Hair loss

Your hair goes through a cycle of growth and rest. The course of each cycle varies by individual. But in general, the growth phase of scalp hair, known as anagen, typically lasts two to three years. During this time, your hair grows about 1 centimeter (just less than 1/2 inch) a month. The resting phase is called telogen. This phase typically lasts three to four months. At the end of the resting phase, the hair strand falls out and a new one begins to grow in its place. Once a hair is shed, the growth stage begins again.

Most people normally shed 50 to 100 hairs a day. But with about 100,000 hairs in the scalp, this amount of hair loss shouldn't cause noticeable thinning of the scalp hair.

Gradual thinning is a normal part of aging. However, hair loss may lead to baldness when the rate of shedding exceeds the rate of regrowth, when new hair is thinner than the hair shed or when hair comes out in patches.

Other causes of hair loss

* Poor nutrition. Having inadequate protein or iron in your diet or poor nourishment in other ways can cause you to experience hair loss. Fad diets, crash diets and certain illnesses, such as eating disorders, can cause poor nutrition.
* Medications. Certain drugs used to treat gout, arthritis, depression, heart problems and high blood pressure may cause hair loss in some people. Taking birth control pills also may result in hair loss for some women.
* Disease. Diabetes and lupus can cause hair loss.

Hormonal changes.

Hormonal changes and imbalances can cause temporary hair loss. This could be due to pregnancy, having a baby, discontinuing birth control pills, beginning menopause, or an overactive or underactive thyroid gland. The hair loss may be delayed by three months following a hormonal change, and it'll take another three months for new hair to grow back. During pregnancy, it's normal to have thicker, more luxuriant hair. It's also common to lose more hair than normal about three months after delivery. If a hormonal imbalance is associated with an overproduction of testosterone, there may be a thinning of hair over the crown of the scalp. Correcting hormonal imbalances may stop hair loss.

Home Remedies For Dry Scalp

Dry scalp can be caused by a number of factors but are generally the same things that affect the rest of your skin both environmental and dietary. We are quite good about treating our dry skin with moisturizers and body oils, but because the skin of our scalp is under our hair we sometimes forget that it is subject to the same drying conditions as the rest of our dermal layer. Luckily there are a number of inexpensive home remedies that can help you deal with this problem.

There are two basic remedies for dry scalp:
Massage and Moisturizer.

Massage will improve circulation and that in turn will help your scalp produce more of the natural oils that not only keep the skin from getting too dry, but also make for shiny, healthy hair. Once you have dealt with existing dryness, a 5 minute head massage once a week can go a great ways towards insuring that your scalp restores a level of healthy oil production, preventing the dry scalp from reoccurring.

Some of the most common causes of a dry scalp are the weather, allergies, air conditioners and irritants found in your shampoos and styling products. You may want to think about swapping your shampoos and styling products to ones that exclude harsh chemicals. A combination of massage, moisturizing and easy to make home remedies for dry scalp will ensure the restoration of your natural oils thus liberating you from the dryness and irritation you may be suffering with.

Hair Thickeners

Hair thickeners have had somewhat of a resurgence in recent times, due in no small part to the general growth in male grooming products on the market. They’ve also come a long way in terms of effectiveness and offering a natural look. Long gone are the days when hair thickening products were nothing more than cheap, baseless products pandering to desperate men and women suffering from thinning hair.

Despite the advancements in hair thickening products however, there are numerous thickeners on the market, and results will differ greatly from one thickening product to the next. Each hair thickener will have optimal results with certain types of hair and, of course, each user’s expectations will have a large bearing on whether a particular hair thickening product works for them.

Hair thickening products cover a wide range of technologies – from products that simply clean the hair and thus remove heavy oils, to products that trap moisture in the hair shaft thus giving more body, through to products that actually bind real hair particles to the hair shaft thereby giving it more volume. Some hair thickeners come in a spray, others in creams, and some require that you hair needs to be blow-dried for maximum effect. Which method of thickening works best for you will be a combination of your expectations, your hair type, and how much money you are willing to pay. The majority of hair thickeners however work by using a hair shaft's natural negative charge to attract polymers (which have a positive charge) thus trapping moisture causing the hair shaft to swell in diameter and appear thicker.

