Baldness Can Be Treated

Get to Know our Hair

Our hair is an important part of who we are. Everyone is born with about 100,000 hair follicles in his/her scalp. Hair is composed of a shaft, which rises outside the skin, and a root inside the skin. The root is enclosed in a sac-like structure called the hair follicle, which is responsible for hair growth.

A healthy follicle produces a strong, thick and colored hair. Hair grows at a rate of about ½ inch per month. The life cycle of the healthy follicle repeatedly goes through two main phases throughout its life.

a growing phase, followed by a resting phase after which the follicle sheds its hair and produces a new hair in its place. It is normal to shed 50 to 100 hairs in each day.

What is Baldness?

For those who wonder why this happens, it all starts with the genes. Over 90 % of men's hair loss is caused by inherited genes and by the presence of androgen (the male sex hormone).

Men who experience hereditary hair loss have an increasing number of damaged hairs which grow thinner and their growth cycles are shorter, until eventually no hair is produced.

As more hairs become thinner and with more frequent shedding the person appears balder. Women may also show baldness but it is usually milder with only diffuse thinning of hairs.

Baldness can be treated

Hair loss affects men both physically and psychologically. Severe hair loss evokes not only cosmetic concerns but also feelings of vulnerability and loss of self-confidence. Fortunately, baldness is not a helpless situation, there are ways to control hair loss as:

• Treatment with drugs that reduce the effect of male sex hormone to be applied on the scalp, however they may decrease sexual desire and may cause difficulty in erection.
• The most promising treatment for baldness are drugs that are applied to the scalp to increase the blood supply of the hair, thus improving hair nutrition, stimulating hair growth, and reducing hair loss.
• Hair transplant is another option for treatment. It is used when other methods fail, probably due to delayed onset of the treatment.