing may pre­cede the hair loss, but symp­toms are often minimal.
• Tel­o­gen efflu­vium. This type of tem­po­rary hair loss occurs sud­denly, most often after a sig­nif­i­cant ill­ness or major life stress. Hand­fuls of hair may come out when comb­ing or wash­ing your hair or may fall out after gen­tle tug­ging. This type of hair loss usu­ally causes over­all hair thin­ning and not bald patches.
• Trac­tion alope­cia. Bald patches can occur if you reg­u­larly wear cer­tain hair­styles, such as pig­tails, braids or corn­rows, or if you use tight rollers. Hair loss typ­i­cally occurs between the rows or at the part where hair is pulled tightly.
• Ana­gen efflu­vium. In this type of hair loss, actively grow­ing hairs in the ana­gen state are affected most often by chemother­a­peu­tic drugs given to fight can­cer or lym­phoma. Hair loss starts soon after begin­ning ther­apy and is more exten­sive than in the tel­o­gen efflu­vium state. In the weeks after the ther­apy has been com­pleted, the hair cycles re-establish them­selves, although the hair may not return as thickly as before chemotherapy.

If you are expe­ri­enc­ing hair loss, please phone our office to set up your com­pli­men­tary con­sul­ta­tion. Bev­erly Hills Hair Restora­tion 310–289-0901

The con­di­tion known as Phys­i­o­logic Alope­cia is the med­ical term for sud­den hair loss. This type of loss can be seen in babies just after they are born. Whilst still in the womb babies are cov­ered in hair, most of which is lost just before the birth and only the hair on the head remains. This is usu­ally dark and is lost within a few weeks of being born after which the baby will grow their nat­ural hair. Phys­i­o­logic Alope­cia is the result of nor­mal hair loss, rather than loss caused by ill­ness, med­ica­tion or stress, and can be wit­nessed in women dur­ing preg­nancy and in teenage chil­dren too. The sud­den loss of the hair is due to the body under­go­ing a nat­ural tran­si­tion or phase and is usu­ally fol­lowed by nat­ural and spon­ta­neous hair growth of another kind. The tem­po­rary nature of sud­den hair loss is there­fore not treated with inva­sive hair replace­ment solu­tions.

Hair fol­li­cle infec­tion is one pos­si­bil­ity of the under­ly­ing cause of your hair loss. It might feel inflamed and filled up by pus. Another name of the hair fol­li­cle infec­tion is fol­li­culi­tis. You might see it as a pim­ple (on your face), but it’s occurred on your scalp. Fol­li­culi­tis could occur on your legs, scalp, beard or maybe but­tock. There’s a group of bac­te­ria named Staphy­lo­coc­cus aureus or Pseudomonas aerug­i­nosa that cause the infec­tion within scalp area. Or in other cases, fun­gal and yeast could also cause the infec­tions. The infec­tion could also be caused when your clothes are too tight, or maybe exces­sive sweat­ing. It might get very painful if left untreated and foli­culi­tis Increases.

Hair Fol­li­cle Infec­tion Treatment

You don’t need any med­ical treat­ment if your hair fol­li­cle prob­lem is not very bad. How­ever, if the infec­tion is bad and painful, you have to visit a doc­tor. He will give you antibi­otic creams to be applied into the infected area. The infec­tion could recur again and again; if this is the case your physi­cian will pre­scribe antibi­otic tablets to kill the bac­terium that is caus­ing the infection.

There are basi­cally three phases of hair life­cy­cle — ana­gen, cata­gen and tel­o­gen. Ana­gen is the growth phase of the hair. Cata­gen is the rest­ing phase of hair life cycle, while tel­o­gen is the phase in which the hair com­pletes its life cycle and falls off. It is nor­mal for women to lose about 50–100 hair every­day. This num­ber is insignif­i­cant and barely notice­able. Hair loss becomes an issue of con­cern only when you start los­ing sub­stan­tial num­ber of hair every­day. This is because, due to some rea­son, hair fall takes place in the growth phase itself. Here are a few fac­tors which lead to hair loss in women over 50.

Andro­ge­netic Alopecia

This is a genetic con­di­tion which affects about 85% women who com­plain of hair loss in their 50s. These women are genet­i­cally pre­dis­posed for hair loss. The genetic com­po­si­tion from both sides of their fam­ily is respon­si­ble for this. In this con­di­tion, the growth phase of affected hair fol­li­cles shrinks, which cause them to fall pre­ma­turely. More­over, the tex­ture of hair begins to degrade as it grows and it also loses its pigment.

Tel­o­gen Effluvium

This is a non-genetic con­di­tion in which hair falls at the end of their life cycle. How­ever, the cause of hair fall is not nat­ural, but derived. Acute stress, med­ica­tions for heart dis­eases, dia­betes, liver dis­eases etc. are respon­si­ble for tel­o­gen efflu­vium. As you must have noticed, these are the med­ica­tions, which most women over 50 con­sume, hence, tel­o­gen efflu­vium is also a pretty com­mon cause of hair loss in women over 50.

