Bald­ness and thin­ning hair is a very com­mon ail­ment, by the age of 35 over two thirds of Amer­i­can men will suf­fer from some degree of hair loss. By the age of 50 approx­i­mately 85% of men will be deal­ing with some type of bald­ness or hair loss. Bald­ness in women is not as com­mon as men, but approx­i­mately two thirds of women suf­fer also. Most women suf­fer from pat­tern bald­ness and more com­monly hair loss and thin­ning. Bald­ness and hair loss can be dev­as­tat­ing and effect a per­sons self esteem and con­fi­dence greatly. Here are ten facts about bald­ness, some of the causes and treatments.

1.) Bald­ness is not caused by wear­ing ball caps, hats, hel­mets or any sim­i­lar apparel.
2.) There is no link between hair loss and a man’s fer­til­ity or viril­ity.
3.) If you are bald­ing shav­ing your hair off will not help grow it back thicker.
4.) It is true that some men can start bald­ing as early as their late teens.
5.) Estro­gen is what usu­ally helps women from expe­ri­enc­ing com­plete bald­ness like men, although women do suf­fer greatly from hair thin­ning and loss.
6.) Bald­ing tends to spread quickly, so you must seek pro­fes­sional help early if you want to do any­thing about it.
7.) There are many causes for bald­ness and hair loss includ­ing genet­ics, envi­ron­men­tal expo­sures, menopause, stress, hor­monal changes, smok­ing, cer­tain med­ica­tions and iron defi­ciency.
8.) True bald­ness effects only men, women can suf­fer from allover thin­ning and loss but their hair­line does not recede dra­mat­i­cally like a mans.
9.) Everyone’s hair is dif­fer­ent so hair loss and treat­ments will be dif­fer­ent from per­son to per­son.
10.) A bal­anced diet and healthy lifestyle can help save your hair.

There are treat­ments and options out there for bald­ness and hair loss, they vary for men and women. If a woman suf­fers from Alope­cia, a rare and tem­po­rary ill­ness where the immune sys­tem attacks the hair fol­li­cles it is usu­ally hard to get a med­ica­tion for it. Unfor­tu­nately many doc­tors do not like to pre­scribe it, and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies have not spent much time address­ing this issue. When Women suf­fer from hair loss the main causes are vit­a­min or hor­mone issues with for­tu­nately can be treated under the care of your physi­cian. Some treat­ments may include Nizo­ral, Prope­cia or Estro­gen, your best treat­ment options will have to be cho­sen by you and your doctor.

In men there are a cou­ple of very pop­u­lar FDA approved med­ica­tions used to help treat hered­i­tary bald­ness. Rogaine and Prope­cia are widely known and used, they work quite well in pre­vent­ing hair loss and even some hair re-growth. In some cases a man and even a woman might be a good can­di­date for hair replace­ment. These pro­ce­dures some call hair plugs are known as micro-grafting, slit graft­ing, punch graft­ing and scalp reduc­tion. Since there can be a con­sid­er­able cost and some side effects with these treat­ments it is impor­tant to weigh all your options. Bald­ness and hair loss is some­thing you do not just have to live with, there are treat­ments that should help you. Take the first and most impor­tant step and con­tact your doc­tor so you can get help for your prob­lem to feel and look like your­self again.

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.

Depend­ing on your hair loss sit­u­a­tion, the cost of a hair trans­plant can vary from per­son to per­son. For some, the cost of a hair trans­plant is a major con­cern. Espe­cially is these times of eco­nomic cri­sis, spend­ing thou­sands of dol­lars on a cos­metic pro­ce­dure may seem a lit­tle extreme.

A piece of advice I would give would be to do some thor­ough research when it comes to hair trans­plant cost. Due to the pop­u­lar­ity of hair trans­plant surgery and the advances in tech­niques of fol­lic­u­lar unit graft tech­nol­ogy, the mar­ket is flooded with spe­cial low prices for hair trans­plant grafts.

Although the cost of a hair trans­plant surgery may seem extreme to many, you have to con­sider the long term invest­ment it will have on your self esteem and the results are for a life­time. If you have suf­fered from hair loss, and you are read­ing this, you know what the feel­ing is like. You may ask your­self, “where do I start ” when decid­ing on hair trans­plant cost. I real­ize cost is an issue, but you have to con­sider that what you pay now will only affect you in the short term. Sure, you want to look for the low­est price, but also keep in mind that your hair trans­plant surgery is per­ma­nent. If you try and save a few bucks and skimp a lit­tle, you may get a ‘not so impres­sive’ out­come. Most hair trans­plants are pretty good these days, so don’t get too scared. The doll-head like result is still seen at times in a town near you, but it is not so com­mon any­more. This type of surgery has really advanced in the last 10 to 15 years. The best hair trans­plant surg­eries are the pro­ce­dures that you never rec­og­nize. You don’t rec­og­nize the trans­plant because its looks so natural.

