In order to devise an effective strategy to stop your hair loss you need to know what is causing it. You can do this by analyzing your hair, scalp and your lifestyle to find tell tail signs of specific causes of hair loss. Once you know what’s causing your hair loss you can find the right treatment to start growing your hair back. But if you don’t know what’s causing it, any treatment you use is just a shot in the dark.
In this article I explain the top 5 causes of hair loss and how you can tell whether they apply to you.
DHT
DHT, or ‘dihydrotestosterone’ is a by-product of testosterone. It’s more common in men and is what causes male pattern baldness, or ‘androgenic alopecia’. It’s called androgenic alopecia because it’s hair loss related to the androgen hormones. You’re most likely to be suffering from hair loss caused by DHT if your hair line is receding, your crown is thinning or the hairs at the front or crown of your head are becoming thinner in diameter.
If you’re male and you have the signs described above it’s likely that your hair loss is caused primarily by DHT. DHT is the most common cause of hair loss.
DHT also causes increased body and facial hair. So if you have quite a lot of body hair and facial hair, as well as thinning hair on your scalp, you may have elevated DHT levels.
The answer to this problem is to inhibit DHT production and to remove DHT from the scalp. Keep reading to the end to learn how to do this.
Stress
Stress is a top cause of hair loss. But it’s not stressful situations that cause hair loss, it’s the way in which you deal with stress that decides whether it will effect your hair. If you are a calm, relaxed person who does not worry about stressful situations too much, it’s unlikely that stress is causing your hair loss.
Stress can sap nutrients from the body that are essential for hair growth. The hair suffers because the body’s resources are saved for more vital uses in the body. As a result the hair suffers as it is not essential. Stress can also effect hormonal levels, which can have a knock on effect on the liver and DHT levels.
If you have a calm and relaxed outlook on life and you are still losing your hair, it’s likely that DHT or another cause explained in this article is responsible for your hair loss. However, if you know that you worry easily or feel anxious easily, it’s quite likely that this is causing you to lose hair.
Fortunately it’s possible to remedy this by supplementing for the nutrient loss through stress and by using effective methods of making you relax and react calmly in stressfully situations. Keep reading to learn how to do this.
Poorly performing liver
The liver plays such an important part in your appearance and a poorly performing liver will almost certainly cause hair loss. There is a direct link between the efficiency of your liver and ‘sebum’ levels on your skin. Sebum is an oil secreted through the skins pores. It can have a negative effect on hair growth as it contains DHT and it can clog the pores in the scalp, preventing hair growth.
The liver processes fats and hormones among other things. If the liver has low levels of a certain essential ‘coenzyme’ called coenzyme A, sebum levels can increase to above normal levels. Coenzyme A breaks fat down. But if coenzyme A levels are low and/or the liver is working inefficiently, the body has no choice but to secrete fats in sebum through the skin.
As we age our livers operate less and less efficiently due to imperfect diets, alcohol consumption, medicine use (e.g. paracetamol), smoking and even just breathing polluted air. So if you can get your liver working more efficiently and increase coenzyme A levels you can have not only a positive impact on hair growth but also a total revitalization of your whole body – both in the way you feel and the way you look. I’ve developed a thorough and extremely effective method of achieving this. Keep reading to find out how I did it.
Poor circulation of blood in the scalp
Hair needs a supply of nutrients in order to grow. How do these nutrients get to the hair? They are carried to the hair shaft in the blood via blood vessels in the scalp. If the volume of blood pumping through the tiny blood vessels that connect to the hair papilas is reduced, so is the supply of raw materials that are used to build hair.
Reduced blood flow to the extremities is common with aging. Smoking, pollution, diet and other factors can cause reduced blood flow to the scalp. So it’s another reason why hair tends to get thinner as we age. What’s the answer? It’s simple; increase the flow of blood into the scalp. But how do you do that? There are several simple exercises you can do to increase blood flow to the scalp (and these do help), but ideally you want to improve blood flow to the extremities by solving the problem from the inside – properly. Fortunately this is another cause of hair loss that can be fixed. Again, keep reading to find out how.
Inadequate diet
Though I am a believer in eating healthily I’m not one of those people who is obsessed with only eating salad and never eating cake or pie. I eat my fair share of junk food in all honestly, but I don’t have a problem with weight and I exercise regularly.
I don’t think diet is the most important factor in hair growth – but it is a factor. The reason I say this is because if you observe tramps (yes, homeless people), you might notice (at least I have in my area) that they often have quite good thick hair (despite being dirty and greasy). Yet tramps have terrible diets and they tend to drink like fish.
