Are you finding a lot of hair on your pillow and bed when you wake up in the morning? Take a good look at your hair brush or comb, do you see more than usual hair being stuck on it? Are you noticing that your hair is thinning out and you are beginning to go bald? If the answer is yes, are you terrified that you may be going bald?

The cold fact of dropping hair and the prospect of going bald can be very depressing to many men. Almost all men will experience some noticeable hair loss when they are in their 50s although for the unfortunate ones, they will even begin the balding process when they were much younger. It is estimated that about three in ten 30 year old men and one in two 50 year old male will have already developed rather extensive balding. 
 

There are many things that can cause your hair to fall out such as stress, anxiety, depression, pregnancy, certain illnesses and diseases, some types of medication, chemotherapy, certain vitamin and mineral deficiencies and so on, but the most common type of balding is androgenetic alopecia or what is commonly known as male pattern hair loss although some women can be affected too since this hair loss problem is not entirely in the male domain alone.

Male pattern hair loss is usually genetic and hereditary in nature. If your close or immediate family members have them, then you are very likely to have this hair loss gene programmed into your DNA blueprint as well. For most men with this condition, they will start dropping hair for as long 15 to 25 years before they are completely bald. For the unlucky ones, all it takes is merely 5 years or so to have a shiny hairless scalp.







 

In male pattern hair loss, hair usually starts to thin out at the at the temples and at the crown of the head. These two receding hair lines will spread and eventually the whole scalp will be bald. This typical pattern of receding hairline can be seen all around us with men having hair at the side and back of their heads, but having a shiny hairless scalp at the top of their crown.

​

In a healthy hair life cycle, a hair grows out from a follicle and stays there for around three years. Thereafter, it will then drop out and a new hair begins to grow from the same follicle. 

In male pattern baldness, it starts with some hair follicles beginning to shrink and getting smaller. As the follicles shrunk, new hair growth from the same follicles gets thinner and thinner than the previous ones. The new hair also falls out faster instead of the usual typical 3 year cycle. As the shrinking of the follicles continue, new hair can't grow out of it anymore and the follicles eventually close up completely, permanently inhibiting any more new hair to grow out from them.

​​

​The male hormone testosterone do play some part in male pattern baldness since the skin on the scalp convert testosterone into another unbounded hormone called dihydrotestosterone (DHT) and this affects the hair follicles negatively causing them to shrink and eventually sealing them up permanently. However not everbody's hair follicles react to DHT in the same way. Those with better genetic predisposition on hair cycles may have more DHT than other men but yet are able to keep their crowning glory. So it all largely boils down to your genes.

It is still unknown why DHT affects exclusively only the hair follicles on the scalp and not on the other parts of the body such as the hair follicles on the chest, genital area, back and legs. Apart from causing hair loss, DHT is also linked to benign prostatic hyperplasia (enlarged prostate) and prostate cancer.

​

To many men, becoming bald is a fact of life they have to accept it as part and parcel of the aging process whether they like it or not. Although no treatment is needed since losing one's hair is not a life threatening condition, many men are distressed by the condition and are seeking ways to reverse the hair loss and grow new hair mainly for aesthetic reasons.

As at of this moment, there are two medications that can combat hair loss and to grow new hair. The active ingredients are minoxidil and finasteride and they come in various brands such as Regaine, Propecia, Proscar and other generic brands.

Although finasteride is also an active ingredient in Proscar, the latter is used more to treat male prostate problems and is higher in dosage per tablet. You can use Proscar by breaking the tablets into1mg which will make it is the same dosage as in Propecia and so is much cheaper than the latter brand. Also do note that the medications do not work on women with hair loss condition.

Finasteride is an oral medication and minoxidil is a topical application to be massaged into the scalp treatment. You will need a doctor's prescription to buy finasteride. No prescription is required for minoxidil though.
 

Not all men taking these medications can regain their hair, but more than half of them do experience some new hair growth. However, once the hair follicles are all closed up, no medications nor any supplements can reverse the hair dropping process to stimulate new hair growth. It also takes about 3 months or more to notice any good tangible results from using the medications.

The downside is that if you want to keep your hair, then you must be on the medications for life because the cycle of hair loss starts all over again once you stop using the medications. Also about 2% of men on these medications reported side effects of lowered libido and erectile dysfunction when they take finasteride (propecia or proscar). This can be easily remedied by stopping the medication's usage.

