Hair Loss Causes In Women

The apparent part of hair over the skin is a dead tissue that has no function in the body, yet it is of psychologiacl importance, particularly for women. Although they remove 80 percent of all hair using every means including laser, yet women are worried about any thing affects hair over their heads, specially those 100,000 hairs over the scalp (2 percent of all hair over the body).

It is the scalp hair we are concerned with, when we discuss common hair loss. To understand the whole subject, we should simplify it by discussing the hair parts separately (i.e. the hair follicle and the hair shaft), to digest how does the loss happens.

It is that part seen over the skin. According to its type which differs with race, hair differs in length, shape and color, and these differences are in part due to the shape and size of hair shaft, and partly to the shape of the follicle.

There are 2 types of hair :

1- Terminal hair on the scalp, eyebrows, and eyelashes. This longer, coarser and pigmented

2- Vellus hair which is present everywhere on the skin except the palms, soles, lips, and some sensitive genital parts. It is soft, rarely more than 2 centimeters long and of fair color. Vellus hair gives rise to secondary sexual hair in response to hormonal changes at puberty

Normal hair of the scalp may regress to fine, short vellus hair with age through regression of certain follicles. This condition of patterned hair loss is called androggenetic alopecia, which is inherited and requires the effects of male hormones.

 It is a group of specialized invaginated cells of the skin, it takes the shape of a pulb and gives rise to hair.

Some follicles are programmed to grow relatively long , thick, pigmented hair, in certain areas such as, the scalp, eyebrow, and eyelash, this type of hair is called primary terminal hair.

Other follicles grow short, fine, non-pigmented  or slightly pigmented hair, and often not visible to the naked eye, though covering almost all the body surface .

Follicles and hairs they produce remain constant in size, however they have the capacity to change size and produce different types of hair.

After puberty, follicles on some parts of the body increase in size, and produce longer and thicker terminal hairs instead of of the vellus type previously produced, to produce secondary sexual hair.

Follicles have normal cycles. At any one time, approximately 90 percent of head hair is growing and increasing in length by approximately 1 centimeter every month. Each hair grows for a period of 2-6 years, during which the hair attains its maximal diameter and length. This process remains constant under normal conditions.

When the growth phase ends, the hair follicle begins a period of 2-6 months rest and the hair is shed. Only about 10 percent of hairs is in the resting phase at any one time. 

We all lose hair everyday throghout life, between 40-120 hairs from the scalp alone. Thus complete baldness would occur in every one of us, if the process continued for 1000 days without regrowth.

Because the hair length and thickness are determined by how long the hair is allowed to grow, before enetering the resting and shedding phase, the hair loss is thus a gradul conversion of terminal hair follicles to vellus-like hair follicles, producing secondary vellus hairs. The net result is a short, thin hairs that may be barely visible above the scalp surface.

The follicles are not altered in structure, and the number of follicles does not change, except in old age when some folliclular loss (deletion) occurs.

95 percent of the described process of hair loss which is seen in both men and women, is caused by a progressive condition called androgenetic alopecia, or common heriditary hair loss.

Hair loss can begin as early as the teens, and by the age of 35, almost 40 percent of men and women show some degree of hair loss. It is obvious in men, but in women it is subtle and not noticed without close examination.

In androgenetic alopecia, a combination of hereditary, hormones and age causes a progressive shrinking, or miniaturisation of certain hair follicles. This causes a shortening of the hair's growth cycle. Over time, as the active growth phase becomes shorter, the resting phase becomes longer, and eventually there is very little growth at all.

 To minimize the progression of androgenetic alopecia, there are only two medicines that are licensed as they- to some degree- improve it; Oral Finistride ( Propecia, MSD), and topical Minoxidil (Regain - Pharmacia and Upjohn).

Neither of them are real cures. Any improvement or 'pause' of hair loss gained from them, will be lost within a few months of stopping the treatment.

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