Hair Loss

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By Dr. Ken Washenik, M.D., Ph.D.

August is National Hair Loss Awareness Month.  The American Academy of Dermatology states that this annual event is designed to increase public awareness about hair loss, the importance of early detection, and available hair loss treatment options.  Hereditary hair loss, the most common form of hair loss, affects nearly 50 million men and 30 million women in the United States alone, according to the National Hair Journal.

It is important to set the consumer straight on at least one subject – hair loss – by separating fact from fiction about hair care and medical hair loss treatment options.

Causes of Hair Loss

• Fiction:  Hair loss is caused by hats and headgear which restrict blood vessels, the scalp draining transference of hair growth to a beard, too frequent washing or cutting of hair, microbes and bacteria, sunlight, smoking, sexual excess, nervous tension, diet, or the most common myth: the passing on of a baldness gene from one’s mother.
• Fact:  While temporary hair shedding may be caused by any number of reasons including poor nutrition and vitamin deficiency, illness or hormone imbalance, true hair loss is a genetic response to the hormone dihydrotestosterone, or DHT. It is not inherited, however, from the mother’s father as was once commonly believed, but can come from both sides of the family.

Attitudes Toward Hair Loss

• Fiction:  Distaste for baldness is a product of modern times. It is a form of vanity born and bred in 20th century youth culture madness.
• Fact:  The disease has afflicted men since the dawn of civilization, and they have gone to almost any length to regrow thinning hair. In ancient times, they smeared their heads with fats from ibex, lions, crocodiles, serpents, geese, and even hippos. They have since used wigs, painful scalp “blistering,” sheep pituitary injections, herbs, vitamins, liniments, elixirs, and salves. None work.

Women and Hair Loss

• Fiction:  Hair transplantation is for men who are the predominant sufferers of genetic baldness.
• Fact:  While 80% of men exhibit some degree of hair loss, 17% of women also are afflicted, beginning at about the age of thirty. In the United States, that constitutes more than 20 million women. They are now prime candidates for hair restoration by means of surgical implantation.

Hair Loss Surgery Results

• Fiction:  Hair transplantation produces “doll scalp” or plugs resembling corn rows.
• Fact:  Procedures today such as Bosley Follicular Unit Transplantation techniques performed by Bosley hair restoration surgeons are light years ahead of older methods.  Hair restoration in the hands of the skilled physician is natural, virtually undetectable, and individually designed for a person’s facial structure, age, and hair color, texture, and type.

Cosmetic Options

• Fiction:  Hair care products cannot address the problem of hair loss.
• Fact:  While most products are just volumizers plumping up the hair shaft, new products are now available with topical Minoxidil, the only FDA approved ingredient for stopping hair loss and promoting regrowth (such as Bosley Hair Regrowth Treatment).

Ken Washenik, M.D., Ph.D.

Ken Washenik, M.D., Ph.D., is the Medical Director of the Bosley and the Executive Vice President of Scientific and Medical Development of the Aderans Research Institute, a biotechnology firm involved in researching tissue engineered hair follicle neogenesis and cellular based hair restoration.

Dr. Washenik is the former director of the Dermatopharmacology Unit at NYU School of Medicine, where he is a faculty member in the Department of Dermatology.  He has conducted extensive clinical research and phase II-IV studies in the area of dermatopharmacology.