Archive for January, 2012

January 24th, 2012

Can my diet prevent hair loss?

Your diet does make a difference. Obviously, your body can’t provide the right nutrients for hair growth if you don’t provide your body with the right food or supplements. It’s pretty much that simple.

 

However, you also want to balance your diet properly. Too much of the wrong things can be just as bad as too little of the right things.

 

Start out with salmon as a great food for overall nutrition. Salmon is a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, which are important for a healthy scalp.  Too little omega-3’s will cause the scalp to be dry. Salmon is also an important source of protein, which is needed to grow the actual hair. The hair shaft is made up of keratin, a form of protein, which the body can synthesize from dietary protein.

 

Just because you need protein, doesn’t mean that you have a license to go out and eat a steak every day. Your diet should include protein sources from eggs and legumes too. Eggs are a source of both vitamin B-12 and biotin. Biotin in particular supports healthy hair growth. Legumes are not only a source of protein, but also low in fat as well. Low fat sources of protein will do you the most good, even if you aren’t trying to lose weight. Too much fat can contribute to too much testosterone, and too much testosterone can make male pattern baldness worse.

 

Don’t forget your veggies while you are filling up your plate with protein! Dark green vegetables are a source of vitamins A and C. Without vitamins A and C, your body can’t produce sebum. Sebum is the only substance that your scalp secretes, which conditions the hair. Of course, you also get lots of other benefits from green veggies, not the least of which is iron. Iron deficiency is a common cause of hair loss.

 

Avoiding iron deficiency is a snap, as long as you include a few iron-rich foods in your diet! How about raisins if you are craving something sweet? Cherry juice is another good source of iron, that isn’t hard on the taste buds.

 

Why not make your own trail mix with raisins and nuts? Nuts are full of great nutrition. Brazil nuts will give you a good dose of selenium, which works like an antioxidant in your body (even though it’s a mineral). Walnuts are a particularly good addition to your trail mix, because they contain omega-3 fatty acids, and zinc. Zinc is another mineral that can lead to hair loss, if you have a deficiency.

 

Whole grains can provide you with a regular dose of zinc. However, if you are feeling more adventurous, consider oysters! Oysters are not only known as an aphrodisiac, but are a great source of zinc.

 

The most important thing in your diet is to eat a wide variety of foods, making sure that you are providing the right nutrition for your hair, as well as your life.

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January 18th, 2012

Can medications cause hair loss?

 

Drugs can often have unwanted side effects, and hair loss may just be one of them. While it’s true that some medications can help you to grow hair, it’s also true that there are medications that can cause excess hair loss!

 

The issue is that the drug may be affecting either the growth phase of the hair, or the resting phase of the hair. Your hair follicle grows during the anagen phase, which usually lasts three to four years. Your hair follicle rests during the telogen phase, which usually lasts three to four months. At the end of the telogen phase, the existing hair falls out, and a new hair begins to grow.

 

Medications can cause two kinds of hair loss called telogen effluvium and anagen effluvium. Of the two, telogen effluvium is most common. If hair loss is related to a specific drug, it will generally start within two to four months of starting the new prescription. With telogen effluvium, the drug is influencing hair follicles to go into dormancy early – therefore, falling out early. With this type of hair loss, people will lose 100 to 150 hairs daily. This amounts to about 30 percent more hair loss than normally.

 

A large number of drugs can cause hair loss. Common drugs that will affect hair include acne medications, antibiotics and antifungals, birth control pills, cholesterol drugs, high blood pressure drugs, steroids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory pain medications.

 

If a prescription drug is causing anagen effluvium, then the drug is preventing the matrix cells in the follicle from dividing normally. This stops the hairs from growing properly and they fall out. If your medication is causing this kind of hair loss, it will become obvious within a few days or weeks. Chemotherapy is the most common cause of this kind of hair loss, and can be quite severe.

 

In most cases, if you stop the offending medication, then the hair loss stops. However, it can take as much as three months for the hair loss to end. If you are on multiple medications, you may need to stop one at a time to determine which drug is the problem. Your doctor will know alternative medications that you can take to manage the same health condition – but without the negative side effect of hair loss.

 

When you stop taking a drug, but the hair does not come back, you may need additional help. In this case, it’s time to consider hair products that nourish the scalp, and even other prescriptions that help to grow hair. If you are looking for natural products to promote hair growth, good options include products like SureThik Shampoo and Serum. When the scalp is nourished well, you have the best chance to grow healthy hair.

 

In some cases, you will need to be evaluated for medical treatment of drug-induced hair loss. A doctor who specializes in hair loss will be best able to evaluate you for the best possible treatment, whether that is hair growth medications, hair transplantation, or other options.

