Category: Hair Loss Causes

I have been taking an antibiotic called zadorin for back acne for approximately 2 and a half months. While its common to have hair loss in Dubai (apparently because of the water) it appears that in the recent two months the hair loss has accelerated. Could the cause of this acceleration be the antibiotics. If so, is this a temporary hair loss?

This is almost an impossible question for me to answer. I would have to examine you and understand what is happening on your head and to your hair before I can render an opinion. I doubt that the antibiotic would cause hair loss, but any medication theoretically can. If the water in Dubai is that bad, consider using bottled water.

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Okay, I am hoping this is going to be my last post for a long while (maybe ever!). There is all this contradictory information as to whether exogenous factors can contribute to, accelerate, and/or possibly cause male pattern balding. These include hair gel, dairy, smoking, pot, alcohol, natural increases and dietary sources of growth hormone, injected HGH, shampoo, shower water, pollution, red meat, hormones in meat, weightlifting, l arginine, high saturated fat diets, etc. There are also exogenous factors that supposedly help fight hair loss — green tea, soy, caffeine (in vitro), saw palmetto, pygeum, pumpkin seed extract, omega 3 fatty acids, l arginine, staying away from high saturated fat diets, etc. Finasteride is apparently found in tubers in C. America so apparently diet does do something for hair loss, right? Then we have all these stories about how Native Americans and Inuits have no hair loss and are lactose intolerant, and stories of how Asians have high soy diets and allegedly no hair loss until their diets became Westernized.

I need some answers, man. I can’t believe with all the science and surveys we have we haven’t ascertained how diet affects us, if at all. Should I be drinking soy (which I’ve also heard has phytoestrogens which can stump bone growth) on a daily basis or should I be drinking milk!? It’s so confusing. So I need some definite answers as to whether diet can affect either positively or negatively male pattern hairloss!!

You clearly did a lot of research. When you get your answers and you are clear as a bell on what it all means as you mix and match them, please feel free to share them with me. I do not have all the answers and whenever there are reports of things in the diet that can help hair growth, it can not be scientifically substantiated. Likewise, diets heavy in meat have been reported to have negative impact on hair growth while rice has just the reverse, yet all of this has no science behind it.

Dear Dr. Rassman,

First, thank you for your great site which is daily helping thousands of hair loss sufferers.

I am a 21 year old male. I suffered from trichotillomania in my teens for 6 years. Now I am 2 years pull free and had full regrowth. But there is something else I am worried about and would appreciate your valuable opinion. I have read that hair repeats its cycle only a determined number of times. So even if hair regrows, it will one day fall out before other hair that has not been affected because their number of cycles was reduced from plucking? Is something like this possible to happen?

Thank you for your time and consideration

That is an interesting question. I would doubt that you will have hit your cycle limit, but there is no way to tell that I know of. The general experience of those with trichotillomania is that once the pulling stops, if the hairs are not lost permanently, they will return to normal (and by normal, I mean the number of cycles that will be found in the surrounding hair). With that said, I do not believe that anyone can tell how many cycles are left in the hair that was victimized by the traction alopecia. Sorry, I am just a mortal doctor with limits in my knowledge!

My husband was smacked by a 2×4 on top of his head and left him with a bald spot, about 2 years ago now. Wondering if there is anything he can try to regrow hair in that spot. (Hes in his 20s)

Thank you.

Did your husband have sutures or staples placed to fix a laceration/cut over the area in question? Often times, areas of sutured/repaired hair can cause strangulation of the surrounding hairs, leading to a bald spot. Although there is no specific hair regrowth treatment for this type of loss, hair follicles can be transplanted into the area in question with good results.

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I am a 21 year old suffering with MPB. Even though I have not been mapped out for miniaturization,I know I am a NW2 and what made me realize I MPB was the back of my crown felt thinner. My question is this.

Can Telogen Effluvium occur along with Male Pattern Baldness? The reason I ask is the fall of 2007 I lead an extremely stressful nine months of school combining with that I did crash diet where I ate healthy but I did not eat enough, I was technically starving myself. From 2004 to 2008 I wore my hair to my shoulders and when I cut it off this past April I noticed how thin my hair specifically my front and back had become.