Now, sev­eral fac­tors can con­tribute to the cost of a hair trans­plant. One fac­tor would be the num­ber of ses­sions you want to have. The sec­ond fac­tor would be the type of pro­ce­dure used. Third, hair trans­plant cost may be deter­mined by where you have the pro­ce­dure. For exam­ple, the cost of a hair trans­plant may be more expen­sive if the surgery is per­formed by a hair restora­tion clinic. These clin­ics carry more of an over­head to run. Con­trar­ily, if you have the pro­ce­dure done by a doc­tor or sur­geon who is in pri­vate prac­tice, it may cost less due to the lower over­head. This will ulti­mately trans­late to a con­sid­er­able sav­ings to the client.

Over­all cost of a hair trans­plant actu­ally varies on each client’s par­tic­u­lar hair loss sit­u­a­tion. This also has to be cou­pled with real­is­tic expec­ta­tions to the client. Keep­ing the real­is­tic expec­ta­tions in mind, the cost can be as lit­tle as $2,500 all the way up to $9,000 price range. Most doc­tors’ will pitch or sell you on price per graft, which will usu­ally run between $3 to $8 price ranges. Remem­ber, each graft can con­tain 1,2,3, or 4 hairs. The aver­age price for most doc­tors is typ­i­cally $5 to $6 per graft.
Let us look at the big pic­ture of hair trans­plant cost. Many men and women spend hun­dreds of dol­lars a year on hair pre­ven­tion prod­ucts such as Rogaine and Prope­cia. These prod­ucts can be effec­tive in some peo­ple, but the results will be lost if you dis­con­tinue tak­ing these prod­ucts. Many peo­ple opt for non-surgical pro­ce­dures such as hair sys­tems, hair weaves, wigs, and other non-surgical solu­tions. The major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion sup­ports the opin­ion that, hair trans­plant surgery is the most attrac­tive option because it was the only per­ma­nent solu­tion, and it looks natural.

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.

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.

Fol­lic­u­lar unit extrac­tion is a method used to har­vest grafts in the least inva­sive way.  Fol­lic­u­lar unit extrac­tion enables the sur­geon to extract hair fol­li­cles using a tiny punch, with­out the need to remove a strip of hair bar­ing skin. This method of har­vest­ing hair fol­li­cles is what makes FUE dif­fer­ent from the stan­dard hair restora­tion pro­ce­dure. In the typ­i­cal sur­gi­cal hair restora­tion pro­ce­dure a strip of skin con­tain­ing bald resis­tance fol­li­cles is removed, this strip is then dis­sected care­fully under mag­ni­fi­ca­tion to pro­duce indi­vid­ual hair grafts. Both the extrac­tion and the strip exci­sion pro­ce­dure pro­duce com­pa­ra­ble micro grafts. The major dif­fer­ence between the two meth­ods is the har­vest­ing of the grafts.

The Pros and Cons of Fol­lic­u­lar Unit Extraction

Pros

·         Fol­lic­u­lar unit extrac­tion is the min­i­mally inva­sive way which fol­lic­u­lar unit grafts are removed.

·         There is less trauma to the graft dur­ing the extrac­tion process then with the tra­di­tional method

·         Patients who have reduced donor den­si­ties, due to poor hair qual­ity in the donor area, have a bet­ter, health­ier selec­tion of grafts.

·         Patients with tight scalps, where tra­di­tional strip har­vest­ing can be prob­lem­atic, are able to receive hair restora­tion now that this method is being used.

·         There is no vis­i­ble scar, patients who like to keep a short hair cut would ben­e­fit from this

Cons

·         The max­i­mum amount of grafts can­not be harvested

·         Grafts har­vested from places other than the donor area will not be permanent

·         The cost is twice as much as the tra­di­tional procedure

·         Prob­lems of “cap­ping” (this is when the top of the graft pulls off dur­ing the extraction)

·         Mul­ti­ple ses­sions are required to equal one strip method procedure

·         Patients with curly or fine hair are gen­er­ally not good can­di­dates for FUE

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

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.