Thin­ning hair ends: What causes them and how to pre­vent them

“Trim your ends every two weeks and con­di­tion only your ends when show­er­ing”, this is every hair­styl­ists’ advice regard­ing split/thinning ends. But before you start trim­ming or treat­ing your thin­ning hair, have you won­dered what is caus­ing the ends of your hair to thin. This is impor­tant! This infor­ma­tion will help you pre­vent run­ning into the same prob­lems down the line.  Women expe­ri­ence hair loss and thin­ning hair pri­mar­ily due to hor­monal, menopausal and genetic rea­sons.  The main con­trib­u­tors to thin­ning hair and ends are phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal sources of dam­age. Please don’t be sur­prised as some thin­ning episodes can occur to per­fectly healthy and well cared heads of hair. Hair thin­ning near the ends is nor­mal in very long hair. A slight thin­ning in the hair ends occurs dur­ing the nor­mal hair growth process. The hair near­est the ends is the old­est hair on the head, and the longer the hair is the older it is! The ends of this hair are usu­ally older than three years.

Thin­ning hair ends can be cause by many factors:

Styling

Always con­trol your comb as it makes its way down the hair shaft. This is crit­i­cal for reduc­ing break­age dur­ing detan­gling and styling. Avoid comb­ing your hair form root to ends with­out grasp­ing the hair along the way. Using the hand to sup­port along the hair shaft as you make your­self through reduces unneeded tension.

Heat Use

Heat has to be one of the main cul­prits of self induced hair thin­ning. The lack of inter­nal mois­ture causes break­age and results in a thin­ner look to the hair. Heat also dena­tures the hair’s inter­nal pro­tein struc­ture and dam­ages the cuti­cles lay­ers of the hair. Try a low heat reg­i­men to pre­vent, no direct heat more than twice a month.

Over Pro­cess­ing from Chem­i­cal Relaxers

When a relaxer touch-up is done and the relaxer is rinse out of the hair, the active creme passes over pre­vi­ously relaxed ends and starts to work on them. This is very harm­ful and hap­pens when the ends are not pro­tected dur­ing the relax­ing process. Each time this occurs, the cuti­cle becomes more and more degraded. Pro­tect your ends by using an oil or con­di­tioner and apply­ing it to your ends before start­ing the relax­ing process.

Improper Neu­tral­iz­ing of Relaxer

When the relaxer is improp­erly neu­tral­ized your hair can become thin­ner over­time. The relaxer chem­i­cals con­tinue to process the hair strand long after the relaxer is rinsed away, result­ing in thin­ner, mois­ture and pro­tein defi­cient hair strands. Break­age can also result from this; you must always make sure your hair is prop­erly rinsed!

Remem­ber it is vital that you keep your hair hydrated, con­di­tioned and well trimmed. This along with stay­ing informed about the causes of thin­ning hair ends will keep your hair end look­ing healthy and beautiful!

The most com­mon type of hair loss in women occurs in a dif­fuse pat­tern. Dif­fuse hair loss is most often hered­i­tary.  It can also be caused by under­ly­ing med­ical con­di­tions, med­ica­tions, and other fac­tors.  Com­mon or “hered­i­tary” bald­ness in women, also called female pat­tern alope­cia, is genetic and can come either the mother or father’s side of the fam­ily. It is caused by the actions of two enzymes; aro­matase (which is found pre­dom­i­nantly in women) and 5-a reduc­tase (which is found in both women and men).

Med­ical con­di­tions that can cause dif­fuse hair loss in women:

• Obstet­ric and gyne­co­logic con­di­tions such as post­par­tum and post-menopausal states or ovar­ian tumors
• Ane­mia — iron deficiency
• Thy­roid disease
• Nutri­tional — crash diets, bulimia, protein/calorie defi­ciency, essen­tial fatty acid or zinc defi­ciency, mal­ab­sorb­tion, hyper­vi­t­a­minosis A
• Stress — sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures, gen­eral anes­the­sia, and severe emo­tional problems
• Con­nec­tive tis­sue dis­eases such as Lupus

A rel­a­tively large num­ber of drugs can cause “tel­o­gen efflu­vium,” a con­di­tion where hair is shifted into a rest­ing stage and then sev­eral months later shed. For­tu­nately, this shed­ding is reversible if the med­ica­tion is stopped, but the reac­tion can be con­fused with genetic female hair loss if not prop­erly diag­nosed. Chemother­apy causes a dif­fuse type of hair loss called “ana­gen efflu­vium” that can be very exten­sive, but often reversible when the med­ica­tion is stopped.

