Pre­serv­ing your ideal hair­line is an art. Roughly 25% of men begin los­ing hair by age 20, while a full two-thirds expe­ri­ence hair loss by age 60.

To avoid undue stress, effec­tive plan­ning begins by learn­ing to view hair loss treat­ment as a mul­ti­far­i­ous dis­ci­pline that involves styling, pre­scrip­tion drugs, and for some, light sur­gi­cal treat­ments (HTS).

Depend­ing on your bald­ing pattern/rate, main­tain­ing your hair­line ide­ally begins when your first begin los­ing hair. For most, the first step is med­ical treat­ment. In Amer­ica, the FDA has approved only two drugs,finasteride (Prope­cia) and minox­i­dil (Rogaine) for use in hair loss. Men can use both the drugs but women can only use Rogaine and not Prope­cia. There is also a generic option that involves split­ting (non-scored) pills.

For some, hair restora­tion surgery is pre­ferred, which involves graft­ing hairs from parts of the scalp unaf­fected by DHT.  While this gen­er­ally a low-risk pro­ce­dure, con­sult­ing with your physi­cian ahead of time is recommended.

There is no sim­ple answer to this. No one treat­ment is spec­tac­u­lar for the aver­age indi­vid­ual. How­ever, there are a few treat­ments that yield decent results for a major­ity of peo­ple. (Decent is defined here as ces­sa­tion of fur­ther hair thin­ning and per­haps some regrowth, rang­ing from a lit­tle to mod­er­ate.) Some peo­ple do respond unusu­ally well–but then some don’t respond at all. Most fall some­where in between.

Since there are mul­ti­ple fac­tors in pat­tern loss for both men and women, it is wis­est to approach the prob­lem from sev­eral angles to max­i­mize results, as some treat­ments are com­ple­men­tary and address dif­fer­ent under­ly­ing causes. A com­mon fun­da­men­tal approach is to use an “antian­dro­gen” of some kind, such as Prope­cia (men only) or Revivo­gen (men and women), and a growth stim­u­lant such as Rogaine Foam or Tri­comin. Other options include ther­a­peu­tic sham­poos, such as Nizo­ral, which is a manda­tory part of every treat­ment reg­i­men. Still other approaches that may help include dietary and nutri­tional con­sid­er­a­tions and even lifestyle mod­i­fi­ca­tions. There are many adher­ents to such a “kitchen sink” approach.

You can also start with a sin­gle treat­ment, though due to the long lag time before you can actu­ally ver­ify effi­cacy, this can be very hit and miss and may bring less than opti­mal results by only address­ing one aspect of a larger problem.

Treat­ments for indi­vid­u­als with Alope­cia Areata (patchy hair loss), Alope­cia Uni­ver­salis and Alope­cia Totalis are lim­ited. Top­i­cal steroid injec­tions are used for less severe Alope­cia Areata, exper­i­ment­ing var­i­ous treat­ment options with a hair loss spe­cial­ist will eventually

Men and women who lose their hair, are either expe­ri­enc­ing hair thin­ning, com­plete bald­ing, or in most cases suf­fer­ing from a genetic con­di­tion known as andro­ge­netic alope­cia. This is pre­pon­der­ance for los­ing one’s hair on cer­tain areas of the scalp that is passed from one gen­er­a­tion to the next. It used to be believed that the bald­ing prob­lem was only passed down through the mother’s genes but that is no longer true. Now we know that this form of hair loss, or alope­cia, is not deter­mined by one par­ent or the other.

Andro­ge­netic alope­cia, also known as pat­tern bald­ness or pat­tern hair loss, is caused by a sit­u­a­tion that actu­ally stops the hair fol­li­cles from pro­duc­ing hair shaft mate­r­ial. The fol­li­cle can be thought of as the hair fac­to­ries in one’s body. The fol­li­cle is con­nected to the blood sup­ply which pro­vides it with oxy­gen and nutri­ents which are essen­tial for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of hair. When pat­tern bald­ness is active a hor­monal metabo­lite known as DHT is pro­duced in the body and even­tu­ally makes its way to hair fol­li­cle. The DHT bonds to the hair fol­li­cles and causes a dis­rup­tion in the pro­duc­tion of hair mate­r­ial. Nor­mally a hair fol­li­cle will pro­duce hair in a cycli­cal man­ner. It goes through growth and rest stages that can last sev­eral months. The DHT short­ens the growth phase of the fol­li­cle to the point that it can no longer pro­duce a healthy hair shaft and the shaft falls out. If not treated quickly, the pat­tern bald­ness will ren­der the fol­li­cle com­pletely ineffective.

