It is estimated that somewhere around 50
percent of men will experience some form of hair loss during their lifetime.
Hair thinning in men, and women, is very common and for many people,
particularly for women, advancing baldness can be seriously upsetting. If this
describes you then you may be interested to find out more about hair regrowth
treatments and in particular which is the best hair growth treatment.
There is a range of causes of hair loss and
different causes require different treatments. For example various medical
conditions including thyroid conditions can cause balding however when the
condition is treated regrowth should return. If you experience sudden or patchy
thinning of the hair you ought consult your doctor to see if you have a medical
condition that needs treatment.
Hair loss in women can be caused by childbirth
or by menopause for example. In both cases after the event normal growth should
occur, however if it does not you should again consult your doctor. Similarly
there can be medications that cause thinning such as chemotherapy and others.
However both for men and women the vast
majority of cases of balding are caused by one condition. It's called pattern
baldness. You can get male pattern baldness and female pattern baldness however
in either case the means by which the hair is lost is the same.
It is estimated that over 90 percent of cases
of thinning hair is caused by pattern baldness. Whilst it is less common in
women than it is in men it is more common than you may expect. Women often
experience thinning rather than complete baldness whereas men can suffer from
complete baldness on the top and sometimes the sides of the head.
Pattern baldness is an inherited condition
where you are predisposed to some form of balding because of the genes you
inherit. How much it will affect you if you have the genes is hard to
determine. It may be almost unnoticeable or it may be serious enough to be very
embarrassing, it's hard to say how pattern baldness will affect any one
individual.
The method by which pattern baldness operates
is that a hormone which goes by the name of DHT (dihydrotestosterone) slowly
strangles hair follicles by limiting the amount of nutrients that they can take
up. As hair follicles have more limited access to nutrition the follicle
shrinks and the hair thins and may die prematurely. And whilst all hairs die
over time they are normally replaced by a new healthy hair, however hair
thinning by means of pattern baldness usually results in thinning of the hair
or baldness because the lost hairs are not sufficiently replaced.
So on to baldness treatments. How do you
return to full hair regrowth? Hair regrowth treatments are common, just search
on the Internet and you'll find dozens of hair loss regrowth treatments all
advertised as a miracle cure for baldness. However the reality is that there is
only 2 products approved by the FDA for use as hair growth treatments in men and
one product approved for women. All the rest are not approved by the FDA and
you have no idea if they work and if so how well they work.
It is also true that even the hair regrowth
products approved by the FDA do not work in all cases. In fact there is no
baldness treatment that works for everybody. And even the best hair growth
treatments take quite some time to work and if you are to undertake such
treatments you need to commit to a minimum of 6 months and preferably 12 months
before you can make a judgement as to whether this treatment works for you.
The 2 products approved by the FDA for use by
men are finasteride (Propecia) and minoxidil which goes by various product
names. Minoxidil is approved for use by women and is the only product so
approved. Minoxidil works by, it is thought, increasing the blood flow to the
hair follicle thereby also increasing the supply of nutrients to the follicle.
This should reverse the problem of lack of nutrients in the follicle.
Minoxidil on its own has been shown to be effective
however one company has taken this a step further. It makes sense that where
supply of blood to the hair follicle is improved to allow the follicle to take
up more nutrients that providing all those nutrients in optimum quantities
should improve the likely outcome. One company now markets minoxidil with a
range of essential hair nutrients, one of which is shown to reduce the effects
of DHT, and this is probably the best hair regrowth treatment on the market
today.
Whilst the advertising might suggest otherwise
regrowing your hair is not easy. The quicker you start more likely you will
have a good result however it takes some time and commitment to find a product
that works for you. 2 products approved been shown by studies to be effective
and one, minoxidil, has now been improved by the addition of extra ingredients.
