The Most Common Cause Of Hair Loss

The Most Common Cause Of Hair Loss
The most common cause of hair loss is genetics - inherit the tendency to lose hair from either or both of parents. The medical term for the genetic predisposition for hair loss is "androgenetic alopecia".
In androgenetic alopecia, the genes affect how the hair grows. They trigger a sensitivity to a class of hormones called androgens, including testosterone, which causes hair follicles (which hair grows from) to shrink. Shrinking follicles produce thinner hair and eventually none at all. Thus, androgenetic alopecia is caused by the body's failure to produce new hairs and not by excessive hair loss. Heredity also affects the age at which you begin to lose hair and the developmental speed, pattern and extent of your baldness.
Androgenetic alopecia accounts for more than 95% of hair loss in men. By the age of 35 two-thirds of American men will experience some degree of appreciable hair loss and by the age of 50 approximately 85% of men have significantly thinning hair.
Men generally develop bald spots on the forehead area or on the top of the head. In men, the hairs on the top of the head have a genetic sensitivity to the male hormone testosterone while the hairs on the sides and back of the head do not possess this genetic trait and therefore are not affected. For this reason hairs removed from the sides and the back (donor hair) will maintain their genetic predisposition when transplanted and continue to grow when moved to the top of the head where hair loss has occurred.
For woman, female pattern baldness is the most common type of hair loss. It can begin at puberty, but is most often seen after menopause. Women have an overall thinning of the hair throughout the scalp while the frontal hairline generally remains intact.

Interesting Facts About Hair And Hair Loss

Hair loss is related to the tendency of hair follicles to stop producing hair growth. Partial or complete loss of hair is called alopecia. Hair loss usually develops gradually and may be patchy or diffuse.
Hair is the fastest growing tissue in the body, second only to bone marrow.
The average scalp contains about 100,000 hairs.
Roughly 100 hairs are lost from your head every day.
Each individual hair survives for an average of 4 - 7 years, during which time it grows about half an inch a month.
You need to lose about 50% of your hair before hair loss becomes noticeable.
In the United States, 30 million women experience hereditary hair loss. 70% of women with thinning hair can attribute it to hereditary hair loss.
Hereditary hair loss or androgenetic alopecia is the most common form of hair loss for men, representing more than 95% of all male cases.
Androgenetic alopecia affects many more men than women. About two-thirds of men experience some degree of appreciable hair loss by the time they are 35 years old, and about 85% have significantly thinning hair by age 50.
In the United States, there has not been an elected bald President since the television age began.

Homeopathy and conventional science

The basic principle of homeopathy is that like cures like: that an ailment can be cured by small quantities of substances which produce the same symptoms. For example, it is believed that onions, which produce streaming, itchy eyes, can be used to relieve the symptoms of hay fever.
However, many of the ingredients of homeopathic cures are poisonous if taken in large enough quantities. So homeopaths dilute the substances they are using in water or alcohol. This is where scientists become sceptical - because homeopathic solutions are diluted so many times they are unlikely to contain any of the original ingredients at all.
Yet many of the people who take homeopathic medicines are convinced that they work. Has science missed something, or could there be a more conventional explanation?