Drugs that can cause dif­fuse hair loss in women:

1. Blood thin­ners (anti-coagulants), such as war­farin and heparin
2. Seizure med­ica­tion, most com­monly dilantin
3. Med­ica­tion for gout, colchicines and alop­uri­nol (Xyloprim)
4. Blood pres­sure med­ica­tion, par­tic­u­larly the b-blockers (such as Inderal) or diuretics
5. Anti-inflammatory drugs such as prednisone
6. Med­ica­tions that lower cho­les­terol and other lipids
7. Mood alter­ing drugs — lithium, tri-cyclics, Elavil, Prozac
8. Chemother­apy
9. Thy­roid medications
10. Oral con­tra­cep­tive agents, par­tic­u­larly those high in progestin’s
11. Misc. — Diet pills, high doses of Vit­a­min A, street drugs (cocaine)

Local­ized Hair Loss

Although there are a host of der­ma­to­logic con­di­tions that cause hair loss, they pro­duce a pat­tern that is dif­fer­ent from the dif­fuse pat­tern of genetic hair loss com­monly seen in women and are eas­ily dif­fer­en­ti­ated from it by a dermatologist.

Local­ized hair loss in women may be sub-divided into scar­ring and non-scarring types. Alope­cia Areata is a genetic, autoim­mune dis­ease that typ­i­fies the non-scarring type. It man­i­fests with the sud­den onset of dis­crete round patches of hair loss asso­ci­ated with nor­mal skin. It can be treated with local injec­tions of steroids.

Scar­ring Alope­cia can be caused by a vari­ety of med­ical or der­ma­to­logic con­di­tions such as Lupus, Lichen Planus, or local radi­a­tion ther­apy. Hair loss from injuries, or from local med­ical prob­lems that have been cured, are usu­ally amenable to hair trans­plan­ta­tion. Radio­ther­apy can cause both scar­ring and non-scarring local­ized hair loss and it also can be treated with sur­gi­cal hair restora­tion if the area is not too large.

Local­ized female hair loss that occurs around the hair­line after face-lift surgery may be per­ma­nent. Trac­tion Alope­cia, the hair loss that occurs with con­stant tug­ging on the fol­li­cles, can also be per­ma­nent if the habit per­sists for a long period of time. Both of these con­di­tions can be treated with hair trans­plan­ta­tion.

Pat­terned Hair Loss

Women with this type of hair loss have a pat­tern sim­i­lar to what we observe in men. In other words, they have thin­ning in front or on top of their scalp with preser­va­tion of the hair in the per­ma­nent zone around the back and sides of the scalp. Thus, the bald­ing is in a char­ac­ter­is­tic “pat­tern” rather than gen­er­al­ized. Women with pat­terned hair loss and a sta­ble donor area may be excel­lent can­di­dates for sur­gi­cal hair restoration.

A sim­ple per­sonal call or email can start your road to recov­ery, so what are you wait­ing for All con­sul­ta­tions are com­pli­men­tary and free of charge. Dr. Kahen will per­son­ally answer all your questions.

John Kahen, M.D., the founder and med­ical direc­tor of Bev­erly Hills Hair Restora­tion, is one of the lead­ing hair trans­plant sur­geons to offer nat­ural results using inno­v­a­tive tech­niques in hair trans­plant surgery. After meet­ing with patients, Dr. Kahen focuses on their indi­vid­ual needs and helps each one to achieve his or her spe­cific goals. His treat­ment plans are cus­tomized and include both sur­gi­cal and non-surgical options.

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.

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.

Alope­cia Bar­bae is also called bald­ness. This is the exceed­ingly rec­og­nized ail­ment encoun­tered by many today. The vic­tims of this dis­or­der belong to both gen­ders. How­ever, research reveals that the causative agents of Alope­cia Bar­bae are respon­si­ble for the appar­ently dif­fer­ent effects too in men and women.

Bald­ness is wide­spread across the globe, vic­tim­iz­ing 50% of males and a sim­i­lar per­cent­age of females above the age of 40 years. How­ever, in this group of females, 13% of pre­menopausal patients express only slight signs of the dis­ease. Nonethe­less, the chances of falling prey to Alope­cia Bar­bae increases after menopause that 75% women over the age of 65 years of age get affected by this prob­lem. Before reach­ing the age of 40 years, the suf­fer­ers bear signs of Alope­cia Bar­bae, and some depict this even before they turn 30. 

Alope­cia is a psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ment for the suf­fer­ers. Hair loss allows the head to be exposed to the UV rays, giv­ing rise in actinic inflic­tion. Car­diac ail­ments could be accel­er­ated by Alope­cia in males, and increase in mild pro­sta­tic hyper­tro­phy could be asso­ci­ated with this prob­lem too. If the ongo­ing research stud­ies evi­dence that the above rela­tions are valid, then the clin­i­cal impli­ca­tions with Alope­cia would increase too.

White males are the most affected by bald­ness in terms of fre­quency and sever­ity while the sec­ond most affected are Asians and African Amer­i­cans. The least affected are Native Amer­i­cans and Eskimos.

