Watch Out For

The next time you find clumps of hair on your hair brush or comb, you probably are or have:

• Anaemia
• Excessively dieting
• Fungal infection
• On drugs
• Have bad teeth
• Too many aspirins
• Wearing your hair too tightly
• Eating too many nuts
• Affected tonsils
• Syphilis
• Pulling your own hair out
• Surgery
• Iron deficient
• Just had a baby
• Diabetic
• On the pill

Loss of hair does worry people and when you realise that any of the factors can be responsible for hair loss, you will appreciate that it is important that you should worry.

Hair loss may be a normal temporary response to something you have experienced, such as surgery or fever, in which case there is nothing to worry about. Therefore the sooner you seek help, the better.

Apart from that, the manner in which hair is lost can also give important clues as to the cause of the loss:

From all over the scalp or from specific areas?

From one spot or many?

With or without sharply defined margins?

With or without the hair follicles being destroyed?

Quickly or slowly?

All these factors provide important information as to why the loss is occurring, how long it will last, and what should be done about it.

The Hair Cycle

Each hair strand grows for about four years. This growing period is followed by a short transitional phase and then a resting period of about two or three months, after which the hair is lost from the scalp and a new hair takes its place within the same follicle.

Of course, all the hair strands are not all synchronised to grow and fall together. If this were the case, you would temporarily lose all your hair at one time - as does happen with some animals.

Instead the hairs grow and fall in a random fashion so that your normal daily loss of hair goes unnoticed.