Hairfall- Symptoms ,Causes treatment and Prevention
Hair is such one thing which tends to change the appearance of one's personality. Although Hair on the body and head are for the protection. The hair on the head protects us from the harsh weather, sunlight and injury. Hair on the body protects the outer covering of the body from dirt, sweat, injury and infections. Hair on the genital parts protects us from STI and infections.
These hair get their nutrition from the blood supply. That clearly means , the growth of the hair depends upon the nutrition in the blood.
Types of Hairfall
As told earlier, Hair growth is majorly depended on nutrition of the body. Commonly people tend to loose around 45-65 hair strands per day, which is very normal and mostly people don't notice this.
But if it more than 100 strands , we term it as “Hairfall” and at this stage one starts noticing. You can see hair in your comb. This happens due to stress or poor diet.
If this exceeds to 150-200 or more than this you suffer from “excessive Hairfall”. This is visible in your comb, bathroom, pillow, bed, and floor. This happens mostly due to nutritional deficiency or sudden change in lifestyle, climate, environment.
Loosing more than 250 hair strands per day comes under “ Severe Hairfall “ which mostly happens due to underlying illness, disease, infection medications. This condition not only causes physical trauma but mental and emotional too.
Now we will discuss what are the types/ patterns of Hairloss.
- Thinning of hair from top- in this is the most common type of hair loss. It is mostly due to aging affect. In males the hairline on the forehead receds whereas in female their partition becomes broad.
- Circular bald spots( alopecia erecta)- one may loose hair in a circular pattern from the scalp, eyebrow, beard or skin. This can be due to genetics, infection , medicinal side-effects or some unknown causes.
- Severe Hairfall- this happens with almost everyone atleast ones in a life time. And it is majorly due to nutritional deficiencies.
- Full body Hairloss- this is caused due to high grade medicines or chemical procedures like chemotherapy in case of cancer.
Causes of Hairfall
The causes of Hairfall can be more than 100. But being precise, we have mentioned some important causes of Hairfall below.
Let's check them.
- Aging - this is one of the unavoidable cause of thinning of hairline and loosing hair.
Re-growth is not possible, but nowadays people have options like hair transplant.
- Hair Treatments - now a days hair treatments are being done in beauty salons, instead of hospitals/ hair clinics . And having frizzy, rough, natural hair is considered “problem” People especially the females are taking keratin treatment, smoothening and straightening hair, where massive amount of harsh chemicals are used. This not only causes severe hair loss but it damages the hair completely.
Re-growth is possible in this case but one has to stop the hair treatments and have a proper course of medicine.
- Medications - some medicine can have bad impact on the scalp and hair growth. We also cannot ignore the side effects of few medicines. Sometimes the Hairloss is patchy ( alopecia) and sometimes it is overall from the whole body.
But in majority cases re-growth is possible by ammelorting the effects of medicine.
- Auto- immune disease- Alopecia erecta happens when body's own immune system attacks the hair follicles.
Although re-growth is possible in this case.
- Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy- cancer treatment including chemotherapy causes the loss of hair from the whole body.
Re-growth although starts happening with few months of the therapy sessions.
- Climate - sudden change in environment, temperature, climate , or water can cause Hairfall
Re-growth usually starts ones the body adapts itself with the environment.
- Hormonal Imbalance - this is nowadays more common cause of Hairfall. The imbalance in specially hormones like estrogen, progesterone, insulin , and Thyroid is affecting the growth of hair. In many females unwanted hair on body and face is also a matter of concern, whereas few males are seen to have Hairloss from chest, face and genitalia due to increase in estrogen hormone.
Re-growth is possible through hormonal therapy.
- Sexually Transmitted Disease - STD like gonorheaa, syphilis, genital herpes etc also cause patchy Hairloss from the scalp, eyebrows ,beard, genitalia etc. This happens mostly when the Sexually Transmitted infection is left untreated or not completely treated.
Re-growth is possible after the complete treatment of STI
- Nutritional deficiencies - the biggest cause of Hairfall is this. The lack of nutrients like biotin, zinc, iron, protein and calcium can lead to Hairfall from excessive to severe.
Whenever,a person notices Hairfall, the first thing which he should do is to improve diet and get the Nutritional deficiency test done.
Re growth is possibly improving diet.
- Infection - infections like Psoriasis, eczema, dermatitis, dandruff etc can also cause Hairloss.
Re-growth - Although if this is not treated timely the complete reversal of hair is not possible especially when infection happens in adults.
- Poor hair care- If one is not taking a proper care of hair and scalp, it can be a leading ause of Hairfall. Timely massaging scalp, oiling , combing and washing are important.
Along with this too much use of heating objects or washing with too hot or cold cold water can also cause Hairfall.
Re-growth is possible by maintain a healthy haircare routine.
- Hairstyles - tieing the hair too tightly or keeping it too loose can also cause Hairfall. Too loose hair tend to absorb more dirt and moisture whereas too tightly tied hair exerts pressure on the hair follicles and makes them weak.
Re-growth is possible by changing hairstyle
Treatment of Hairfall
The treatment depends on the cause of Hairfall.
Sometimes, a person does not work on the maintaining cause of Hairloss and takes medicine after medicine noticing no significant change . So one must remove the maintaining cause first.
You can do the following things :
- Diagnosis - it's better to check on the nutritional deficiencies through blood serum test, pull test, scalp biopsy and light microscopy.
Once the cause is clear then it's easy to treat Hairfall.
- Correcting nutritional deficiencies - one can take biotin, calcium ,zinc supplements to improve the deficiency.
- Medications - medicines like minoxidil , finasteriode etc can be given by your dermat depending on the cause.
- Hair transplant - this is the ultimate option when you don't have the re-growth chances. This mostly happens in adults when the hair follicles are too much damaged or its the genetic cause.
- Natural ways to treat Hairfall -
Firstly, we should go with natural ways / home remedies to treat Hairfall. In this you may follow them:
- Regular washing, massaging and oiling scalp
- Using oil like coconut and olive oil
- Including amla( gooseberry), carrot , beetroot in diet
- Vitamin C intake is equally important and one should not ignore this.
- Curry leaves also have the ability to reduce Hairfall.
- Not using heating instrument.
- Avoid hair treatments like keratin, smoothening or straightening of hair.
- Avoid colouring or bleaching your hair.
- Avoid too tight hairstyle
- Avoid keeping hair loose all the time.
Hair Patch- Now days most of the people are using hair patches. The hair patch is like a piece of cloth which has hair and on the inner glue is there. This patch is fixed on the already cleaned and shaved scalp. This is kind of wig but very different from hair wig.
The hair wigs have the tendency to fall out and make people uncomfortable. Whereas the patches does not fall. They are just like the real hair. It is easy to clean and wash them . Although a regular servicing in a month is required to maintain the quality of the hair patch.
Most of the people are using hair patches these days as they are chemical free and does not have any side effects like in hair transplant.
Hair is equally important as your health . And Hairfall is the first sign of most of the deficiencies and hormonal problems. It is said that whenever our body becomes ill or tend to become ill the first sign to notice is the Hairfall.
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