Onset of the Ailment

Alope­cia Bar­bae begins slowly. In men, it starts with hair loss in the tem­po­ral region which reshapes the pos­te­rior hair­line. Then, it devel­ops with the usual ante­rior and apex hair loss. While in case of women, it begins with scat­tered hair loss in the crown. The tem­po­ral hair loss is sim­i­lar to men, but gen­er­ally, females retain their ante­rior hairline.

Phys­i­cal Changes

The suf­fer­ers of both gen­ders expe­ri­ence the tran­si­tion from healthy, pig­mented ter­mi­nal hair to weak, short and scat­tered hair. The end result is stunted, flimsy, non-pigmented hair in the affected areas. With time, the ana­gen step decreases while the tel­o­gen part is unaf­fected. It gives rise to the hair fall among the vic­tims. Though it pro­vides a gen­er­al­ized pic­ture, the dif­fer­ences in the devel­op­ment of ail­ment always per­sist among dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als. In case of females, usu­ally, the patch of hair loss can­not be spec­i­fied. Gen­er­ally they lose hair in all areas over the crown. The core dif­fer­ence is that the ante­rior hair­line is safe in case of females while that is lost right at the onset of the prob­lem in case of males.

While the loss of hair from the scalp- hair thin­ning, male pat­tern bald­ness, a reced­ing hair­line, and alope­cia– is a very com­mon and frus­trat­ing prob­lem among both men and women, some indi­vid­u­als suf­fer from loss of over­all body hair. There are five main causes of body hair loss– skin con­di­tions, hor­monal dis­or­ders, med­ica­tions and other med­ical ill­nesses, stress, and diet. Cer­tain skin con­di­tions, such as eczema, pso­ri­a­sis, der­mati­tis, skin injury, and burns, cause dam­age to the hair fol­li­cles and sur­round­ing cells mak­ing hair growth impos­si­ble. In some of these instances, espe­cially in the case of severe skin burns, the cell dam­age can be irre­versible so the body hair loss is also permanent.

Aside from hor­monal dis­or­ders and skin injury, cer­tain other med­ical ill­ness can lead to loss of body hair. Can­cer, dis­eases that affect the immune sys­tem, and con­di­tions that dis­rupt organ func­tion can all cause tem­po­rary lapses in the nat­ural hair growth process. In most cases the body hair loss is restricted to one or two areas most affected by the dis­ease or ill­ness, but in some cases the hair loss can be seen all over the body.

Because there are so many dif­fer­ent rea­sons that you may be los­ing the hair all over your body it is imper­a­tive that you see a doc­tor at the first sign of this hair loss. If the hair loss is a result of an under­ly­ing med­ical con­di­tion it is impor­tant that you receive treat­ment for the dis­ease not just the hair loss.

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.

Make sure to pick up NEWSWEEK dou­ble issue: MAY 24 & 31, 2010

John Kahen, M.D the founder and med­ical direc­tor of Bev­erly Hills Hair Restora­tion is cur­rently fea­tured in NEWSWEEK mag­a­zine, an exclu­sive issue fea­tur­ing BEST DOCTORS IN THE GREATER LOS ANGELES.

With today’s advances in cos­metic surgery hair loss suf­fer­ers can regrow the hair they lost with a hair trans­plant pro­ce­dure, but the harsh real­ity is not every­one is a can­di­date. To be a pos­si­ble can­di­date you must have a suf­fi­cient amount of donor hair. The most com­mon donor site for hair trans­plant surgery is on the head.  If the sides and back of your head have full lus­trous hair, you are in luck.  This hair can be used as donor hair to replace hair you have lost on your bald­ing spots.  If your hair in these areas is not healthy, you face a dif­fi­cult problem.

If you have lost your hair due to genet­ics, or a fam­ily his­tory, you will likely be a good can­di­date for hair trans­plant surgery.  Men who have hair loss in their fam­i­lies usu­ally have a good idea of the way the bald­ness pat­tern will play out.

Your rel­a­tives may have had hair that went bald into a horse­shoe pat­tern and held at that stage.  If this is the case, your sur­geon will know what to expect.  Then, he can take hair from the sides and back of your head as donor hair and per­form the hair transplant.

If you have lost your hair because of some kind of trauma or burns, you will also make a good can­di­date for hair trans­plant surgery.  This is because the hair you still have will prob­a­bly still be healthy.  It will pro­vide good donor hair for your hair trans­plant.  The most likely sit­u­a­tion is that you will have enough hair to make this pos­si­ble.  How­ever, if you have lost too much hair, a hair trans­plant may not be possible.

Hair loss suf­fers can ben­e­fit greatly from hair trans­plant surgery. The first step towards find­ing out if you’re a good can­di­date is sched­ul­ing a con­sul­ta­tion with at hair restora­tion sur­geon. At the time of the con­sult the Doc­tor will make a com­plete assess­ment and dis­cuss the options best to fit your indi­vid­ual needs.