Hair Fall in Men-Fact or Fiction?
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Do you or a manyou love suffer from hair fall in men? Although our society generally accepts male baldness as a fact of life, many men who have thinning hair feel differently about it. Hair has come to signify strength and stamina and youth. Now this is not something that is talked about openly; it is more of a basic, common assumption that men have. But since male hair loss is far more prevalent than female hair loss, it is seen as a relatively minor condition, much like crows’ feet.
When we find out that we are losing hair, it’s extremely shocking and upsetting, and it can effect no only how we feel about ourselves but how we feel other people feel about us. So the first thing we want to do is change it. However, remember that just because you’re losing your hair does not mean you are old. Statistics show that a quarter of men who lose their hair from male pattern baldness (MPB) (which is 95% of hair fall in men) inherited it from their father or grandfather. And in fact, a quarter of MPB sufferers start to bald by the time they are 21. But most of them–50 percent–do by the time they’re 35 and 85% by the time they’re 50. So when it comes to hair fall in men, the general rule of thumb is that if you don’t lose your hair, YOU are the exception.
After overcoming the initial shock of hair fall discovery, you then jump right online because you realize that everything that’s in the drugstore is online. Plus there are loads of health food stores and review sites and information available, a veritable treasure trove of information about hair fall in men out there. You may even find that you want to go to your primary care physician for an exam just to make sure it’s not due to stress like a death or a layoff or anything traumatic like that, or perhaps even a hormonal imbalance. But typically, as I said before, it is just due to heredity.
As you should be able to tell by now, hair fall leads hair fall men to seek help from a ton of sources. But there is one thing you should keep in mind: no one is a duplicate. Each person has a different response to hair fall treatments. One may work for you and not do a thing for someone else. Some people are resistant; others are allergic. So your body’s response to each treatment may be different. The one common thread in all of this is that 95% of the time hair fall in men is hereditary.
And where does this heredity come from? What did you inherit? You were programmed with a genetic sensitivity to a hormone called DHT. What happens is that the brain actually sees this chemical as something that is harmful to the body just like if you would have an allergy to pollen. When your brain detects pollen in the air, it thinks you are being attacked by a harmful substance. To protect you, the brain secretes mucous, and then you feel sick–even though pollen is not making you sick. It is your own body making you feel sick.
Well, the same is true with hair fall in men. Your brain tells your body that this chemical, dihydrotestosterone, is toxic, when it’s not–you’re just sensitive to it. Thinking it is protecting you, your brain orders your hair follicles to shrink or close so that they will not come in contact with it anymore. The problem with that is that without a follicle you can grow no hair! And during the shrinking process, the hair starts to look unhealthy and fall out sooner.
So what’s going on here is two things. First, you’ve got hair that’s not staying in as long, so it’s shorter when it falls out. It’s thinner and more brittle when it falls out. And it’s duller. Second, you’ve got the fact that you’re losing hair more quickly. This is a continuous cycle until the bald spot or spots (depending on your male pattern baldness) to which you were predisposed are achieved. But the good news is that this hair fall is not irreversible.
The most common way to reverse hair fall in men is by blocking the DHT in the first place. That way your brain doesn’t tell your hair follicles to shrink. Minoxidil is an ingredient approved by the FDA to actually block DHT. In clinical studies it has proven as a single ingredient to reverse hair fall in 80 percent of it’s users.
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December 16th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
hair thinning for men…
Informative post about hair loss in woman, thanks for sharing your knowledge, I look forward to more about hair loss in woman….