Alope­cia Areata

This is basi­cally an auto-immune dis­or­der, in which the cells of body fail to rec­og­nize its own hair fol­li­cles. The immune sys­tem sends inflam­ma­tory cells to attack these fol­li­cles, caus­ing them to fall off. Apart from this, the immune sys­tem of these women do not show any major prob­lem. A dis­tinct hair loss can be seen, which includes cir­cu­lar bald patches with dense hair growth around.

Trac­tion Alopecia

If you have been abus­ing your hair with dif­fer­ent hair treat­ments, tight bands, vari­ety of hair serums, all your life, then trac­tion alope­cia is what you get at the age of 50. Tight hair bands lit­er­ally pull your hair out of the scalp, while hair treat­ments dete­ri­o­rate the qual­ity of hair, both of which lead to hair loss in later life.

Hair Loss Treatment

Your hair expert may rec­om­mend you an appro­pri­ate treat­ment for cur­ing your prob­lem. Hor­mone ther­apy, drugs, top­i­cal solu­tions can be pre­scribed accord­ing to the cause of hair loss. In some cases, hair loss laser treat­ments can prove ben­e­fi­cial. How­ever, if the cause is genetic, then you have lim­ited scope of grow­ing your hair back. In this case, hair trans­plant is the only option avail­able. How­ever, if you start tak­ing proper care of your hair in your young age itself, you will have lit­tle rea­son to worry about hair loss in your later life. Sim­i­larly, avoid expos­ing your hair to harsh chem­i­cal treat­ments, as far as possible.

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.

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.

Demodex Fol­li­clorm are a species of mites, it has also been called “face mite”. Demodex Fol­li­clorm varies in size from .1mm to .4mm long, it lives in your pores and hair fol­li­cles, typ­i­cally on your scalp, nose, eye­brows and often in the roots of your eye­lashes. Demod­i­cides are very worm like with tiny claws and scales all over its body, this make it eas­ier for it to anchor itself in the hair fol­li­cle. Female demod­i­cides can lay up to 25 eggs in a sin­gle fol­li­cle, and as the mites grow, they become tightly packed. When the mites mature they leave the fol­li­cle to mate and lay more eggs. Mites have a daily rou­tine so to say, dur­ing the day they remain feed­ing within the fol­li­cle. At night, they emerge onto the sur­face to mate, and eggs are laid into fol­li­cles so that the newly hatched mites may feed on the oily secre­tions of the scalp known as sebum.

Almost every human being holds the Demodex mite to some degree; peo­ple that are los­ing their hair carry a sub­stan­tially large amount of the mites in their fol­li­cles. So if the pres­ence of the mite is so uncon­trolled in everyone�s fol­li­cles, wouldn’t every­one be suf­fer­ing from hair loss The most preva­lent expla­na­tion is that some of us are unfor­tu­nate and carry a gene that may cause an immune response that is not nec­es­sar­ily con­sis­tent across all those who are affected with the mite. An inflam­ma­tory reac­tion on the scalp is an effect the mite has on these peo­ple, and when this occurs the hair fol­li­cle is killed. The sec­ond most com­mon rea­son­ing is that level of infes­ta­tion tak­ing place is so immense the hair fol­li­cle even­tu­ally begins to suf­fer. The mite like explained ear­lier feeds off the sebum; this causes the fol­li­cle to become pro­gres­sively under­nour­ished caus­ing the hair fol­li­cle to even­tu­ally fall out.

Accord­ing to the online� Med­ical Libary, 25% of men show signs of bald­ness by age 30 and two thirds by age 60. Hair Loss affects toughly 40 % of men thats why men are start­ing to take action with hair­trans­plan­taion when there is even a slight sign of bald­ing.� The most dra­matic area to lose hair is the frontal area (hair line). This tends to cause a man to look bald even with only a slight loss of hair. The num­ber of young men start­ing treat­ment with prope­cia and hair restora­tion is increas­ing. It is com­mon for men with min­i­mal hair loss to seek a sur­gi­cal hair trans­plant. Most men with frontal hair loss are excel­lent can­di­dates for fol­lic­u­lar hair transplants.

For most men with male pat­tern bald­ness, frontal hair loss is the most com­mon. This is char­ac­ter­ized by a front to back pro­gres­sion of hair loss. For most men there is gen­er­ally more lim­ited hair loss in the�crown, even with advanced hair loss, the hair loss moves back until with many it causes bald­ness from the front to the crown, leav­ing the sides and back of the head pro­duc­ing a fair amount of hair. Direc­tion of hair growth enables cov­er­age of the area imme­di­ately in front of it and to the side to give the most nat­ural appearance.