A friend of mine way back in college used to regularly pull back his hair and open his eyes wide to scare us with how far his hair had already receded. Male pattern baldness can start early, for him, he couldn’t have been more than 20 years old.
Blame your parents for it (it’s an inherited condition from both sides of the family). Whether you are affected is decided by a mixture of genes so probably the whole family’s to blame. Anyway, nowadays for most people there is a hair loss solution .. a ‘cure’.
Our hair follicles are set deep enough into our skin that they remain in place for a lifetime while surface skin layers slough off. They repeat a cycle: anagen, catagen, telogen .. in layman’s terms: hair growth, cessation, and rest, followed by hair growth again.
The problem with male pattern baldness is that every time the follicles return to the hair growth stage, the hair is that bit thinner than before. This progresses until each follicle ceases to work.
Interestingly, it’s the length of the growth cycle that sets how long your hair can grow and that’s inherited too, but it’s different in different parts of your body. That’s why you can’t grow eyebrows down to your knees.
If you’re worried about your hair falling out, you might be assured that a normal loss volume is about 100 hairs every day. Those are from resting follicles. Around the base of those hairs is the white club that is created during the cessation period. Sometimes people who fear their hair coming out wash their hair less frequently. That tends to exacerbate the worry, since when you do wash your hair, there appear to be even more hairs being lost.
Male pattern baldness comes about when your hair follicles are sensitive to a derivative of the testosterone called dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Testosterone is the male sex hormone. As a young adult the levels are at their highest, which is why male pattern baldness can start early. Follicular sensitivity to DHT is the genetically determined part of male pattern baldness.
The hair loss solution
So. Now we have the background, what do we do about it? The first thing is to take action early on. Baldness is very difficult to reverse because the follicles have effectively shut down. Act sooner while the follicles are still active, and it’s often possible at least to stop the decline, if not to reverse it.
London’s Belgravia Center is a popular hair loss clinic that provides an effective hair loss solution by providing a custom-designed treatment plan for each client, based on a full assessment by a professional trichologist.
Belgravia’s hair loss solution aims to use everything that works in order to halt hair loss and promote regrowth. This, combined with regular monitoring and scalp photographs to show progress, provide the most effective hair loss treatment strategy.
The main goal is to disrupt the link between DHT and the hair follicles, so keeping the follicles healthy. In aid of that, anything that promotes blood circulation to the scalp should help to bring nutrients to the follicles and promote their health.
The Belgravia Center has its own pharmacy so it can provide the most effective, low cost hair loss treatment. There are two effective drugs approved for the treatment of hair loss, Propecia and Minoxidil. The Belgravia Center can dispense both along with many other products such as medroxyprogesterone (MPG) and azelaic acid that help inhibit DHT too.
Propecia was approved just over ten years ago and more or less transformed hair loss treatment. It blocks the effect of DHT on hair follicles, effectively stopping the main cause of male pattern hair loss in its tracks.
Having said that, the Belgravia Center handles thousands of hair loss cases every year and has found treatment to be more effective if the problem is tackled from all possible angles. To that end, Minoxidil is also commonly prescribed to stimulate the blood supply to the scalp, herbal supplements are recommended, and an FDA cleared laser comb worth £245 is provided free with most treatment programs.
While hair loss treatment for those outside London is available over the Internet, those who can visit the clinic for initial diagnosis and quarterly checkups may benefit from additional techniques such as light therapy, massage, and steam scalp treatment.
Trichologist-recommended shampoos are also important because the balding process is often accompanied by increased sebum production, inflammation, and irritation that can limit the effectiveness of any hair loss treatment.
For the best results, regular monitoring is essential to assess progress and of course Belgravia’s clients are welcome to ask questions by phone (during opening hours) or over the Internet in between reviews. Often a photographic record is taken, resulting in a series of scalp photographs.
The problem with hair loss cures is the history of the industry which has a reputation for selling expensive ‘cures’ that don’t work. New, officially approved and effective drugs have changed all that, meaning that men concerned about the onset of male pattern baldness can do something about it. That’s got to be a good thing.