What Causes Hair Loss?
Thursday, November 29th, 2007A number of things can cause excessive hair loss. For example, about 3 or 4 months after an illness or a major surgery, you may suddenly lose a large amount of hair. This hair loss is related to the stress of the illness and is temporary.
Hormonal problems may cause hair loss. If your thyroid gland is overactive or underactive, your hair may fall out. This hair loss usually can be helped by treatment thyroid disease. Hair loss may occur if male or female hormones, known as androgens and estrogens, are out of balance. Correcting the hormone imbalance may stop your hair loss.
Many women notice hair loss about 3 months after they’ve had a baby. This loss is also related to hormones. During pregnancy, high levels of certain hormones cause the body to keep hair that would normally fall out. When the hormones return to pre-pregnancy levels, that hair falls out and the normal cycle of growth and loss starts again.Some medicines can cause hair loss. This type of hair loss improves when you stop taking the medicine. Medicines that can cause hair loss include blood thinners (also called anticoagulants), medicines used for gout, medicines used in chemotherapy to treat cancer, vitamin A (if too much is taken), birth control pills and antidepressants.
Certain infections can cause hair loss. Fungal infections of the scalp can cause hair loss in children. The infection is easily treated with antifungal medicines.
Finally, hair loss may occur as part of an underlying disease, such as lupus or diabetes. Since hair loss may be an early sign of a disease, it is important to find the cause so that it can be treated.Since hormones both stimulate hair growth and cause hair loss, hormonal changes by far have the biggest impact on hair loss. These can affect both men and women in the following ways:
This is the most common cause of thinning and affects both men and women. Men generally have hair loss concentrated in a specific pattern from the front through to the crown. Women tend to have thinning throughout their head without being in any specific pattern. This type of hair loss is caused by the androgen DHT, or Dihydrotestosterone. Since everyone has DHT that is produced by their bodies and only some people suffer from hair loss there has to be another factor involved. This other factor is having follicles that have a greater number of Androgen receptors for the DHT to attach to. This is the component that is inherited through the genes. To date the most effective preventative treatments are anti androgens, drugs that prevent the creation of DHT. In the future gene therapy will one day be able to alter the genes to prevent the follicles from being affected by DHT.

