How To Stop and Prevent Hair Loss

Medical Or Natural Hair Loss Treatments – Which Is The Best Hair Loss Treatment?

There are a lot of myths surrounding hair loss treatment. Standing on your head to increase the blood flow to the brain will not cure it, nor is there any evidence that massaging your scalp helps – though this might help you relax, which itself could lead to hair regrowth. Hair Again however could have some answers, and I’ll talk more about that method of treatment for hair loss soon.

In ancient Egypt, people would cover their baldness with a mixture of fats from ibex, lions, crocodiles, serpents, geese and hippopotami. How effective these hair loss treatments were we cannot say – there are no records. Julius Caesar took another approach – he camouflaged his loss of hair with laurels. It has been suggested that the ceremonial use of a laurel wreath stems from Caesar’s vanity!

The “Hair Again” report I mentioned above contains some of the latest scientific research and advice on hair regrowth, and debunks a lot of the myths about regrowing hair – in fact I managed to get the author to create a simple video review that covers all the natural hair loss treatment and remedies that actually work – take a few minutes to watch it now…

To get hold of a copy of Hair Again click here now (the page opens in a new window so you can come back here later)

OK – so, moving on. There is a range of medical hair loss treatments available today, and if you haven’t watched the video about man-made hair regrowth chemicals and drugs, you might want to check it out now (click here – the video should start playing as soon as the page opens). Some of these medical treatment for hair loss may be effective, at least temporarily, with the milder forms of alopecia, but they rarely work if you have alopecia totalis or universalis. It’s not really possible to present you with any clear conclusions about which medical hair loss treatment will work in which circumstances. In the end, all treatments are palliative – i.e. they can help to control the problem, but they rarely cure it. Even if you have patchy alopecia areata it is questionable whether the treatments themselves are effective or whether you would recover anyway without treatment. Because of these problems, and because the treatment of hair loss may be painful or have side-effects, having any form of pharmaceutical treatment should involve an informed choice.

There are several factors to be taken into account regarding the potential for hair regrowth. Such regrowth is less likely if:

• The alopecia is more serious (totalis or universalis).
• It starts before 16 years of age.
• Nails are affected.
• There is rapid progression.
• The hair loss takes place over a period of months rather than days or weeks.

There is no conclusive evidence that medical treatments alter the ultimate course of the disease. If you are developing alopecia universalis, then there is no known medical hair loss treatment to stop this occurring.

Neither has any hair loss treatment been conclusively shown to do anything more than suppress the active immunological process. Because of this, only long-term treatment will have any long-term effect; because once the treatment stops, the immunological system is again activated and hair loss is likely to resume. Medical treatments often have side-effects, and these must be weighed against any cosmetic benefits.

Drug treatments should usually last at least three months before an assessment can be made of their effectiveness. If you have alopecia areata it may be necessary to treat unaffected areas of the scalp as well as affected areas, because these may develop an inflammatory reaction and lead to further hair loss. Doctors may also recommend leaving an affected area untreated to check the degree of spontaneous hair regrowth.

It may be possible to increase the chances of hair regrowth through the use of more than one drug at the same time. This technique is used, but has not been assessed scientifically to see whether it has a beneficial effect. The danger of this approach is that there may be side-effects not only from each drug, but also from the combination of drugs – and the effects here are not known.

Beware!

There are endless hair loss treatments being marketed by the medical community, alternative practitioners and those within the cosmetics industry, which, it is claimed, will lead to hair regrowth. The proliferation of these treatments is indicative of the number of people who are very concerned about their hair. If a treatment is discovered that is effective with all forms of alopecia, we will soon know about it. It is almost a search for the Holy Grail. If something is found it will be on the front page of every newspaper and on the radio and television news headlines!

There are always new hair loss treatments coming on the market. Some of these are simply quack medicines, which gain popularity because people with alopecia are desperate to find something that will make their hair grow back and are willing to try anything. There are ever-increasing numbers of drug based female and male hair loss treatment available, which are constantly being tested for efficacy. As we have seen, the evidence for the drugs we have so far is limited, to say the least. We do not believe that treatment for hair loss and alopecia has advanced much beyond creating substances that might delay hair loss, or might lead to some limited improvement in the more minor cases of alopecia. There is as yet no medical or drug based wonder cure, nor is there one on the horizon.

If your alopecia is patchy and limited to the head you have a fair chance of recovery, though there will always be the threat of recurrence; some drugs can provide limited help for you.

If your alopecia is totalis or universalis, or you have had the alopecia with little or no regrowth, then there are no drugs available that will guarantee hair regrowth. That is a fact, and something that you must accept. There may however be a natural hair loss treatment available, which would be covered in the Hair Again report.

For some people there is the possibility of hair transplantation, but this is only viable if you have hair to transplant. It is not for totalis or universalis patients. For others, wigs and tattoos are useful cosmetics.

One study has examined the effects of using a combination of hair loss treatment strategies with alopecia patients. The treatments included the use of a strong immunosuppressant, and at the same time the people in the study were taught relaxation and image therapy. There was some evidence of effectiveness as nearly all of the patients who tried relaxation combined with the drugs had some hair regrowth. This suggests that relief from stress facilitates the recovery of the immune system – rather than the main benefit being from the drugs.

The overall view appears rather pessimistic, but there are positive signs. Gene therapy is likely to provide an effective cure within the next few years – but is not available yet. Also, new drugs are constantly coming on to the market. The more we understand hair loss causes and causes of alopecia, the closer we come to an effective treatment. Advances are certainly being made in understanding how and why alopecia occurs, but these advances are not yet sufficient to supply guaranteed medical or drug based cures.

If you have alopecia, particularly the more serious forms, then you need to learn how to deal with it, how to adapt to having no hair, how to manage your life, your family, your work, and how to cope with stress.

Hair Loss Treatment

The good news is that humans are good at adaptation, and in learning about effective natural hair loss treatments from the Hair Again report, you could ultimately discover how to stop hair loss and start to regrow it.