Hair Loss Medicine

The principal methods of non-surgical hair replacement today involve the use of hair systems and hair loss concealers. Various types of hair systems such as full wigs, hairpieces, toupees, hair extensions and weaves can look very authentic and have been used for ages to cover bald areas and typically with good rates of success. However, their main weaknesses are high maintenance expense and, in many situations, the discomfort of wearing them. Hair loss concealers on the other hand have been around for a shorter period of time and have often been looked down upon for being incapable of withstanding adverse external conditions such as heavy rain or wind and for appearing unnatural. This is no longer true as many of them have greatly improved recently, both in terms of their authentic appearance and their resistance.

There are three basic types of hair loss concealers: those that simply paint your scalp to match your hair colour, then there are hair thickeners that thicken your hair by coating and penetrating the hair and trapping volume-building proteins and moisture inside the hair shaft and, lastly, there are concealers that use microfibers that cling to your hair like branches to the trunk of a tree, increasing the hair density. Some products combine two of the aforementioned approaches and paint your scalp and thicken your hair at the same time. All of these products come in various forms, such as a powder, cream or a spray. Hair loss concealers do not contain any active ingredients that would combat hair loss but some of them allow you to continue with a topical hair loss treatment such as minoxidil.

Microfibre-based hair loss concealers can be typically applied in as little as 30 seconds versus a minimum of five minutes needed for hair thickeners. However, microfibres are less water-resistant and it is quite difficult to apply them precisely and, therefore, they are not too good for creating an authentic-looking frontal hairline. Their greatest advantage is that they are unrecognisable in your hair, even with a very close inspection. Hair thickeners, mainly those that also colour your scalp, are extremely water-resistant and excellent for frontal hairlines but they take longer to apply. They cover your scalp with a layer of colouring substance, which makes it difficult to effectively apply any topical hair loss treatment. Their greatest weakness in comparison to microfibres is that in direct sunlight it can become visible to the sharp eye that the scalp has been painted.

The most commonly criticised weakness of all chemical substances used for concealing hair loss is the limited choice of available shades. Some hair loss sufferers use a combination of two products simultaneously in order to overcome the weaknesses of individual products and to achieve the most authentic shade and appearance. Most often a combination of a hair thickener and a microfibrous concealer is used. The results of such combinations are usually excellent. If you want to try any such combinations, make sure that you apply the scalp-painting, hair loss thickener first and then use the microfibres to mask the remaining imperfections. There are many products in all three categories of hair loss concealers and you may need to test several of them in order to identify those that best match you hair colour and style of application.

Gray hair at a young age can have various causes, such as vitiligo, thyroid imbalance, vitamin B deficiency, constant and extreme stress, alopecia areata, bad diet, etc. but its greatest trigger is genetics, causing the premature death of pigment-producing cells in hair follicles. When it comes to treating gray hair caused by other non-hereditary health conditions then the focus should be on tackling the primary reason. In treating genetically determined, premature gray hair, any effective therapy should involve interference with our genes. However, at the moment, no such treatment exists that can halt or reverse the dying of pigment-producing cells called melanocytes. There are some commercial products out there, though, containing vitamins, minerals and a Chinese herb Fo-Ti that are said to stop and reverse gray hair but the only evidence supporting the claims made by their marketers refers back to the old Chinese legend of an old villager, Mr He, from one thousand years ago. Vitamins B, namely PABA and folic acid, have been observed to stop graying in people with diets poor in vitamins B but they cannot help reverse gray hair in individuals suffering from chronic vitamin B deficiency, let alone in cases of genetically-determined gray hair.

Therefore, the only available and effective treatment option for premature and age-related gray hair is to cover it. There are two principal colouring options for covering gray hair, which include hair dyes and progressive hair colorants. Hair dyes can be temporary, semi-permanent, demi-permanent or permanent, depending on the durability of their colouring effects. The ability of the pigment molecules to penetrate into the hair shaft determines the stability of the hair colour. Each hair consists of at least two layers, the cuticle, which is an outer protective layer, and the cortex, which is hidden under the cuticle. Permanent hair dye is, as its name says, the most stable of the hair colouring options and the most effective method of covering gray hair amongst hair dyes, as its large molecules get trapped in the cortex of the hair and resist being washed out but it is also the most drastic method of dyeing hair. Hair dyes are popular, especially with female consumers. Men usually look for more subtle options of covering their gray hair as for a man dyeing hair is socially less acceptable. Progressive hair colorants, with their slow and gradual mode of action, seem to be the right product for men.

The marketing of progressive hair colorants is typically targeted at male customers but they can be also successfully used by women. These products colour hair gradually and unnoticeably and only affect your gray hair. They can be applied selectively to cover only certain areas so that you can leave some area untreated to look more natural. Progressive hair colorants are easy to apply, no plastic gloves are required to apply them, and you just have to spread them on your white areas. Their mode of action consists of the chemical reaction involving one or two substances from the colorant, which in the presence of atmospheric oxygen produce synthetic pigment on the surface as well as in the pores and in the cortex of your hair. As the substance is drying in the air, the chemical reaction begins and lasts until the next shampoo wash. Hence, the longer the substance stays in your hair the more effective it is. The downside is that progressive hair colorants have to be reapplied relatively frequently, which makes them more expensive compared with the majority of traditional hair dyes. Progressive hair colorants are either metallic based or use organic chemicals.

The sporadic controversy surrounding these products results from a wrong understanding of their mechanism of action and the purpose they were designed for. They were not meant to cover all your gray hair with a single application. For people with more than 50% of their hair already white, it is not possible to achieve full white hair coverage with these products, no matter how often they apply them. They were designed for individuals who wish to reduce the amount of their gray and would like to do it discretely and unnoticeably. Frequent shampooing reduces the effectiveness of these products as does exposure to direct sun.

