The birthday party - no place for bald men (or women)

You'd think a birthday party would be a source of joy and celebration, wouldn't you? Well, usually it is - and that's great. However, there's one thing about birthday parties (as I learnt to my cost this weekend) which isn't so great if you're (going) bald...everyone's got a camera.

Just when you thought it was safe to look at yourself in a mirror the "birthday party photographer" is the guy who just can't help coming up to you and showing you the photo he took when you weren't looking (or able to put that paper hat on quick enough). Damn these amateurs and their poorly-exposed-instantly-viewable-digital-pictures!

Well, thankfully my own birthday comes but once a year so I've got some time to recover my self esteem before the next one...

Hair cloning down under

Great article over at The Age:

"Melbourne scientists are trying to cure baldness once and for all by using stem cells to grow a potentially endless supply of new hair.

If successful, cloning would overcome the shortcomings in existing hair-loss treatments.

Hair transplant surgery, for example, can redistribute hair over balding areas but does not create new hair. Drugs such as minoxidil and finasteride can stop balding in men, but can't reverse it and need to be taken indefinitely. Other options tend to involve fake hair, including "yeah, yeah" Shane Warne hair, which is a technically advanced hairpiece.

Scientists from St Vincent's Hospital and Melbourne University, headed by St Vincent's dermatology director Rod Sinclair, have extracted adult stem cells from hair follicles and are trying to coax them to spawn new hair follicles in a culture dish..."

More at http://www.theage.com.au/executive-style/style/yeah-yeah-its-cloned-hair-20090615-c7x4.html

Hair and appearance

I've been thinking recently about how much difference hair makes to someone's appearance. Surely there's no quicker way of completely changing the way you look than having your hair cut in a different style or changing its colour.

This is one of the biggest problems with hair loss - not only does it make some people feel less attractive because they don't like the way they look with thinning or no hair, but it drastically reduces the options available when they get tired of their current look.

Not everyone looks worse with no hair - guys especially can suit the look a shaven head or buzz cut gives - but everyone fancies a change of scene now and again!

More Treatment Tips

There are different levels of improvement. As the hair often deteriorates without treatment with some hair conditions, slowing down the loss or stabilizing it might actually be an improvement (compared to what would occur without treatments). With minoxidil, for instance, data has shown that even if you don't see regrowth, the percentage deterioration in hair quantity is often much less than if you hadn't used it at all.

Of course, most people look for a slight improvement or, preferably, full regrowth from any treatment. There is always the possibility of curing your condition, however, depending on how long you have had the problem, you may have to look for an improvement that is between what your condition is now and what is was before you had the hair loss. Will this be enough to satisfy you? Time will tell. The longer you have had a hair-loss problem, the more difficult it may be for you to attain full regrowth.

Hair loss often happens six to sixteen weeks after the trigger has occurred, so any treatment needs to be given the same length of time. If you are not willing to give a treatment regimen at least three months (after which time you should be seeing early results), I suggest you don't start using it in the first place; it's not fair on the treatment, or on your wallet.

How long should you keep using a treatment that seems to work? Many hair-loss conditions can be viewed as chronic (long term) conditions and just like any other chronic condition, treatment needs to be long term, especially with genetic hair loss. Therefore, you may need to use a treatment regimen consistently for it to continue working. For instance, if your hair loss is caused by dietary reasons, then you need to make sure that you keep following your corrected diet.

Stick with it!

Treatment Tips

Once you find out why you are losing hair, you need to decide on what treatments to use, if any. If you look on the Internet, you'll find a host of different products promising to regrow your hair. Which one should you use? A lot of products are expensive versions of saw palmetto (an herb which helps to block the conversion of testosterone to DHT) or minoxidil (Rogaine), both of which you could probably get cheaper elsewhere.

It is important to realize that there is no 100 percent guarantee with any treatment; as no single treatment is available that will regrow everyone's hair. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if anyone offers a 100 percent guarantee, you should be extremely skeptical. This doesn't mean that there is no hope as there are many causes of hair loss. Depending on why your hair is falling out, there are many treatments that can improve your condition and regrow your hair. Sometimes you may need to change treatments or use more than one treatment to find the best combination for you. This is why it's important to find out what's causing your hair loss first.

So what treatments should you use? The answer largely depends on what is causing your hair loss. Generic treatments, which you can purchase at many beauty salons and pharmacists, are formulated to help everyone with hair loss. They may temporarily help the symptoms of your hair loss, but if you don't identify the root of the problem, you will not see long-term improvement. Many treatments will help a proportion of people, but you want to use what will help you specifically. So, after you have ascertained why your hair is falling out, you want to use a treatment regimen that will help all these factors.

Often, therefore, a multifaceted treatment is necessary to get the best results. The more treatments that you use that are orientated to your problems, the better the chance of improvement.

Hair Loss and Medication

Taking certain medicines can cause hair loss in some people while the same medicine may not cause hair loss in others. Stopping a certain medicine can also cause hair loss in some, but not in others. In addition, certain medications can cause hair fall the first time they are taken, but not subsequent times (once the body adjusts to the medicine, the hair loss stops), or they don't cause hair loss the first time but do subsequent times (possibly due to the medicine accumulating in your system).

Sound complicated?

It is difficult to categorically say that one particular medicine causes hair loss and another doesn't, as medicines can react differently in different people.

So what particular groups of medications have been reported to cause hair loss?

The most common ones are:

· Chemotherapy medications. These can cause temporary hair loss by stopping the hair growth almost immediately (called anagen effluvium). They can also produce changes in hair texture, hair type, and pigmentation.