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January 10th, 2012

Male Pattern Baldness and Women

Male pattern baldness is the most common form of baldness. For men, it takes the form of thinning hair, leading to complete or partial loss. The pattern of baldness on the head is also well known and often results in a receding hairline, which may lead to complete baldness on the top of the head. Typically, most men will retain some degree of hair, starting from the sideburns and continuing behind the ears and around the back of the head.

 

This pattern of baldness is typical of androgenic alopecia. Androgenic alopecia easily recognized in men. It is not so easily recognized in women.

 

However, women can (and do) develop androgenic alopecia. Unlike their male counterparts, women may develop this condition as early as late teens and as late as full menopause, and may not have the same obvious hereditary association as men do. As women begin to lose more hair, they also may not know if the hair loss will be permanent or just temporary. It’s quite possible with women that a variety of other conditions can affect hair loss, including recent pregnancy or breastfeeding cessation, low iron, hormonal issues or other illness.

 

If you do have androgenic alopecia, there are a number of patterns of hair loss that you may see:

 

  • Generalized thinning over the whole head, with more thinning at the back of the head
  • Generalized thinning over the whole head, with more thinning at the front of the head (but not the hairline)
  • Generalized thinning over the whole head, with more thinning at the front which involves hairline (such as “receding” at temples or hairline)

 

What can you do? First of all, alopecia is associated with high levels of DHT. DHT is dihydrotestosterone, which will cling to hair follicles and starve out the hair. A simple blood test can help you determine if you have too much DHT. If your DHT is too high, saw palmetto – a natural supplement – can help.

 

Topical serums and shampoos are an ideal method of getting saw palmetto to your scalp, because your skin will absorb anything that is applied to it. Be sure to get a product that includes the known best ingredients for scalp health. One such products combination is SureThik Shampoo and Serum. This particular product line posts relevant research on its site to support the kinds of ingredients used.

 

Another way that you can get DHT to your follicles is through taking aaw palmetto as an oral supplement. This will reduce the levels of DHT throughout the body and while also benefitting the hair follicles. Saw palmetto can be found at almost any health food store.

 

The good news is that androgenic alopecia doesn’t have to mean that you lose your hair permanently. You can take steps to protect your hair follicles and your hair.

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January 2nd, 2012

Am I losing too much hair?

Maybe hair loss runs in your family. Or perhaps you’ve noticed what looks like too many hairs on your comb or brush recently. For whatever reason, you are concerned that you are losing too much hair, and have noticed what looks like thinning.

 

Let’s begin with a few facts. It is completely normal to lose as many as 50 to 100 hairs per day. Not all will be on your brush, however. You may lose a few hairs while having your shower; you may lose some while pushing your bangs out of your eyes. So, don’t expect to count the hairs on your brush and know for sure how many hairs you typically lose.

 

The reason that everyone loses a certain amount of hair is that each follicle enters the anagen – or resting – phase many times over the course of a lifetime. A follicle may stay in this phase for three or four months. However, this is a relatively short phase in comparison to the catagen – or growing – phase. Depending on your genetics, your hair may be growing for three to ten years at a time!

 

This means that the true measure of whether you are losing too much hair is whether the follicles emerge from the resting phase and re-enter the growing phase. If you notice your hair is thinning, your hair follicles may not be returning to growing hair, for a number of reasons.

 

One of the most common reasons is too much DHT. DHT is Dihydrotestosterone, a hormonal component that can block receptors in the hair follicle and slowly starve the follicle by blocking nutrients from entering.

 

The good news is that there is a safe herbal supplement that can help to lower your levels of DHT naturally. It’s called saw palmetto. New research shows that this supplement is effective against DHT, helping to break it down into other substances that are not damaging to your hair.

 

So, how do you get Saw Palmetto to the follicle? While you can take saw palmetto as an oral supplement, this approach does not guarantee delivery of sufficient concentration of the herbal remedy to the follicle itself. One of the best ways to get saw palmetto directly to the site of your hair loss is to apply it to the scalp. You can get this combination with a number of topical products. One such combination is SureThik Shampoo and Serum. The advantage of SureThik (unlike some competitors) is that the company posts research on its site that documents the efficacy of its ingredients, so that the consumer understands how the formula works against hair loss.

 

Why apply the key ingredient twice to the scalp? It’s all about results. The advantage of using both a shampoo and serum combination is that it delivers saw palmetto in two steps – with a scalp cleansing shampoo and a leave-on treatment. This is a one-two punch against hair loss from DHT.

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