Hair Loss

I was sitting on my couch over breaking watching football and basketball and I noticed the hairlines of some of the players and the people in some commercials. Everyone knows it quite common for your hairline to recede when you get older and you can tell when it is receding by the high hairline and the indents on the top of the head. I was thinking, are there any other factors that could possibility cause your hairline to recede besides age. Do certain treatments cause your hair too thin out, is hair loss genetic, is it due to chance and it is just a matter of time.

Receding hair is due to hair lose commonly experienced by men more than women and usually occurs around your mid-30’s but can happen as early as your early 20’s. You will begin to notice a loss of hair over your temples that causes a widow peak on your forehead, and eventually form a bald spot on your head. This article breakdown the process of hair loss and the numerous causes it originates from, including hormones, genetics, ag
e, and stress. A sex hormone called DHT (dihydrotestosterone) found in men is rreceding-hairline-haircut-and-hairstyle-800x1024
esponsible sexual characteristics during puberty is a direct causes of hair loss in some men. When it continues to increase after puberty it can build up around hair follicles and it limits them from growing because it restrains them from receiving blow flow and it causes hair to fall out. Genes are another cause of receding hairlines. Scientist found that the gene AR
(androgen receptor) that is passed down from a boy’s father can cause hair loss based on the strength of the gene, it can start to show as early as a boy’s teenage years. Age is obviously a factor in hair loss with 65 percent of men showing signs of hair loss in their later years and 25 percent of them show signs of loss around 30 according to the National Institute of Health.

A study done by doctor Keith D. Kaufman surveyed a group of male patients ages 18 to 41 that experienced pattern hair loss. Two 1-year trials were observed while one group of men received an oral hair loss supplement while the other group was a blinded trial. The 1553 men who received the oral supplement were discovered to have shown improvement after every year while the placebo trail of 1215 men continued to result in loss. The oral treatment did not only slow down the hair loss, it also improved the quality of their hair while increasing the growth. The test was randomized among the men and the age at which they began to notice hair loss was divide between the supplement and placebo as well as U.S. and internationally. Another statistic that was shown was in every category more than 70 percent of the men had a family history of hair loss. Photographs of every patient were captured to record their progress and in this study and photo that shows a man’s baseline photo with a bald spot on his head was completely gone after 24 months of receiving the oral treatment. The oral treatment method that was used was to counteract the process of DHT, which they said was the main contributing factor in these men.

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In conclusion, after reviewing the study it would be interesting to see how patient’s hair loss reacted to this supplement who did not suffer from DHT. Would that cancel out the process of getting rid of the DHT and go straight to increasing the hair growth? Since hair loss is so common among men there are many store bought products that can be used, but there were also teenagers in that study so would they just have to wait to use it or take a different approach? What is the approach you take if you carry the AR gene, can that be cured?

 

Sources

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Kozlovkf. “Receding Hairline in Men & Teenagers – Causes, Meaning, Signs of Receded Hairline (Genetics, DHT, Medications, Stress and Age).” Hair Care. 2013. Accessed November 30, 2016.
Kaufman, Keith D., Dr. Finasteride in the Treatment of Men with Androgenetic AlopeciaScienceDirect. N.p., 30 Nov. 2016. Web. Oct. 1998.

7 thoughts on “Hair Loss

  1. Grace Anne Walker

    Both my grandpa and my father are bald so naturally my brother was always concerned of his hair loss and how it would affect him. Your blog was very informative about hair loss and the common trends for it in men. Something that you can add would be if women’s hair thinning has the same affect and is passed down from mothers. I liked your graphics in the blog because they helped back up your claim. Here are some tips to stop hair loss! http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Hair-Loss-Naturally

  2. Tyler Mitchell Azar

    Very informative blog! I had never given much thought to what causes hair loss and this got me thinking about it much more. I would be curious to see if there’s any truth to the idea that baldness comes from your grandfather and skips a generation, or if that’s just an old wives’ tale. Perhaps that would be a good idea for a subsequent blog. I also think the graphic you used in the middle of your post was helpful in visualizing the results of the study. All in all, great post

  3. Mya Legend Avant

    This post is pretty interesting I never really thought of hair loss being anything than a result of aging. I think my belief just goes to show how logical fallacies can eat to false information. I believed that hair loss was a result of age because everyone says it is. Also I saw a correlation with hair loss and age and due to conformation bais I wanted to believe that this proved age caused hair loss. However as Andrew explained in one of his lecture just because two thing have a correlation does not mean that one causes the other. Furthermore I wonder if there has been a study similar to this about grey hair. I was told all my life that grey hair was from stress, but I wonder if the is the truth or not. Perhaps that is something to explore; if it turns out that the supplements could increase hair growth does that mean that there might be something to get rid of grey hairs. Finally I wonder is the studies done were double blind. It could be that if the scienctist who admistered the supplements to the patients knew which were the real ones and which were the placebos, the result of the study could have been skewed. It would help if there were a meta-analysis for this because that would suggest that there are multiple lines of evidence that point toward the results of this study being accurate; further making it unlikely that this study suffers from the Texas sharpshooter problem or the file drawer problem.

    1. Mya Legend Avant

      This post is pretty interesting I never really thought of hair loss being anything than a result of aging. I think my belief just goes to show how logical fallacies can lead to false information. I believed that hair loss was a result of age because everyone says it is. Also I saw a correlation with hair loss and age and due to conformation bais I wanted to believe that this proved age caused hair loss. However as Andrew explained in one of his lecture just because two thing have a correlation does not mean that one causes the other. Furthermore I wonder if there has been a study similar to this about grey hair. I was told all my life that grey hair was from stress, but I wonder if this is the truth or not. Perhaps that is something to explore; if it turns out that the supplements could increase hair growth does that mean that there might be something to get rid of grey hairs. Finally, I wonder is the studies done were double blind. It could be that if the scienctist who admistered the supplements to the patients knew which were the real ones and which were the placebos, the result of the study could have been skewed. It would help if there were a meta-analysis for this because that would suggest that there are multiple lines of evidence that point toward the results of this study being accurate; further making it unlikely that this study suffers from the Texas sharpshooter problem or the file drawer problem.

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