stop hair loss

When talking about non-surgical hair replacement it is hair systems and hair loss concealers that spring to most peoples’ minds. Various types of hair systems such as full wigs, hairpieces, toupees, hair extensions and weaves can look very authentic and have been used for ages to cover bald spots and typically with good rates of success. However, their traditional weaknesses are high maintenance costs and, in many situations, the discomfort of wearing them. Hair loss concealers on the other hand have been around for a much shorter period of time and have often been looked down upon for being incapable of withstanding adverse external conditions and for appearing unnatural. This no longer appears to be true as many of them have dramatically improved recently, both in terms of their authentic appearance and their resistance.

There three existing types of hair loss concealers include those that simply paint your scalp to reduce the contrast between your hair colour and the colour of your scalp, then there are hair thickeners that thicken your hair by coating and penetrating the hair and trapping moisture and volume-building proteins inside the hair shaft and, lastly, there are concealers that apply microfibers that cling to your hair like branches to the trunk of a tree, increasing the hair density. Some products combine two of the aforementioned approaches and paint your scalp and thicken your hair at the same time. All of these products come in various applications, such as a powder, cream or a spray. Hair loss concealers do not contain any active substance that would fight hair loss but some of them allow you to continue with a topical hair loss treatment such as minoxidil.

Microfiber-based hair loss concealers can be often applied in as little as 30 seconds versus a minimum of five minutes needed for hair thickeners. However, microfibers are less water-resistant and it can be quite tricky to apply them precisely and, therefore, they are not very suitable for creating an authentic-looking frontal hairline. Their greatest benefit is that they are unrecognisable in your hair, even with a very close inspection. Hair thickeners, especially those that also colour your scalp, are extremely water-resistant and excellent for frontal hairlines but they take longer to apply. But they cover your scalp with a layer of colouring substance, which makes it hard to apply any topical hair loss treatment. Their greatest weakness in comparison to microfibers is that in direct sunlight it can become visible to the sharp eye that the scalp has been painted.

The common drawback of all types of products for concealing hair loss is the limited choice of available shades to match everybody’s hair colour. Some hair loss sufferers use a combination of two products simultaneously to overcome the weaknesses of individual products and to achieve the most authentic shade and appearance. Usually a combination of a hair thickener and a micro-fibrous concealer is used. The results of such combinations are often excellent. If you decide to try any such combinations, make sure that you apply the scalp-painting, hair loss thickener first and then use the micro-fibres to mask the remaining imperfections. There are many products in all three categories of hair loss concealers and you may need to test a number of them in order to identify those that best match you hair colour and style of application.

Hair loss can be caused by a variety of factors but heredity is the number one reason why men and women lose their mane. Hereditary hair loss in men and women has the same main cause, which is a metabolite of the male hormone testosterone, called dihydrotestosterone (DHT) attacking and killing our hair follicles. DHT is also present in the female body. Men and women lose their hair not because of increased levels of DHT in their bodies but due to the susceptibility of their hair follicles to DHT attacks, although the exact mechanism and reasons why certain hairs, mostly those on the top of the head, are more vulnerable to such attacks are not yet know.

The principal difference between the male and female form of hereditary baldness is in its shape. The male form has a characteristic horseshoe pattern whereas the female form is usually a diffuse thinning across the entire scalp and is therefore less easily-recognised. The female form of hereditary hair loss is, in its form, practically indistinguishable from hair loss caused by various other factors. The second most common reason for a woman to lose her hair is hormonal imbalances during and after pregnancy or menopause. Such changes are typically of a temporary nature and so also is the hair loss, although post-menopausal hair loss is in most cases permanent.

When it comes to treating hair loss in women there are certain specifics. First, most females do not make very good candidates for hair transplant surgery due to their diffuse thinning pattern, which makes it impossible to identify the hair that will be resistant to future miniaturisation. Secondly, finasteride, which is one of the only two FDA-approved hair loss treatments available today, cannot be used on women and neither can dutasteride, which is its closest and assumedly yet more powerful relative. Rogaine (generic name minoxidil) is the second FDA-approved hair loss treatment and its approved concentration for women is only 2% versus 5% for men. However, many doctors recommend their female patients use male formulations of minoxidil, with a concentration of 5%. Aminexil is a molecule similar to minoxidil and it is usually recommended to women who are pregnant or breastfeeding as a safer option than minoxidil.

Although some anti-androgens such as finasteride or dutasteride cannot be prescribed to women, there are other anti-androgen medications that can be effectively used to treat female baldness. Spironolactone (trade name Aldactone) and cyproterone acetate (used in contraceptives such as Diane 35, Diane 50 and Ginette 35) are antiandrogens most commonly used to treat female pattern hair loss.

Another treatment with satisfactory rates of success is topical estrogen solutions such as Crinohermal, which use a female hormone, estradiol, as their main active ingredient. Estradiol is capable of inhibiting the conversion of testosterone into follicle-harming DHT. Hormone replacement therapy is another hormonal treatment suitable for women at menopause, with estrogens and progesterone pills and creams being the most common forms of treatment. Estrogen levels in the body decline with time. As women enter the menopause, estrogen levels decline and thus more of the male hormone testosterone is then available to be converted into follicle-harming DHT.

The above list of female hair loss treatments is not exhaustive, though. There are a number of other remedies that are often claimed to help promote hair growth in women, such as alfatradiol, ketoconazole, fluridil, flutamide, as well as different substances of natural origin. Despite the fact that there are female patients who will swear by some of these treatments, none of them has ever been sufficiently clinically studied, let alone approved by any major national health supervisory authority as a treatment for female hair loss and the claims of their guaranteed effectiveness should be taken with a grain of salt.

