Category: Hair Loss Causes

Doctor..

Thanks for keeping an archive.. It’s a treasure chest of info.

I had a couple of months were I was taking care of a sick family member and missed a minox application usually at night.. so I was down most days to just one application.. maybe 6 weeks. Had a lot of loss the last 5 or 6 weeks. I’m guessing since minoxidil is dose dependent there’s going to be loss from twice to once a day application. Also I switched to an online source that supposedly took over for Dr. Lee’s products. Which like Dr. Lee, is now out of business also. So It could have been a possible scam with phoney products. I needed a non PG formula.. though even the Rogaine foam is a problem..

I’m wondering if the loss is due to twice to once a day application for some weeks. The stress and lack or sleep in being a caretaker.. or could it be Minoxidil Solutions LLC was just a scam. In which case maybe some of your readers may have had the same result and offer a comment.

Thanks for being a “reliable” place to turn for the hair loss community.

You have suggested the many reasons why you experienced the hair loss. I can not tell you which is more possible than the other.

It could be from changing the dosing, or it could be from bad medication (I don’t know if it was indeed a scam), or it could be from stress… or it could be a combination of it all.

hello dr rassman
i just want to ask you about protein shakes. do they cause hair loss? i heard if it has amino acid will cause hair loss. can you take a look to this kind of protein: Combat Powder.

thanks

These protein shakes may have nutritional value, but I doubt that whey protein shakes will impact hair loss or hair gain. One recent push by a prominent hair transplant surgeon and dermatologist is for a protein shake to increase hair growth after a transplant, but the evidence is just not there for me to take any position in the solution.

I would be careful that in the process of using such a shake, that there is not hidden steroid in it. Some of the “muscle milk” products that are on the market have steroids in them and that is bad for both overall health and maintenance of hair.

Dear Dr. Rassman,
I am 28 yrs old have been suffering from hair loss since I was about 22 years of age. I am about a norwood 3 right now. I had chemically relaxed my hair once when I was 18 and a second time when I was about 21, while suffering a minor burn from my second treatment. I have taken the hair DX test and I have been told that I have a moderate predisposition to male pattern baldness. Can my hair loss be due to a combination of both factors?

If it were solely due to the chemical relaxers, would I have lost my hair when the injury occurred and wouldn’t my hair loss be more diffuse? If it is due to the insult by chemical straightening, would the hair/hair follicles show the same progression of hair loss as if it were male pattern baldness? I can’t change the past, but I would just like to know if my chemical relaxer treatments have led to this.

Thank You

You have a complex story and it would likely require a complex examination. Without seeing you and examining you, I can not tell you the cause of your hair loss or what you can do about it. The HairDX test can tell you if you’ve got the genetic markers, but it won’t tell you if or when you’ll see those genes expressed.

See a good hair transplant doctor who cares about your welfare and then you will know more than you know now.

Is it possible to thin out over the top of the head without ever going completely bald in that same area? Will a NW6 difuse thinning pattern always lead to a fully bald NW6?

I suppose what I’m asking is can hairs stop miniaturising once they’ve started without medication OR can a good proportion of hairs remain healthy even in an area where there are also miniaturised hairs?

Thanks.

With medication, residual hair may remain in an obvious pattern like a Norwood class 6 pattern. For those not on medications, sooner or later the pattern will advance, but the fringe area may remain.

How are you, Dr. Rassman?

I don’t get it. A a firm believer in Charles Darwin’s theories about evolution and natural selection, I would have thought that those unfortunate souls who bear the gene that causes baldness would be an extinct breed. The overwhelming majority of women I’ve met find balding or bald men unattractive. Yet, the baldness gene hasn’t been removed from the human gene pool. How come this gene has made it?

Women and homosexuals find bald men sexually unattractive. Nobody chooses to sleep with a baldie over a hottie with a thick head of hair. Still, 50 percent of the male population has some degree of hair loss. Why does everyone find bald men that hideous?

I realize that my questions might be beyond the scope of this blog and that nobody really knows for sure. Nevertheless, I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.

We think of balding in terms of known times of recorded civilization. I wrote about this very question a few years back — Evolutionary Reason for Hair Loss?.

As humans grew their brains, intelligence and brain power came into play as an important factor for female mate choices. In the early years of humans, the disease tuberculosis was common, and men who had TB would become sickly. Women could often judge the long term health of their prospective mate by looking at the hair. Even though genetic balding was also present, women assumed that men who were bald (I suspect class 6 or class 7 pattern bald) would not make good mates because they would not live long enough to provide for them and their children. Those balding men with TB would die, so women assumed there was a connection between the two. Choosing a non-balding man with a full head of hair gave a woman some assurance that the man was healthy.

In modern Western society, TB is not common. Today’s balding men in Western societies are generally healthy. The genetics of balding may not negatively impact a woman’s choice if the man was smart, successful, and wealthy. I suspect that a class 6 or 7 bald, healthy, and successful man might be preferred over a poorer, full-haired man today. Ask if a sickly man lost his hair, would he be chosen by a good looking woman searching for a husband to produce a family today? The answer might lay in his bank account.

Besides all that, I’m sure there are plenty of people out there that would disagree with the idea that “nobody chooses to sleep with” a balding man.

Snippet from the article:

Here’s a reason to get your flu shot that you probably haven’t considered: infection with H1N1 may trigger baldness in a small number of people.

A new report from Japan suggests a link between alopecia areata, a condition in which patches of hair fall out, and swine flu (H1N1). The researchers report that seven patients experienced hair loss one to four months after developing the illness.

Read the rest — H1N1 May Cause Baldness

Apparently 7 patients with H1N1 (swine flu) saw hair loss, and although this is an extremely small number of patients to make a link, it’s worth exploring further. The exact cause of alopecia areata remains unknown, so finding even casual links could possibly lead to new information and perhaps even treatments.

Is it true that women that shave their legs all the time eventually will have less and less hair growing on their legs? What I’m getting at is, as a 23 year old man that shaves his head daily, if I decide in a few years to grow my hair out again am I going to run the risk of going bald from all the shaving? I’ve been shaving my head completely bald since I was a teenager and have no hair loss in my immediate family that I know of. And before I started shaving my head, I had no visible loss. I just want to know if I’m hurting my hair by shaving it off every morning.

Thanks!!!

These are old wives tales and have no truth to them. A similar myth is also shaving the head will make the hairs grow out thicker or fuller. False!