The main notable aspect about hair thickeners is that they simply do just that – thicken hair. For those people with thinning or light hair, then hair thickeners can add a significant amount of volume to the thinning area, giving the appearance of a fuller head of hair. Hair thickeners do not regrow hair, or delay the onset or progression of hair loss in any way. They are merely cosmetic solutions to thinning hair, and should be treated as such.

Some of the more popular hair thickening products on the market today are (in no particular order):

* Kerasome
* Toppik
* Couvre
* Fullmore
* Dermatch
* Morebody
* Top Brass

But of course there are many, many more products on the market – far too many to list here.

If you are thinking about using a hair thickening product it pays to do some research first. Type in any product brand name into your search engine of choice and you’ll be presented with any amount of information to help you decide which hair thickener is a good match for you, and if you do undertake to use a hair thickening product, keep a careful look out during the early stages of your regime for signs of hair or scalp damage. If in doubt, any good hair salon should be able to recommend a good thickener to start with.

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it's always nice to check the label, otherwise consult your doctor..

Understanding Hair Loss -- the Basics

What Causes Hair Loss?

Hair grows everywhere on the human body except on the palms of our hands and the soles of our feet, but many hairs are so fine they're virtually invisible. Hair is made up of a protein called keratin (the same protein in nails) produced in hair follicles in the outer layer of skin; as follicles produce new hair cells, old cells are being pushed out through the surface of the skin at the rate of about six inches a year. The hair you can see is actually a string of dead keratin cells. The average adult head has about 100,000 to 150,000 hairs and loses up to 100 of them a day; so finding a few stray hairs on your hairbrush is not necessarily cause for alarm.

At any one time, about 90% of the hair on a person's scalp is growing. Each follicle has its own life cycle that can be influenced by age, disease, and a wide variety of other factors. This life cycle is divided into three phases:

* Anagen -- active hair growth. Lasts between two to six years.
* Catagen -- transitional. Lasts two to three weeks.
* Telogen -- resting phase. At the end of the resting phase (two to three months) the hair is shed and a new hair replaces it and the growing cycle starts again.

As people age, their rate of hair growth slows.

There are many types of hair loss, also called alopecia:

Gradual thinning of hair with age is a natural condition known as involutional alopecia. More and more hair follicles go into a telogen, or resting, phase, and the remaining hairs become shorter and fewer in number.

Androgenic alopecia is another form of hair loss. It's a genetically predisposed condition that can affect both men and women. Men with this condition can begin suffering hair loss as early as their teens or early 20s, while most women don't experience noticeable thinning until their 40s or later.

Patchy hair loss in children and young adults, often sudden in onset, is known as alopecia areata. This condition may result in complete baldness, but in about 90% of cases the hair returns, usually within a few years.

Telogen effluvium is temporary hair loss that can occur within a few months after a high fever, a severe illness or extreme stress, and in women following childbirth.

Drugs that can cause temporary hair loss include chemotherapy drugs used in cancer treatment, blood thinners, retinoids used to treat acne and other skin problems, beta-adrenergic blockers used to control blood pressure, and birth control pills.

Hair loss can also be caused by burns, X-rays, and scalp injuries. In such cases, normal hair growth usually returns once the cause is eliminated. Ringworm caused by a fungal infection can also cause hair loss.

The causes of alopecia areata, a disease that often strikes children or teenagers, remain unexplained. It is thought to be an autoimmune disease, meaning that the immune system revs up for unknown reasons and affects the hair follicles. In most cases the hair grows back, although it may be very fine and possibly a different color before normal coloration and thickness return.

Although shampooing too often, perms, bleaching, and dyeing hair do not cause baldness, they can contribute to overall thinning by making hair weak and brittle. Tight braiding and using rollers or hot curlers can damage and break hair, and running hair picks through tight curls can scar hair follicles. In most instances hair grows back normally if the source of the problem is removed, but severe damage to the hair or scalp sometimes causes permanent bald patches.

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glad that anytime may hair falls back, not so afraid that it will grow again...
understanding hair loss