Category: Hair Loss Causes

Dr. Rassman,

For the longest time I have wanted to visit your clinic, but I am as far away from California as I can get. I am a 20 year old male experiencing abnormal hair growth throughout my entire scalp. I saw a dermatologist recently who told me that I do indeed have bitemporal recession, but that the kinked and bizarre hair growth is something independent of MPB. Beyond this, he was not helpful in the least. What concerns me most is that hairs all throughout my supposedly permanent region are growing in wiry, almost identical to a mathematical sine curve. As the hair thins, I noticed that the amplitude of the waves also gets smaller.

I have a sample bag of at least 100 such hairs and would like to send them to you or your clinic so they can be analyzed. Is this possible? I have waded though alot of literature, and the closest thing I can find to my condition is progressive acquired kinking or “woolly hair” – except it is not isolated in any one spot. I have looked at the hairs under a microscope (I’ve got access to a lab) and they are clearly abnormal. It looks similar to pili torti, but the hair is waved and not twisted. It also shows a spangled appearance when I view it under bright light.

Please help me, doc! I understand there may be no cure, but at the very least I’d like a diagnosis, or a name by which to call it. If you can supply a mailing address, I’ll send the samples to you.

Unfortunately, sending samples of your hair will not help me to figure out what is going on, as I do not do hair analysis outside the head and scalp. I am afraid that I can not offer you experience or insights with this condition without a proper examination. Sorry.

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is there any way to speed up mpb???? if mpb is caused by adrogens, would using any product that may otherwise cause some form of hairloss speed it up??? acelerate it????
also do you recomend any recomended sleep patterns for men loosing their hair?

Good question. Although the mechanism of hair loss in men is known to be hormone related, there are many other factors that can accelerate your hair loss, including:

• emotional changes and stress
• major medical condition
• major surgery
• inflammation of skin
• nutritional imbalance
• steroid or steroid-like drug use
• extreme dieting
• hair transplant surgery

Having said that, most of those conditions never cause permanent hair loss if you don’t have the genetic susceptibility for it.

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Dr william
i need to ask you something. why don’t you give people any hope in life? your OPINIONS are so pessimistic. like the one i read that if a father has a balding gene he may not express male pattern baldness in his whole lifetime. so how did you know at the first place that he got a balding gene? and if you know the balding gene please say it’s name to the people here. of course if you have a balding gene you will certainly go bald unless you have a proof. thanks

If you think that I am negative, that is an interesting observation. Throughout my life, I have been called an optimist, but I must be pragmatic and realistic when writing this blog every day. For example, I can not say that hair cloning will come about shortly as others might say, because my research pointed to a troubled view on the timelines for cloning. Likewise, you state that I’ve said something like, “if a father has a balding gene he may not express male pattern baldness in his whole lifetime.” Using the “if“, I was discussing possible considerations. If you call this pessimistic, the language speaks to itself. It has long been said that writers are accountable by their words. Mine are right in your question. Do you have a personal problem with me?

There are well over 100 genes controlling hair loss and hair growth and hair cycles and hair death. Hair is one of the more complex organs in the body, because it has elements that arise from all three of the germ layers of the embryo and the control and coordination of those three layers and their contributions to grow a single follicular unit is so complex, that we still don’t command it or understand it all. That is the crux of the research going on. I hope that this helps.

Is there any condition that you know of that would make hair spontaneously fall out. Occasionally after washing my hair my scalp will become very irritated and I will shed like crazy (100-200 hairs) for a few hours. The last time this happened (2 Days ago) I lost about a quarter of the hair I had. Everytime I go to a derm. they don’t know what this is but tell me I have Seborrhoeic Dermatitis and for me to wash my hair MORE! I use Tar Coal and have a prescription for Clobetasol Propionate.

100 to 200 hairs lost daily is not considered massive, as around 100-150 is normal, though that number can be higher or lower for each person. Everyone is different. However, massive hair shedding can be related to certain medical conditions such as chronic telogen effluvium, but if you add up what you are saying, this would suggest that you will lose it all very quickly — something I really doubt. Hair regrows at a rate of a half an inch per month.

Maybe you need to see another doctor who can test you hair for miniaturization and even perform a hair pull test on you. These two steps can point to your diagnosis.

I drink pink grapefruit juice from concentrate everyday which helps to increase my methadone level. Can you tell me if you know of any claims or studies done which show that by drinking grapefruit juice before taking methadone can actually increase one’s methadone blood level ?

I am curious to know if drinking pink grapefruit juice from concentrate can cause one to actually lose hair ? Thank you

Pink (or yellow) grapefruit (juice or concentrate or in any from) does not cause hair loss. Grapefruit juice interacts with many prescription drugs, but I am unfamiliar with any connection to methadone.

For more info, see these links from CBS News / WebMD:

• Why Grapefruit May Affect Some Drugs
• Grapefruit Bad With Some Drugs

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Thank you for making yourself accessable on the blog Dr. Rassman.

I’m having a peculiar issue with my hair. I shaved my head completely bald apx. 3 months ago to achieve a good baseline to monitor any future potential regrowth. My hair over my entire
head is generally about 1.5 inches long now. When I do see hairs that fall out in the shower or on my pillow they are strangely without question the same uniformed length(being about 1/4 inch long). Why is this so? or how can this be? They are always the same length, being much shorter than the majority of the other hairs on my head that are not falling out. They are however, no less thicker or thinner in diameter than the other hairs. Thanks for your time again.

We lose 100-150 hairs per day normally as the hair cycles. Considering that you cut the hair to equal lengths, then the ‘old’ normal hair that is shed will have the same length as the ‘new’ hair that is not shed.

Dear sir, I am 46 yrs old and recently have had blotching hair loss on face and scalp. it is baby smooth and it seems to be speading in different areas. can you please explain? thank you

With such a brief description it is impossible to offer any help or try to explain what is going on. Atypical hair loss has many differential diagnoses (such as alopecia areata) . You need to see a good physician for a full medical work up to explore medical causes of hair loss. In some cases hair loss can be a sign for medical problems.