However many people balk at the idea of ingesting or infusing chemically produced drugs for the rest of their life and will prefer a more natural treatment for their balding condition. If you are one of them, then Profollica is formulated just for you.

Profollica is a 100% all natural home treatment therapy and both men and women can use it because unlike hair loss medications, it does not affect your hormones. It works by stopping the devastating effect of DHT which is shrinking your hair follicles. Since it is all natural without any harmful chemicals, there are no known reports or complaints of any negative side effects. You can read more about Profollica here.

Other than taking or applying medications to stimulate hair growth, some people opt for wearing wigs and toupees. The problem with this is that most people can tell if you are wearing them as usually the hair and the partings will look weird and artificial. So the other alternative is to go for hair transplantation.




 

​

Hair transplant or hair replacement do look more natural than putting on a wig or a toupee and it is of a more permanent feature. As a result of this, one can hardly tell that a person had a hair transplantation procedure done. 

The hair Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) method for hair transplantation was first described by Masumi Inaba who was a Japanese doctor in 1988 when he introduced the use of a 1mm needle for FUE. Sadly he passed away not long after publishing his research work in 1996 in the book Androgenetic Alopecia: Modern Concepts of Pathogenesis and Treatment. The very first FUE hair transplant was conducted by Dr Ray Woods in Australia,1989.

The Follicular Unit Extraction Procedure -  There are basically two primary types of hair transplant procedures at the moment. The Follicular Unit Extraction and the Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT) techniques. These methods only differ on how the hair follicles are being carefully extracted from the donor area of the patient's scalp.

 

In the FUE hair method, each follicular unit is painstakingly extracted one at a time without other cellular tissues being removed along the way very much unlike in strip harvesting as in the FUT method where a strip of the scalp's skin is being removed and then dissected into many individual follicular units.

Thus the FUE technique of extricating individual follicle is therefore less painful but is much more time consuming and since these follicles are extracted randomly, the donor areas where the follicles are extracted from do not show any patches of bare skin, so it is less noticeable.  Since the procedure do not do much damage to the skin of the scalp except for very small and minute punctures in the skin, patients will be fully healed after some scabbing in less than a week or so.

​

The downside of the FUE method is the cost since your dermatologist or doctor must remove the hair follicles one by one and this takes a lot of time and skills set to do so and therefore it is usually more expensive than the FUT method of hair transplant.

 

The Follicular Unit Transplantation Procedure - As described earlier, the FUT method requires the removal of a strip of tissue from the donor area of the scalp from which the hair follicles are then extracted.

These follicles are then harvested from the strip of skin before being individually transplanted into the bald areas of the scalp. As a result of this, the FUT method allows for a bigger number of grafts that can be transplanted in each treatment session and therefore is a much faster procedure.

As this procedure is more invasive than that of the FUE procedure, the discomfort level is felt more acutely by the patients. There may also be some swelling and some pain in the areas where the strips of skin were removed and patients are sometimes given pain killers for this purpose.
 

Also some minor narrow linear scarring may occur. However since the scarring is very thin, it is easily concealed by the hair in the area. After some time, the scars will eventually fade away naturally.

1) How can I tell if my hair loss condition is as a result of male pattern baldness and is not caused by something else? - 

Well, you can start by checking the areas where the hair thinning is occurring. Androgenetic alopecia is usually restricted to the area at the top of the head or your crown. This is why balding men are most often left with hair on their sides and back of their heads.

Take a look at the chart on progressive male pattern hair loss earlier in this article. Is your hair thinning progression similar to what the diagram shows you? If so, it is highly probable that you are a victim of the male pattern baldness syndrome. 


2) How can I know if my hair loss condition is just temporary in nature or permanent? -  If your condition is due to male pattern baldness, then it is permanent. The good news is that you can stop the hair loss progression and even reversing it by using medically proven medication and the right hair restoration treatments.

Temporarily losing hair is more common in women than in men such as during pre or post pregnancy. Some situations such as stress, anxiety, autoimmune conditions, certain medications, diseases and so on can also cause people of both genders to lose their hair. However, the hair loss will stop when the aggravating factors are removed.


 

​