Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Stress and Hair loss

Your hair has a way of telling you if your body is in balance. If you are healthy - physically as well as emotionally - your hair will be radiant and shining and your scalp pliant and moist.

If you are not well physically, or if you are upset emotionally, your hair becomes dull and lifeless - it will begin to fall out, and your hair will become waxy with the overproduction of your traumatised sebaceous glands.

If your hair is thinning or you are experiencing baldness and it seems abnormal either because you are young or female, it is more than likely that stress is the culprit of hair loss. Your hair is one of the first places your body shows distress. Illness, medication and imbalances in nutrition all show up in you hair and scalp.

Usually, it is not mild job or life stress that triggers hair loss, more likely it is extremely serious stress to the body that causes hair to stop growing and fall out. These types of stress can be initiated by some types of medications, diabetes, thyroid disorders and even extreme emotional stress, but also can be caused by commonplace life events like childbirth, miscarriage and surgery.

Any major change in our lives can be reflected in the condition of our hair, scalp and skin. We reflect our health and well-being in the condition of our hair and scalp.

But how does stress actually effect hair loss? Well hair grows in repeating cycles. The active growth phase lasts around two years and is followed by a resting phase that spans three months, after which the hair falls from the scalp. Normally, every strand of hair in your head is at a different point in this cycle, so the shedding is barely noticeable: a few strands in the shower drain, some more on your brush, a hair or two on your pillow. A normal head sheds at most 100 strands of hair a day.

However, when the body undergoes extreme stress, as much as 70 percent of your hair can prematurely enter the resting phase. Three months later, these hairs begin to fall out, causing noticeable hair loss.

The person will not become completely bald and the thinning will be fairly unnoticeable. However, it is this three month delay and the fact that the trigger seems so unrelated that causes confusion on the part of the patient concerned about hair loss.

Fortunately, in most cases hair will begin to grow back within six months. However, some people may face further periods of severe stress that may trigger the whole process to being again cause more hair loss resulting in a more long-term problem.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Is Hair Loss Hereditary?

Most people are of the opinion that hair loss runs into the family. Children look at their parents who may be balding and assume that this is their future. In a vast majority of cases, hair loss is hereditary, passed down the genes from either side of parentage. Some studies indicate that baldness from the maternal side has a greater chance of it being passed along to a male offspring

Whilst in many situations hair loss does seem to be hereditary, there are, of course, some exceptions to this, but they are not incredibly common.

You may therefore be wondering, what exactly does cause hair loss then? Is it genetically already predetermined that you will lose you hair? The answer is yes, and no! Hair loss is affected genetics but it can be caused by factors that can be controlled or even reversed by outside forces or products.

Hair loss is caused by an increase in DHT in the scalp. A human body is programmed to produce an enzyme known as 5 alpha reductase. When the Androgen hormone in the scalp produces testosterone, which mixes with 5 alpha reductase, it produces Dihydrotestosterone or DHT. DHT is not well received by male (and some female) hair follicles, cutting off blood supply which is critical to growth of new hair.

Thinning and or balding process begins when this occurs, in other words DHT related hair loss.

DHT is not the only cause of hair loss. Dirt and oil on your scalp can also lead to an increase in the rate of hair loss, as can malnutrition and poor circulation. Lucky for you, plenty of products on the market right now can cancel out the effects of these problems and ultimately allow you to keep your hair.

Even if there are many family members who are presently balding, or indeed are bald already, this may not be your future. You can start as soon as possible to take the right supplements and use the right products to prevent any future hair loss. In the long run you will be glad you did. Even if you have already started to lose your hair, there are some great hair loss products out right now that can really turn things around for you and help you re-grow hair you have already lost.