The best hair restora­tion sys­tem involves deal­ing with the affect of DHT and also trans­plant­ing new hair fol­li­cles into the balded area. There are two hair loss treat­ment drugs that have been approved by the US FDA and have proved effec­tive at slow­ing down the loss of hair but they will not do much to re-energize the fol­li­cles that have stopped pro­duc­ing so these hair fol­li­cles must be replaced. Of the two drugs only one, Minox­i­dil, is approved for both men and females. This is a top­i­cal solu­tion that is applied to the scalp and helps to allow the hair fol­li­cles to con­tinue to pro­duce as needed. The sec­ond drug, Finas­teride, is only pre­scribed for men as it can cause birth defects. This drug actu­ally works to limit the amount of DHT that is pro­duced in the body. Hair restora­tion doc­tors will usu­ally use one or both of these drugs to keep what hair there is still grow­ing along with hair implan­ta­tion to pro­vide replace­ment hair fol­li­cles for the bald­ing that has already occurred.

The part of the sys­tem that causes the high­est hair restora­tion costs is the implan­ta­tions. Thus if a per­son can start the treat­ments early to save what hair they still have the hair restora­tion price will be much lower. As is usu­ally the case, the sooner a prob­lem is addressed the cheaper it is to deal with.  Apply­ing the cor­rect hair replace­ment sys­tems can get you the head of hair you deserve. Start today to deter­mine your path to a full head of hair.

If you’re start­ing to get wor­ried because you think you’re los­ing your hair or just won­der­ing if the amount you’re los­ing is nat­ural, take a small hand­ful of hair in your hand and tug it as hard as you can. If you have more than six strands of hair in your hand then you are los­ing hair. A nat­ural loss would be less than six strands of hair a day. The “how to tell if you are los­ing your hair” test is the best way to make the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between nor­mal shed­ding and per­me­ate hair loss.

Hair loss is a big con­cern for many men, women and chil­dren. There are many causes. You may know that you have rapid hair loss already or even a lit­tle loss and won­der what is caus­ing it. Maybe you already have a patch of hair loss. You may not be sure so here’s a good way to tell if it’s abnor­mal or not.

What do you do about it

First of all try to deter­mine if it’s related to any cur­rent med­ical diag­no­sis you have right now. Then take a look at any med­ica­tions you may be tak­ing in case it’s tem­po­rary and related to med­ica­tions, med­i­cines or drugs.

If you’re a man then male pat­tern bald­ness could be a pos­si­bil­ity espe­cially if you notice a reced­ing hair line. Symp­toms could be related to preg­nancy if you’re preg­nant. It could be a thy­roid issue. If you are los­ing in big chunks it could be alope­cia areata. There are many causes for hair loss.

In any case you’ll want to learn how to stop or pre­vent it. There are many ways to learn through blogs, forums and dis­cus­sion groups. How­ever one must be care­ful there because there is a lot of mis­in­for­ma­tion and guess­ing going on. It’s always bet­ter to get med­ical advice from experts in the field, espe­cially if pro­gres­sion is a mat­ter of concern.

Sci­en­tist and doc­tors have for­mu­lated var­i­ous drugs, pills, solu­tions, and sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures just to stop hair loss. In many cases sci­ence has suc­cess­fully con­trolled the rate at which DHT has been caus­ing hair loss with prod­ucts. Many of these prod­ucts are also used to stop the onset of hair loss caused by cer­tain body hor­mones such as DHT. These prod­ucts included:

• Provil­lus
• Rogaine
• Nioxin
• Fol­li­cle revitalizers

While these treat­ments may stim­u­late faster hair growth there may be also some side effects that users have to antic­i­pate. Aside from the pro­duc­tion of hair-regrowth sub­stances, doc­tors have also devel­oped hair trans­plant surgery as a means to stim­u­late new hair growth. Hair trans­plant surgery involves trans­fer­ring fol­li­cles from areas where there are no pres­ence of DHT to the bald­ing areas of the head. For patients who pre­fer a nat­ural solu­tion, there are treat­ments that don’t involve the use of tech­nol­ogy or med­ica­tions. Aloe Vera, sting­ing net­tle green tea red pep­per and dong quia are some of the many herbal based treat­ments that users can either apply to their scalp or ingest. It is pointed out that these herbal — based treat­ments also con­tain sub­stances, which inhibit the spread of DHT. How­ever, no mat­ter what treat­ment option is cho­sen, it is always rec­om­mended that hair loss patients con­sult with a doc­tor to get the par­tic­u­lar med­ical diag­no­sis of his/her hair con­di­tion. The specifics of the patient’s case are vital so that he/she can get the most suit­able hair regrowth treatment.

