Hair Loss : Symptoms, Causes and Treatment

Hair loss is medically called as alopecia. Everyone loses hundreds of hair every day. Loosing hundreds of hair is not a cause of concern but if you see bald patches on your head or if your hair have become thinned you may be suffering from Hair loss and that requires treatment.

Symptoms of hair loss include:

• Bald patches on head
• Thinning of hair

Causes of Hair loss

The most common cause of hair loss in both male and female is hereditary hair loss. Almost 80 million people in United States suffers from this type of hair loss. This type of hair loss is also termed as male pattern baldness, female pattern baldness or androgenetic alopecia.

Other causes include:

• Not taking proper hair care such as maintaining hygiene by washing your hair at least twice a week or as per your hair or scalp type.
• Brushing or combing hair too hard that results is hair breakage.
• Diseases such as thyroid
• Use of birth control pills in women
• Hormonal imbalance mostly in women
• Tying your hair too hard in a ponytail
• Use of harsh shampoos
• Excessive use of hair styling products like gels, dyes, hair sprays.
• Childbirth
• Any kind of major surgery
• Lack of protein , zinc and iron in diet
• Severe Infection
• Medicines such as blood thinners, high-dose of vitamin A, medicines used in treatment of arthritis, depression, gout, heart conditions and high blood pressure.

Hair loss can also lead to psychological conditions of depression, low self-esteem, lack of confidence in individuals as everyone is concerned with the way they look and loss of hair or thinning of hair makes one look older than one's age and less beautiful than those with healthy hair.

Any type of hair loss is treatable. Consult your dermatologist for proper treatment.

Treatment:

Topical minoxidil can be used by men and women and oral finasteride like (Generic Propecia, Generic Proscar) can be used by men only. These drugs have shown to slow down the hair loss and also there is new hair growth.

Hair loss caused by diseases such as thyroid disease can be stopped by treating thyroid disease.

Topical cortisone or cortisone injections increase regrowth of hair in some types of hair loss.

Women need to take topical or oral estrogen or other female hormones for treating hair loss.

Hair transplantation is a permanent form of hair replacement which is surgery of existing scalp hair are relocated to bald area or area with thinning hair. It is mainly used in treatment of male pattern baldness. It can also be used in women experiencing thinning of hair or in people who have lost some but not all hair from burns or other scarring injuries to the scalp, eyebrows or eyelashes.

Restoration surgery includes scalp reduction surgery in which bald area of the scalp is removed and scalp full of hair is brought closer together to reduce balding. It also includes in scalp expansion surgery in which the trichologist temporarily inserts devices under the scalp to stretch areas with hair which also reduces balding. In scalp flap surgery, the area on the scalp with hair is surgically removed and is relocated to bald area of the scalp.