Sat 26 Jan 2008
There are many factors that contribute to hair loss, hormones, heredity, stress, illness, diet, and poor hair care can all help to cause hair loss. Diet, stress, and illness are the temporary conditions and once you either remove the stress or cure the illness, change the diet, things should in most cases go back to normal.
Hormones and heredity are a much more different matter. Heredity is a condition that is irreversible. Your parents pass certain physical traits along to there children and hair loss can often be one of these. With hormones, it is completely different and they will have effect people differently.
With males, testosterone is produced in abundance. There are enzymes that alter testosterone, this in turn produces something called DHT. DHT is known to be present in the blood and also it can cause other conditions, the shrinking of the hair follicles is one of these. If a hair follicle shrinks, enough it will be unable to grow or produce new hair. With the old hair dying constantly falling, it will not be replaced as is normally the case.
In women, a hormone imbalance can cause hair loss. Childbirth, pregnancy, and menopause can all lead to significant changes in the levels of hormones in the body, leading to both mental and physical effects. You can also find that during this time these changes can cause temporary or permanent loss of hair.
There have been hair loss and hair re growth products around for centuries. In the ancient times, they used a variety of oil based and herbal remedies that had ranging degrees of effectiveness.
The modern medical era has primarily focused on ways to stimulate or re open the non-functioning hair follicles, so that normal growth can take place. A number of products are now available to help with this, some you may get over the counter while others you will need a prescription.
There is one ingredient in particular that many hair loss products include and that is minoxidil. It has been shown in research studies that this helps about 80% of the time to slow hair loss and in some actually helps to re grow hair. The most well known of these would have to be Rogaine.
One product that contains minoxidil and has been shown in studies to work well is Provillus. This has an added ingredient, Azelaic Acid, which helps to accelerate the repair of hair follicles. You should consider these products to be more long term and it may take 3-6 months in order to see noticeable results.