What Causes Hair Loss and How To Stop Losing Hair

What Causes Hair Loss and How To Stop Losing Hair

Article by Glen Greenbaum

What Causes Hair Loss and How To Stop Losing Hair – Health – Hair Loss

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Most hair loss starts slowly. For instance, you may notice a few hairs in your brush or in your bathtub drain, and within a few years, you may be completely bald. However, you should not panic if you lose a few hairs. Most people lose fifty to one hundred hairs per day, but as they have over 100,000 hairs, losing a few every day is natural.

If you lose more hairs than this, you may experience an early sign of baldness which can be an inherited condition or one caused by certain medications or medical problems.

Although baldness is typically thought to be a problem for older men, it can affect anyone including women and children. The treatment options can range from wearing a hat or a wig to having surgery or rubbing treatment into your scalp.

Causes of Hair Loss

Hair follicles naturally go through cycles of growing and resting. The average cycle for most hair follicles is two to three years of growing followed by three to four months of resting. After the resting phase, the hair shaft falls out, and a new one replaces it. Baldness occurs when this cycle does not follow its regular patterns.

Essentially, the main cause of hair loss is that some follicles exhibit short growing phases or produce thin short hairs.

This may be caused by underlying hormonal shifts or irritation to the follicle itself. The following section will look at the different types of baldness and their causes.

Types and Causes of Permanent Hair Loss

Male and female pattern baldness also known as androgenetic alopecia is a permanent condition that affects a third of men and women. In men, it usually starts in your late teens or early twenties and involves the loss of hair near the temples, along the hairline or at the top of your head. In women, it typically involves hair loss in the front, on the side, or on the crown of your head.

In both men and women, this condition is normally hereditary, and it is caused by a shorter growing pattern of the hair follicles.

Cicatricial or Scarring alopecia is a type of hair loss that happens when the hair follicle is scarred or damaged. The scarring or damaging is usually associated with a skin disease like lupus erythematosus. This type of hair loss may look patchy and may feel itchy or painful.

Types and Causes of Temporary Hair Loss

Alopecia areata is a form of baldness that involves the development of small round patches of hair loss. Typically, it is exhibited in the form of quarter-sized patches that are spread around the scalp, but it can occur in any area with hair including eyebrows or beards.

No one knows what causes this condition, but most doctors believe that it is a hereditary auto-immune disease that can be triggered by certain viruses.

Many of the patches may grow back, but some of them will also lose their hairs repeatedly.

Telogen effluvium