There is no single natural hair loss treatment that sells as much as some of the best selling hair loss medicines such as Propecia or Rogaine. However, due to the sheer variety of natural hair loss products, their combined sales exceed the sales of medicinal treatments. The key to the growing popularity of natural products is a general belief that they are as effective as medicinal treatments but less expensive and do not carry the risk of causing negative side-effects. However, none of these claims seem be true.

There are many herbal extracts out there that are assumed to treat hereditary pattern baldness in humans but none of them has ever been clinically proven and independently verified in a statistically significant sample. Hence, no matter what the marketers of the natural hair loss treatments say about the superior effectiveness of their products, you should take their word with a grain of salt. That does not automatically imply, though, that all natural hair loss products are useless. Herbal treatments are a mix of numerous components that are thought to promote hair growth and they may work for some people but their mechanism of action is a mystery and their results usually vary significantly between patients.

Herbal supplements have one weakness and that is that they have not been subjected to any rigorous clinical testing regarding their safety, either alone or in interactions with other substances, as medicinal drugs. Most herbal extracts and naturally-derived substances are only tested on rodents not on humans. In addition, increasing numbers of herbs and herbal products are becoming responsible for bad allergic reactions. Many marketers tell you that saw palmetto is as effective as finasteride in treating hereditary hair loss and that it can be used as its natural substitute. Its mode of action is to reduce the dihydrotestosterone (DHT) levels in your scalp, the same job as finasteride does. However, saw palmetto is supposed to have no negative side-effects. Saw palmetto simply enjoys the best of both worlds; it is as effective as finasteride but as harmless as drinking mineral water. A quick internet search turned up the following list of side-effects experienced by saw palmetto users: stomach pains and diarrhoea, severe bleeding during saw palmetto use, difficulty with erections, testicular discomfort, decline in sexual desire, breast tenderness and enlargement, allergic reactions and a warning that saw palmetto extract is not recommended for women who are pregnant or breast-feeding because of its possible hormonal activity. This shows that herbal substances are not so harmless after all.

The price comparison does not speak in favor of natural hair loss products, either. They happen to be some of the most outrageously-overpriced hair loss remedies on the market. Sure, it is not easy to beat the price of cheap generic minoxidil. But why should you pay ten times more for the same generic minoxidil just because it comes in a box with a few herbs and vitamins? Natural hair loss products usually come as a complete treatment, consisting of topical and oral applications and a shampoo. You are advised to use the entire therapy, as the individual components complement each other, which ensures very good profits for the manufacturer.

Hair loss can be caused by a variety of factors but heredity is the number one reason why men and women lose their mane. Hereditary hair loss in men and women has the same main cause, which is dihydrotestosterone (DHT) attacking our hair follicles. DHT is a metabolite of the male hormone testosterone but it is also present in the female body. Men and women lose their hair not because of increased levels of DHT in their bodies but due to the susceptibility of their follicles to DHT attacks, although the exact mechanism and reasons why certain hairs, mostly those on the top of the head, are more vulnerable to such attacks are not yet know.

The main difference between the male and female form of hereditary baldness is in its shape. The male form has a characteristic horseshoe pattern whereas the female form is usually a diffuse thinning across the entire scalp and is therefore less easily-recognised. The female form of hereditary hair loss is, in its form, practically indistinguishable from hair loss caused by various other factors. The second most common reason for a woman to lose her hair are hormonal imbalances during and after pregnancy or menopause. Such changes are typically of a temporary nature and so also is the hair loss, although post-menopausal hair loss is in most cases permanent.

When it comes to treating female hair loss there are some specifics. First, most women do not make very good candidates for hair transplantation due to their diffuse thinning pattern, which makes it impossible to identify the hair that will be resistant to future miniaturisation. Secondly, finasteride, which is one of the only two FDA-approved hair loss treatments available today, cannot be used on women and neither can dutasteride, which is its closest relative. Rogaine (generic name minoxidil) is the second FDA-approved hair loss treatment and its approved concentration for women is only 2% versus 5% for men. However, many doctors recommend their female patients use 5% minoxidil formulations such as Rogaine foam. Aminexil is a molecule similar to minoxidil and it is often recommended to women who are pregnant or breastfeeding as a safer option than minoxidil.

Although some anti-androgens such as finasteride or dutasteride cannot be prescribed to women, there are other anti-androgen medications that can be effectively used to treat female pattern baldness. Spironolactone (trade name Aldactone) and cyproterone acetate (used in contraceptives such as Ginette 35, Diane 35 and Diane 50) are anti-androgens most commonly used to treat female pattern hair loss.

Another therapy with seemingly satisfactory rates of success is topical estrogen solutions such as Crinohermal, which use a female hormone, estradiol, as their main active ingredient. Estradiol inhibits the conversion of testosterone into follicle-harming DHT. Hormone replacement therapy is another hormonal treatment suitable for women at menopause, with estrogens and progesterone pills and creams being the most common forms of treatment. Estrogen levels in the body decline with time. As women enter the menopause, estrogen levels decline and hence more of the male hormone testosterone is then bioavailable to be converted into follicle-harming DHT.

This list of treatments for female pattern hair loss is not exhaustive, though. A number of other remedies exist that are often claimed to help promote hair growth in women, such as ketoconazole, fluridil, flutamide, alfatradiol, as well as numerous substances of natural origin. Despite the fact that there are female patients who will swear by some of these treatments, none of them has ever been sufficiently clinically tested, let alone approved by any major national health supervisory authority as a treatment for female hair loss and the claims of their guaranteed effectiveness should be taken with a grain of salt.