HAIR LOSS

. Saturday, September 20, 2008
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Baldness, like blue eyes, is for many a result of hereditary potluck. It’s a condition that affects about half of all men by age 50, says David A. Whiting, M.D., medical director of Baylor University Hair Research and Treatment Center and a clinical professor of dermatology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

The strands we leave behind in our hairbrushes are proof that what’s hair today may be gone tomorrow. The average person loses 50 to 100 hairs a day. But virtually all of that grows back. Since we have approximately 100,000 hairs, losing 100 here and there doesn’t amount to much anyway. But once a man passes his teens, the male hormone testosterone begins to affect his hair follicles. If he is genetically predisposed to baldness (and some men keep their hair forever), he will lose more hair than he replaces. The result is a condition called androgenetic alopecia, or simply male-pattern baldness.

Heading back baldness

For centuries men have sought remedies for lost hair, and always they’ve been disappointed.

As early as 4000 B.C., balding Egyptians were salving their scalps with exotic fruits, oils and animal parts in vain attempts to grow hair. But man’s luck changed in the 1970s when doctors discovered that minoxidil, an oral medication for high blood pressure, also makes hair grow––on the head, arms, legs and face. Scientists lost no time in reformulating minoxidil as a liquid and testing it as a remedy for baldness.

“Minoxidil works by pushing hair back into anagen, whichis the growth phase of hair,” Dr. Whiting says. (The resting phase is called telogen.) “In the course, some hairs will grow longer and thicker and become more pigmented.”

However, while minoxidil works for some men, it won’t work for everyone, Dr. Whiting warns. “I tell my patients that it will produce hair growth you can see in one-third of the cases, it will produce some fuzz in about one-third.” What’s more, he adds, the benefits are temporary: When you stop using minoxidil, your hard-earned hair will disappear in just a few months.

Minoxidil seems to work best for young men who have just started to lose hair. And it works much better on balding pates than on receding hairlines. But if you’re already bald, it’s probably too late. “This stuff is a much better preventive than restorative,” concludes Dr. Whiting.

Plugs instead of rugs

Apart from donning a wig, the fastest way to put hair on the roof is with a hair transplant. Assuming you still have an ample supply of your natural hair around the fringes, a trained surgeon can move it around to help cover your bald spots, says Karen Burke, M.D., Ph.D., a dermatologic surgeon and clinical member of Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, California.

Hair transplants have come a long way in recent years. In the past, large tufts of hair were taken from the back of the head and grafted to the bald area, leaving the patient with an artificial “doll’s hair” look. But today, with new microsurgical techniques––using minigrafts as small as a single hair––doctors can give you a much more natural-looking hairline.

Most transplants require two to four office visits of about 3 hours each. It depends on how much transplanting you need. Some doctors will suggest using minoxidil to help the transplants start growing.

Unlike your old, undependable hair, transplanted hair can last forever, Dr. Burke says. “A completed transplant looks fabulous,” she adds. “Unless you’re looking at it from very close, it really can look perfect.”

BALD IS BEAUTIFUL

Some men worry that thinning hair represents lost youth and vitality. But there are a few guys––some 25,000, at least––who firmly believe that less is quite a bit more.“The good Lord created only a few perfect heads, and the rest he covered with hair,” says John T. Capps III, founder of Bald-Headed Men of America (BHMA), an international group that dedicates itself to helping the hairless.BHMA got its start in 1972 when John lost a sales job because, the boss said, he looked too old. “I figured if it happened to me, it possibly happened to a lot of others.” So John began asking his bald friends if they’d like to band together for mutual support.

They said yes, and today BHMA has members in 50 stats and 39 foreign countries.Not surprisingly, the group is headquartered at 102 Bald Drive in Morehead City, North Carolina. Members attend an annual convention where they participate in self-help sessions and regale themselves with bald jokes. On a more serious note, they visit hospitals and pass out “Bald is Beautiful” buttons, T-shirts and balloons to children who have lost their hair during cancer treatments. John acknowledges that these are a lot of men in the world who are embarrassed to the bald. “There’s a billion-dollar industry out there, and it plays on the vanity of those individuals.” But the men in BHMA, he says, “don’t believe in drugs, plugs or rugs.”

Covering up

While drugs and surgery both are effective, there are easier ways to change your looks and improve your (remaining) locks, says Maurice Stein, owner of Cinema Secrets in Burbank, California, and make up artist to the stars for more than 30 years. Some suggestions:

Cut it short. Short hair can make bald spots less obvious. “The shorter you wear it, the fuller the hair will look,” says Stein.

Paint your pate. Have you ever noticed how movie stars, even those you know are older than you are, still have young-looking heads of hair? “It’s scalp makeup,” Stein says, “and it comes in black, dark brown, medium brown, light brown and gray. You just pat it right on the scalp, and it will dry in 15 to 20 seconds.”

Get a wig. Shop around and find yourself a quality wig, preferably made from artificial fibers, because they are more durable, Stein says. “You can take it off at the end of the day, dip it in the sink, rinse it out and hang it up to dry.” While you’re at it, try some different styles, he adds. “Get several of them, and don’t wear the same one every day. Treat it like a sports coat. I mean, all your sports coats aren’t tweeds, so why should you wear the same hair every day?”

Hand off. “The less you fiddle around with your hair, the better,” says Dr. Whiting. “I tell people to stop brushing and combing it all the time––the idea of 100 brush strokes a day is ridiculous,” he says. Such over attention can only result in quicker hair loss.

TREATMENT BREAKTHROUGH

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP Today, even the miracle drug minoxidil often can’t restore hair to anything resembling its former glory. But tomorrow, things could be different.Eager to share the bonanza of profits now being enjoyed by Upjohn, other companies are competing to be next with a baldness breakthrough. Some promising research is under way.One drug, called Tricomin, was tested at the University of Rheims, France. Doctors aren’t sure how it made bald men start to grow hair, but they speculate that Tricomin may cause new blood vessels to form in the scalp and boost the pate’s production of collagen, a natural protein that keeps skin healthy and supple.

Some researches say the future of baldness treatment lies in deactivating or blocking male hormones in the scalp that cause follicles (from which hairs sprout) to shut down. Theoretically, any drug that blocks these hormones could control hair loss, and a number have been tried. The trick is to isolate their effects on the scalp without unsafely throwing off the hormonal balance elsewhere in the body.Researchers at the University of Miami have made some exciting breakthroughs. According to Marty Sawaya, M.D., assistant professor of dermatology and leader of the research, we may see successful hormone treatments for hair loss by the year 2002.And last, a number of Canadian tests are looking at electrical stimulation as a way to prevent or treat hair loss.

The treatment consists of sitting under a helmet-like hood that painlessly bathes the head with a mild current. “The method sounds quackish, but the research being done is legitimate,” says Harry Roth, M.D., clinical professor of dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco.Whether you’re thinking of investing in pharmaceutical stocks or a new hairbrush, you might want to exercise caution, says David A. Whiting, M.D, of Baylor University. Although a new miracle baldness treatment may be on the horizon, it called be some years before anything significantly better than minoxidil comes along, he says.

4 Comments:

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Rasneel kaur said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
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