However there are cases where I think diet can have an impact on hair. These are:
- If you ever experience crash dieting;
- you do a great deal of exercise;
- you lead a very stressful life; and/or
- you don’t get enough sleep.
So, if any of the above apply to you, diet may be a factor in your hair loss. I’ve been through all of the scenarios listed above, in normal life and through my ethnographic experimentation; and I can report that in my experience they have all had a major impact on my hair in the past.
I experimented with bowl cleansing a detoxing diets that involved fasting and I noticed hair loss after fasting because I did it wrong. Fortunately this sort of hair loss is reversible and doesn’t take long to reverse. It’s also possible to complete detox programmes and weight loss programmes safely without effecting your hair, providing you understand and follow some important principles.
Getting enough sleep and reducing stress in my life were difficult hurdles to overcome because I’m so busy and I went through a long period of experiencing social anxiety in my life a few years back (which is fairly common in young men). Fortunately I found a remarkably effective way of changing my mind set using an audio programme I developed for the book. I cured my social anxiety because I knew I had to in order to stop my hair loss. This was an important step for me.
So you can see that by dealing with stress in your life and following some simple guidelines around dieting and eating, you can solve the diet related hair loss problem without having to alter your diet greatly – if tramps can have good hair without living on a diet of organic salad and steamed vegetables, so can you!
That said it’s worth making sure you get some important nutrients in your diet. I use several ‘superfoods’ that make it easy to get an abundance of nutrients in my diet without the hassle of very strict dietary guidelines.
When you combine the abundance of nutrients with the increased blood flow to the scalp, efficient liver, clear DHT free scalp and low stress levels, you can see how it’s very possible to get your hair not only maintained but growing back fast.
In conclusion
If you’ve read this article from start to finish, you’ll see that despite the daunting task stopping hair loss seems to be, it is very possible. It’s simply a case of reversing each of the causes, so that they work in your favour. Let’s take an example:
- Hair loss cause: You have weakened circulation to the scalp
- Solution: Fix the problem so your circulation is strong again
- Regrow hair: Boost circulation to the scalp to higher than normal healthy levels to supply the hair with even more nutrients than a normal healthy scalp gets.
Now, you’re not only stopping hair loss by eliminating a root cause, you’re using it to grow new hair.
You can do the same with each of the causes. By not only reducing stress levels, but making yourself even more relaxed and calm than most people (using my audio programme), you turn stress from a cause of hair loss, to (lack of stress as) a cause of hair growth.
If you want to find out:
- how I remove DHT from my scalp;
- how I inhibit DHT production in my body;
- how I turbo charge circulation to my scalp;
- how I conquer stressful situations, reacting calmly when other people stress out; and
- what foods I use to feed my hair with everything it needs,
Download my hair loss eBook today and get the subliminal mind training audio programme free. Learn more.
Thank you for the article, I am definatly going to order the e-book. I am not sure if we can ask questions on this site but if we can I am listing mine in hopr for advice or comments. I am 40 years old male and have decent hair, I am in pretty good shape I lifts weights 5 days a week and do cardio. My hair started receding on the sides slowly when I was 35, right about that time is when I really started having anxiety and constant stress so I dont know if it was age that caused my problem or just my age. I still have the hair on top and the sides a slowly receding but not to bad but I have really bad dry burning itchy scalp on the vertex, i saw a dermatoligist and he said it was dandruff. I have tried every shampoo and home remedy (apple cidar vinager, ect..) possible. From reading your article, I am thinking I may have a problem with my liver due to cronic stress and anxiety. I kind of got peranoid when my hair started receding on the sides and I have been taking avodart for about a year and half now and it has been maintaing my hair pretty good, I still notice lately that it has been getting thinner and when I was tested last my esotrgen levels were very high, this is a normal side effect of avodart and I was recommended to take progesterone supplements to couter act the estorgen. I know I need to get my stress and anxiety under control, I have been taking passion flower drops and gaba and they have been helping a little. I really want to get off of the avodart but I am scared that my hair will start to get worse. Is there any recommendations you have for someone in my situation. I dont think MPB runs in my family, I never new my dad but my moms dad is in his seventies and still has all his hair. Is it possible for a person that is not prone to MPB to get it due to long term stress and anxiety? I try and take all the good hair supplments (biotin, multi-vitamin, vitamin E, Fish Oil, ect…) any suggestions or comments you have would be greatly appreaciated.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your questions. I’ve emailed you and posted some answers to your questions here:
http://www.nicehair.org/your-questions/some-questions-about-anxiety-stress-related-hair-loss-and-avodart
Regards,
Chris