The currently available medical options for regrowing lost hair in people suffering from hereditary forms of baldness are limited to relatively few products which are most effective in the early stages of baldness. Once you have lost a substantial portion of hair due to hereditary factors or an accident, such as a burn, the only remaining option is to replace the missing hair. Your options can be either of a temporary nature, such as the use of various hair systems and hair loss concealers, or a permanent surgical solution. Hair transplantation happens to be the most effective way of surgical hair replacement and the only permanent solution that delivers satisfactory results.

Hair transplantation surgery consists in transplanting your own hair from the back of your scalp to the balding area. The core limiting factor of hair transplantation is the shortage of donor hair and, therefore, many patients do not make a good candidate. The suitable hair transplant candidate should have a high hair density in the back of the scalp, his hair should be wavy and thick, his scalp flexible and the contrast between the colour of his hair and scalp should not be too great, and he must be in good physical condition. Women often suffer from a diffuse form of hair loss and, therefore, do not make very good hair transplant candidates. Hair transplant surgery also cannot be performed on patients suffering from unpredictable forms of hair loss such as alopecia areata.

Given the chronic shortage in the supply of donor hair, the hair transplant surgeon must be able to utilise the little hair he can use to create the optical illusion of a full head of hair. This presents one of the biggest risks in hair transplantation, as it can every so often happen that the patient does not like the final result. Although you can usually arrange for another hair transplant session, some damage can be irreparable. Other risks and side effects occurring during and after hair surgery include excessive bleeding and scarring, the lengthy healing of wounds, the transaction and eventual death of many implanted hair follicles, post transplant shock hair loss, which, though temporary, can affect your newly-implanted hair as well the hair in the donor area, scalp numbness and tension and the further progression of hair loss post surgery, which can lead to unnatural patterns of baldness. In one recent study, which evaluated the experiences of 425 hair transplant patients who had undergone 533 hair transplant procedures in total, it was determined that about 5% of the patients experienced complications either during or after surgery.

Hair transplants can cost around ten thousand dollars, depending on the technique used, the location and reputation of the clinic, the extent of hair loss and the number of hair transplant sessions needed to achieve the desired effect. However, sometimes it is impossible to estimate the final cost, which represents another risk you take when deciding on hair surgery. Given the pain, time and cost involved, it appears necessary to educate oneself prior to signing up for hair transplant surgery. The hair transplant industry is a fast-growing segment and the quality and affordability of hair surgeries are improving, so do not let anybody push you into hasty uninformed decisions.

When it comes to treating your hair loss it pays to have some basic understanding of the existing treatment options in order to better assess your chances and to choose the right remedy for your current condition. In the first place, hair loss treatment options can be divided into surgical and non-surgical therapies. Although there are only a few surgical techniques currently used, the non-surgical spectrum is wide and confusing. There seem to be thousands of non-surgical treatment options available to those who wish to avoid hair surgery. Propecia and Rogaine might be the best known medicinal hair loss treatments, while dried fruits of saw palmetto and a Chinese herb, He Shou Wu, also known as Fo-Ti, are the natural ingredients most frequently used in alternative hair loss remedies.

The non-surgical hair loss therapies can be in principle broken down into medicinal and alternative treatments, whereas when considering methods of application, they can be divided into oral treatments, topical applications and others, such as low level laser therapy. Irrespective of the aforementioned breakdowns, hair growth treatments work either by blocking the activity of dihydrotestosterone, also called anti-androgens, or by stimulating hair growth.

Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) is a biologically-active metabolite of the male hormone testosterone that is thought to be the main cause of both male and female hereditary pattern baldness. DHT causes hair miniaturisation as the hair becomes finer and thinner with every new hair growth cycle until the hair follicles refuse to produce another hair at all and eventually die. The exact mechanism by which DHT acts on hair follicles is not known, though. Finasteride, better known under its trade name Propecia, is the only clinically-proven and FDA-approved anti-androgen used for treating male pattern baldness. It acts by preventing the creation of DHT in the scalp. Since the introduction of Propecia, many other drugs and natural therapies have emerged claiming anti-androgen activity. Some of them are supposed to work by a different mode of action than Propecia, such as preventing DHT from binding to the receptor sites in the follicle or blocking activity in the androgen receptor itself.

Minoxidil, also known as Rogaine, is the best-known hair loss medicine amongst hair growth stimulants. It is assumed that hair growth stimulants work by directly stimulating epithelial growth of hair follicles and some of them may also counteract the hardening of the hair follicles but the exact mechanism of their action has never been described. One thing that all hair growth stimulants have in common is their ability to increase the length of the hair growth cycle, thus improving the ratio of hair in the growth phase and to increase the hair’s diameter.

The natural hair loss treatments are in principle assumed to work by the aforementioned modes of action and are often presented as safe alternatives to medicinal treatments. There are not too many hair loss treatments that have been clinically proven and independently verified to be effective in treating baldness. Of those few existing, all happen to be medicinal drugs. Natural hair loss treatments have still to live up to their manufacturer claims.

When deciding about the most suitable hair loss treatment option, one should always consider approaching the problem from different angles. It is best advised to use a combination of anti-androgen and hair growth stimulant, such as a Propecia/Rogaine combination. Alternative, hair loss treatments, for instance natural remedies, should mainly be considered as a method of fine-tuning this basic regimen in order to achieve additional benefits.