Scientists Find New Hope For Balding Problems

Losing hair is physically painless but to many people it could cause a lot of anxiety. Although balding is a common problem, it can affect one’s self confidence, especially when it starts at an early age.

What Happens When You Lose Hair

Everyone loses a few strands of hair daily. 

However, some people are concerned when they find that their thick mop of hair seems to be thinning and their scalp starts showing through their hair in midlife.

Male pattern baldnessis the cause of most types of hair loss in men.

However, a quarter of men who have male pattern baldness start losing their hair before they even reach their 20s. This situation makes men very unhappy and their loss of self-confidence could affect their personal life as well as their careers.

Alopecia or hair loss is not just a problem of men. Many women start to have significant hair loss by the age of 40 and this could be very devastating. Although men can sometimes joke about their balding heads, most women suffer silently. Since hair loss is not usually related to a health problem, people, including doctors, do not give a lot of attention to it in terms of finding a medical solution.

Hair thinning often happens slowly and one may not notice losing more hair than usual. Hair shedding may occur in clumps in one area (focal hair loss) or from all over the scalp (general hair loss).

Women usually thin out their hair starting at the top of their heads.

What Causes Balding?

Hair loss that results in male or female pattern baldness is usually an inherited condition. However, there are other possible causes of hair loss.

Hair growth slows down with aging, so if we lose hair faster than our bodies can grow back new hairs, then we would naturally have thinner hair as we age. Aside from this, hair strands break more easily with age as hair gets thinner.

Practices that can cause hair damage and loss include: wearing tight ponytails and braids, pulling hair back tightly, or using hair dyes and curling irons.

Other factors that can cause temporary hair lossare malnutrition, iron deficiency, protein deficiency, scalp diseases like ringworm, and several diseases.

Read More: How to stop hair loss?

Baldness can also be a side effect of drug therapy, such as chemotherapy, which is used to treat cancer.

Current Treatments For Hair Loss

There are many products in the market currently being sold to prevent or treat baldness, but there are only two medications that are scientifically proven to reduce hair loss. 

Minoxidil foams or scalp lotions work by enlarging hair follicles and stimulating hair growth. Studies suggest that some hair re-growth occurs in about seven out of ten men who use minoxidil. However, results can take months to appear and side effects include scalp irritation.

While minoxidil may be bought over the counter, finasteride pills need a doctor’s prescription. Finasteride prevents hair loss in about 90 percent of users and it works by reducing the conversion of testosterone to another hormone that prevents hair from growing.

Surgical treatments for baldness include hair transplant surgery, scalp reduction, and moving scalp flaps to bald areas. These techniques involve moving small grafts or large flaps of the scalp with hair to bald areas of the head. These procedures take time and although considered generally safe, they can also have minor side effects such as bleeding and scarring.

If hair loss is associated with some disease or medication being taken, treatment of the condition may help resolve hair thinning and hair may grow back to normal without further treatment.

New Research Raises Hope for Hair Restoration

So far, traditional hair loss treatments involve removing hair follicles from a person’s own scalp and transplanting these to his bald areas. While scientists have successfully induced new hair growth in hairless rat skins, they have not been able to trigger new hair growth in the cultured skin cells of human subjects. 

Recently however, scientists observed that transplanted cell behavior in rats and humans differed, which could be key to the capability to induce hair growth.

Read More: What you should know about baldness

They believe that hairless epidermal skin (the superficial layer of skin) could be reprogrammed to grow new hair follicles by transplanting just a few hair cells. This could be helpful not only for alopecia but also for covering hairless skin in patients who suffer from severe burns or wounds.

The authors of the study, which was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America, state that although the results of their research is encouraging, more work is required before this type of treatment can be done in people. Nevertheless, their findings represent a significant milestone in bioengineering of hair.