The roots of mod­ern day were cul­ti­vated in Japan in the late 1930s. In 1939, Japan­ese der­ma­tol­o­gist Dr. Okuda detailed his ground­break­ing work in sur­gi­cal hair restora­tion for burn vic­tims. He described using a punch tech­nique to extract round sec­tions of hair-bearing skin, which were then implanted into slightly smaller round holes made in the scarred or burned areas of the scalps of his patients. After the skin grafts healed, they con­tin­ued to pro­duce hair in the pre­vi­ously bald areas of scalp. In 1943 another Japan­ese der­ma­tol­o­gist refined Okuda’s tech­nique by using sig­nif­i­cantly smaller grafts of one to three hairs to replace lost pubic hair in his female patients.

In 1952, Dr. Nor­man Oren­tre­ich, a New York der­ma­tol­o­gist, per­formed the first known hair trans­plant in the U.S. on a man suf­fer­ing from male pat­tern bald­ing. Oren­tre­ich essen­tially rein­vented modern-day hair transplantation.

Seven years later, after much crit­i­cism, Oren­tre­ich pub­lished his find­ings and set forth his the­ory of “donor dom­i­nance” in the Annals of the New York Acad­emy of Sci­ences. His work demon­strated that the hair from the back and the sides of a man’s scalp was for the most part resis­tant to the bald­ing process. How­ever, his tech­nique mir­rored the less aes­thet­i­cally “punch graft” process of Okuda instead of the more nat­ural, smaller graft­ing tech­nique of Tamura.

It wasn’t until the mid 1990s that sur­gi­cal hair restora­tion pro­duced natural-looking results. Newer tech­niques, such as fol­lic­u­lar unit micro graft­ing, fol­lic­u­lar unit trans­plan­ta­tion, and fol­lic­u­lar unit extrac­tion, have made hair trans­plan­ta­tion a vir­tu­ally unde­tectable, viable option for many.

When con­sid­er­ing under­go­ing any type of cos­metic surgery, being con­cerned that there will be prob­lems or side — effects is very nat­ural. Learn­ing the facts is vital for relief of any emo­tions that may be caus­ing hes­i­tance to go for­ward with a pro­ce­dure. Hair restora­tion is a sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dure that both men and women are embark­ing to per­ma­nently cor­rect their hair loss.

Hair restora­tion is not a major surgery in fact it is com­monly thought to be eas­ier than vis­it­ing your den­tist. It is an out­pa­tient pro­ce­dure and per­formed with a local anes­thetic. Your scalp is numbed and you are relaxed in a reclined posi­tion while the pro­ce­dure is being per­formed. After your hair trans­plant pro­ce­dure is com­plete you return home that same day and can carry on with the major­ity of your nor­mal activ­i­ties. Patients have even reported no pain and return to work the next day because there are no clear signs of hav­ing a hair trans­plant pro­ce­dure. Anti– inflam­ma­tory med­ica­tion is com­monly pre­scribed to con­trol and reduce any pos­si­ble swelling.

A com­mon ques­tion asked by indi­vid­u­als con­sid­er­ing hair restora­tion is, will there be any scar­ring Scar­ring in the area where the hair fol­li­cles were implanted is extremely rare. In the area where the donor hair was removed, a trchophytic closer tech­nique is used to elim­i­nate any scar­ring; even under close scrutiny scar­ing is unde­tectable. With all of the mod­ern devel­op­ment in hair replace­ment ther­apy, hair restora­tion is a sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dure that has been suc­cess­fully sat­is­fy­ing hair loss patients. In the com­ing post-operative months their hair will begin to grow and thicken, and pos­i­tively impact­ing the rest of their lives.

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.

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.

Many early hair trans­plant tech­niques used large grafts; this old tech­nique caused “plugs” which are not aes­thet­i­cally accept­able by today’s stan­dard. It is no longer nec­es­sary to be stuck with the dis­sat­is­fac­tion and embar­rass­ment of plugs.  By trans­plant­ing ultra micro grafts we are enable to alter the unnat­ural look of old tech­nique.  Also, in some cases we are able to remove those old plugs and trim them to mini and micro grafts and re-transplant them. In most cases, our patients receive dra­matic improve­ment with his revi­sion tech­niques. There­fore patients can expect the finest avail­able work so that future revi­sion work is greatly minimized.