It is believed that 95% of the people who lose their hair, suffer from Andro Genetic Alopecia (AGA), also known as Male or Female Pattern Hair Loss. Pattern Hairloss is known to affect over 40 million American Men and 20 million American Women. Let’s discuss some of myths and facts about this kind of hair loss.
In order to choose an effective solution for your hair loss problem, you need to better understand the type of hairloss you have and the cause of it. It is important to not be lead into buying multitudes of products based on myths and improper understanding of your hair loss situation.
Because hair loss is such a widely experienced but also widely misunderstood phenomenon, it is important to understand what are myths and what are actual facts. It is important to have the facts in order to discern the appropriate treatment regimen for the actual kind of hair loss one is experiencing.
Table of Contents
MYTH: Poor nutrition causes pattern hairloss
While poor nutrition does affect one’s general health, it does not cause pattern hair loss in and of itself. If this were true, then almost every homeless person would be bald. Instead, many poorly nourished people, whether homeless or not, have full heads of hair, despite years of such things as drug addiction, alcohol abuse and horrendously poor diets. And at the same time, while poor diet does not directly cause pattern hair loss, there are some foods which may affect the health of one’s hair and in an indirect way, contribute to already existing pattern hairloss.
FACT: There are 3 main causes of common pattern hair loss
Common pattern hair loss, in Men and Women, is generally caused by three things: genetics (heredity), circulating hormones (ie: DHT), and age.
Genetics
Genetics gives us genes that cause the scalp hair follicles to be susceptible to the harmful affects of DHT.
Hormones
Circulating hormones, such as DHT, then trigger the onset and progression of the disease.
Age
Finally, age causes the hair disorder to manifest. In other words, ten year old children, even those whose scalp hair follicles are genetically pre-dispositioned to be affected by pattern hair loss later on in life, do not usually start to lose their hair until they reach their 20s, 30s or beyond.
FACT: Other types of hair loss caused by variety of factors
Other types of hairloss can be caused by a variety of factors, individually or collectively. These other factors include the side affects of medications, health situations, stress and trauma, diet and nutrition and environmental toxins and pollutants. You can read more detailed information on various types of hairloss and causes of hairloss.
MYTH: Poor blood circulation in the scalp causes hairloss
Research has shown conclusively that scalp blood circulation remains intact, regardless of the vitality of the underlying scalp hair follicles. The problem of pattern hair loss is affected by circulating hormones, primarily Testosterone which is converted into DHT, not by circulating blood.
Nevertheless, many purported hair loss treatment remedies claim to address the problem and further even claim to reverse hair loss by increasing the flow of blood to the scalp and hair follicles. Minoxidil is an ingredient in quite a few “hair loss solutions” marketed today which makes this very claim. Minoxidil actually was developed as a drug for patients with high blood pressure. When applied topically to the scalp in a liquid form in these hairloss treatment products, it tends to simply dilate blood vessels in the scalp. But it generally does not affect circulating DHT hormones in the body, which find their way to those same scalp hair follicles and continue to cause pattern hairloss.
MYTH: Wearing hats too often causes hairloss
Hats do not cause hair loss. Rather, hats are often worn to cosmetically cover noticeable hair loss. The fact is, the most common form of hair loss which affects both Men and Women, which is pattern hairloss , has been demonstrated to result from a genetic predisposition or susceptibility of certain hair follicles within a well-defined pattern on the scalp to specific hormonal triggers. Once the process of losing one’s hair starts, individual hair strands start to grow thinner. This disease is called pattern hair loss, because hair within the affected scalp areas progressively thins to the point of baldness in a particular pattern, whereas hair outside the pattern remains largely unaffected.