· Antidepressants. In particular, lithium-based medicines can temporarily disturb the hair cycle and cause hair loss.

· Thyroid medicines. Both an underactive (hypothyroid) and an overactive {hyperthymic) condition can cause the hair to fall out, as can the initial use of a thyroid medicine. Often, when a person starts taking thyroid medicine, the physician will need to vary the dosage until the correct balance is found. Some people experience hair loss during this process, up until three to six months after the dosage has been stabilized.

· Oral contraceptive pill. Either stopping or starting the pill may cause hair cycle disturbances. Oral contraceptives can affect the hormone levels, which often control hair growth.

· Other groups of medicines. Other medicines that can cause hair loss include blood pressure medications (blood thinners and beta blockers); cholesterol medicines; medications for ulcers, gout, arthritis, and Parkinson's disease; and anticonvulsants (for epilepsy).

· Vitamins and supplements. Some of these can cause hair loss such as taking too much vitamin A (in excess of 25,000 IU per day) and taking excessive quantities of "natural" testosterone boosters.

Hair loss and nutrition

Recent published research has shown that your hair needs a plentiful supply of protein, energy-producing molecules (glucose), and certain vitamins and minerals for optimal growth to occur. As the hair follicle is a nonessential tissue and, therefore, one of the last tissues to receive nutritious substances (or the first to have them reduced), any long-term deficiencies may lead to premature hair loss. Also, hair is one of the fastest-growing tissues in the body (it grows about a half inch each month), so any long-term reduction in certain nutrients to the hair follicle may disturb the hair cycle. Any nutritional disturbance to the hair follicle can cause the growing (anagen) phase of the hair cycle to become shorter, leading to an increase in shedding, and cause the resting (telogen) phase to become longer, slowing regrowth.

Protein deficiency can be a frequent cause for hair loss because insufficient levels of protein will reduce an essential raw material for hair growth. Protein helps the body build the hair fibers, which consist of 80 to 95 percent protein. This is especially relevant for vegetarians or people who eat infrequently during the day.

Eating infrequently or missing meals can adversely affect your hair cycle. If you do this over time, the amount of energy available at your hair growth site may be deficient, causing the hair to fall out prematurely.

The most common nutritionally related hair loss occurs while dieting. Severe weight loss due to dieting can often cause a temporary increase in hair shedding due to metabolic changes in the body. It has been reported that losing an excess of fifteen pounds of weight in a month can be a trigger for hair loss. The loss usually begins two to four months after the onset of the diet; however, the hair tends to regrow to its original fullness another two to six months after the weight has been stabilized.

The good news is that, usually, any short term deficiencies cause only temporary hair loss. Once corrected, hair will regrow normally. However, long-term shortages can occasionally lead to permanent hair loss as well as the acceleration of genetic hair loss, if present.

Heavy metals such as mercury, found in contaminated fish, can cause hair loss. Again, a blood test would generally help find out whether this is relevant to your condition.

Health-related causes of hair loss

So many health factors can influence your hair cycle. During your evaluation, besides asking about your general health, the hair-loss specialist should also ask you whether you have a family or personal history of a thyroid condition or anemia, two of the most common causes of hair loss next to genetics. Also, you should be asked whether you have had any recent blood tests taken within six to nine months (if you have, take a copy on your initial visit or send a copy at a later date). This will help the specialist know what other tests to suggest.

Other important health influences on your hair cycle include any recent surgery near the time the hair loss started; as anesthesia can disturb the hair cycle, as can the reason why you had the surgery in the first place. A high fever can also be a factor. A temperature greater than 101 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) can cause the hair to shed.

Obviously, numerous other general health factors can be important. For example, lupus (an autoimmune disease), digestive problems, and infections may be relevant to your condition. The most important health influences are often the ones that occurred approximately four to sixteen weeks before you noticed your hair falling out.

To try to determine the possible health factors that could have caused your hair loss, write down any illnesses that you have had, either chronic (over a period of time) or short term. Make a note of when the illnesses started, how long they lasted, and any medications that you took (or are taking) for them. Then work forward three months or so to see whether that was when your hair loss began. If you noticed that your hair began to fall out approximately three months after an illness, that illness might be one of the causes of your hair loss.

Questions the hair loss specialist will ask

During the initial evaluation the specialist should ask you a series of questions to help him or her find out what could be causing the loss or thinning of your hair. Not all questions you are asked will seem relevant, though often the answer is needed to rule out certain things.

How Long Have You Been Losing Hair?

Often the trigger of hair loss occurs between four and sixteen weeks (an average of three months) previous to you seeing the hair falling out. For instance, if you see a hair falling out when washing your hair in, say, June, that hair probably stopped growing in March. This is because when the hair goes into the resting (telogen) phase, it usually takes this amount of time for it to move into the falling out (exogen) stage.

Has the Hair Loss Been Continuous?

The answer to this question will indicate whether the cause has been continuously, or only periodically, affecting the hair cycle. Continuous influences could be genetic or a chronic general health condition. Periodic loss could indicate a dietary or stress influence.

Good hair loss specialists care

Good hair loss specialists should be genuinely concerned about your condition. You're worried about losing hair, and this can often lead to anxiety and depression. The last thing you need is to be told that "It's all in your head" or "You've still got plenty of hair, so don't worry." The amount of hair that you've lost is relative to you, not other patients of the specialist.

Also, you want to make sure that every possibility is explored in finding why you are losing your hair. Because hair loss is not a life-threatening illness, many physicians are indifferent - yet hair loss often affects your quality of life, so it's important that your concerns are taken seriously.