Overview of Baldness

A person’s hair is an integral piece of their personality. Most people instinctively judge other people by their appearance. Alopecia, also commonly known as hair loss or baldness, can have a profoundly adverse effect on a person’s self-esteem and self- confidence, especially as baldness is regarded by many people as a sure sign of growing older.

How does a person realize that they are getting bald?

Baldness could start gradually with the thinning of hair or when the hair starts falling in bunches. Very often this is so gradual and subtle that a person may take a while to realize that are they are indeed growing bald. A person could get bald all over their head or the baldness could be confined to just one limited area. In men, when baldness is hereditary and is caused due to the genes, bald spots can be seen appearing on the top of their head or on their forehead. In women, the onset of baldness is marked by thinning down of the hair.

What is the cause of baldness?

Every person experiences some amount of hair loss every day and at the same time new hair grows every day. Baldness is a result of an imbalance between the re-growth and the loss of hair and occurs when the hair loss is far more than the growth of new hair.

Each shaft of hair increases in length by approximately half inch a month and it’s life is approximately estimated to be four and half years. After this period of time, the shaft of hair typically stops growing and breaks off. In its place a new growth of hair begins at the same spot that the old hair broke off. It is estimated that about 85% of our broken hair re-grows at any one given time. However about 15 % of broken hair never re-grows.

Every shaft of hair grows from the follicle, which is a tiny opening in the outer layer of the skin. Baldness results because of the contraction of the follicle, which reduces the growth of hair over some period of time. Eventually, only a tiny follicle is left that has practically no hair in it. For all practical purposes, hair is expected to continue growing, but in men in whom baldness has already started, the follicle has stopped growing any new hair. The reason why this happens is not very clear, but it is commonly thought that there is some relationship between this phenomenon and male genes together with male sexual hormones. The follicles remain active even though they have decreased in size, and this is thought to be indicative that there is a strong likelihood that fresh growth will occur.

Baldness could be caused due to genetic reasons or a whole host of other reasons including physical or mental stress, advancing age, very high fever, recent illness, using of certain hair-dyes, heavy dosages of strong medications, ringworm of the scalp ( this is common in children), over-use of curling instruments or even tying up the hair too tightly.

How to deal with baldness

There are few people who consider baldness as purely physiological and do not get bothered by it at all whereas others are constantly conscious of it and try different treatments in an attempt to cure or prevent their baldness.