Did TE set in along with MPB or did my stressful life speed up my MPB?

Thank you also for this website, it is very informative.

Yes, telogen effluvium (TE) and genetic hair loss can co-exist. Your history of weight loss and stress can cause TE, but with this in your past and the stress and starvation corrected, the hair should come back to normal within a year or so. The risks here are that your stress and poor diet could also have kicked in the genetic hair loss, but a good miniaturization study should show that if this is the case. Also, if you do a hair pull test this will show TE if you have it.

I’m borrowing the following paragraph of text about the hair pull test from DermNet NZ:

“Hair loss associated with excessive shedding results in a positive ‘gentle hair pull’ test. Grasp a lock of hairs to determine if any can be extracted with firm pull. Normally 0-2 telogen hairs can be extracted: these are hairs in the resting phase, identified using magnification by a rounded bulb at the proximal end. An elongated or tapered end indicates anagen hair (growing phase); anagen hairs extracted by the gentle hair pull test are pathologic.”

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Hello. I have heard conflicting things about zinc supplements in regard to hairloss. Can an increased amount of zinc actually cause more hair loss? If so, what amount would be beneficial?

Currently I am taking about 41mg/day of zinc in supplement form (11 from a multi-v and 30 from optizinc [monomethionine] which also has 300mcg copper to offset). Is this too much or is it low enough not to be a detriment to my hair?

Thanks!

I do not keep up to date on supplements and dosing because the studies have little scientific base. Take everything in moderation and always clear this with your primary care doctor, because I don’t know the reason why you are taking these supplements or that if you even need to be taking supplements. There are some reports that zinc in high doses can cause hair loss, but it is not clear that the websites that report this have valid studies behind the reports.

Over the years, I have lost 30 or 40 percent of my transplanted hair. I am a 72 year old male. I first had 300 plugs put in the frontal part of my scalp at age 40. About half of the hair fell out over 10 years. I was told that it was because the plugs were too large and did not get the proper blood flow. I then had 3 FUE prcedures done over a 8 year period in my 60’s. The first two were 1200 grafts each and the the last procedure of 1000 FUE’s was done at age 69.

All total, about 30 percent or more of the these grafts have fallen out and not come back. My hair now looks like it did after I had the first FUE transplant. The doner area still has hair. At first I thought that the doctor took hair from too high from this area but my hair loss has not gone down that far.

Do you know what would cause transplanted hair to fall out and not come back or, is there anything I can do to keep from loosing any more transplanted hair? Could it be that there may be something wrong with my scalp on top of my head? or ?

The first Doctor who did the plugs was one of the first to do plugs. The second doctor that did the FUE’s had been doing follicle transplants for 15 to 20 years and had a good reputation. I was going to ask my doctor about this but the second doctor passed away last year.

Any help or information is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Hair taken from the back and sides of the head is permanent, but the permanent zone is only 2 1/2 inches high in the back of your had and many doctors years ago, harvested hair that was not permanent with punch excision and the old open donor method of harvesting. I have seem many of these patients over the years with this problem. You are correct that the old plugs have oxygenation problems and they often lost hairs within the plugs in the short term after a hair transplant. About 1/3 of the population lose about 1/3rd of their permanent hair. If this is you, you should see a loss of hair in your permanent zone. This problem seems to be more for people of your age than younger men and it is called senile alopecia. If you have senile alopecia, there is nothing that can be done about it. You might try minoxidil, as it tends to prolong the hair cycle and could prevent the death of some of these hairs.

i am eighteen years old and have noticed that my hair all over the top of my head and even on the sides to some degree has become finer. I already have naturally fine hair but it has gotten even more fine, however i still have a full set of hair. Does hair becoming finer always mean it is undergoing miniturization and balding or can it just be naturally occuring with age and not undergoing balding?

There is no clear way to tell without a physical examination and history. If you are miniaturizing rather than going to a finer hair, the regularity of the mapping will tell. Real miniaturization will have variable hair shaft widths while a change to a finer hair will show complete regularity in hair shaft widths. A fine hair can undergo miniaturization.