Hair loss in men and women; their types, causes, triggering factors & homeopathic treatments:

Types :The medical term for hair loss is alopecia.

 Alopecia can be of four types.

1. alopecia areata

2. alopecia totalis

3. alopecia universalis

4. androgenic alopecia

Now in the list the first three are auto-immune disorders, that means when without any obvious cause our body starts to produce antibodies to combat antigens of our own body then it starts destructing our own cells. In case of hair & scalp it starts destroying our very own hair follicles.

In case of alopecia areata, a single or multiple small patches occur in our hair containing areas. Most commonly on scalp, but it might be anywhere else too like beard, moustache etc.

In case of alopecia totalis, all the hair follicles of our scalp get destroyed forming a total bald look.

But this is not the end! The most dangerous among these three is alopecia universalis. In this condition all the hairs of our body falls down & forms a total hairless body.

Fortunately, the most common type of alopecia is the fourth one of our list - androgenic alopecia. It accounts for about 90 percent among all the alopecias. It's typically permanent and can be attributed to heredity. Now androgenic alopecia can be of two types - simply in case of male its mpb (male pattern baldness) & in case of female its fpb (female pattern baldness).

Male pattern baldness has 7 grades according to the amount of lost hair and similarly female pattern baldness has 3 grades.

Causes:

MPH & FPH are typically genetic. There are some triggering factors which determines at which pace the follicles will be destroyed. Now please note why I mention these as triggering factors. Typically people call these causes of hair loss, but scientifically there is only one cause behind hair loss. The name of the cause is DHT - Dihydrotestosterone. 

When the testosterone hormone of our body mixes with an enzyme called 5 alpha reductase, it forms DHT. Now you might wonder then how females get the condition. The female body also produces a small amount of testosterone though it may primarily be a male sex hormone. That is why the occurrence of baldness is much more in males than females.

Now when these DHT gets formed it searches for a suitable place in our body to get deposited & unfortunately the deposition site is our hair hair follicles cause DHT has very high affinity towards the hair follicles especially of scalp. So now you can understand the basic cause of hair loss.

Now we come to the triggering factors which causes the formation of 5 alpha reductase hormone in our body, later on which gets binded with testosterone to form DHT.

The triggering factors: hormonal changes - thyroid diseases (hypo or hyper), addison's disease, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation or use of ocp (oral contraceptive pills)-medication such as chemotherapy-excessive shampooing, blow-drying, ironing-permanent hair straightening, smoothening, perming-emotional stress-nervous habits such as continual hair pulling (trichotilomania) or scalp rubbing-burns or radiation therapy-scalp diseases like scalp psoriasis, seborrheic dermatitis, tinea capitis-poor nutrition, anaemia, iron deficiency

Treatment:

Firstly for the first three types of alopecia mentioned above, there are not many choices of treatment. Only two options are there:

1. Steroid therapy or injection (fails miserably because it reduces body immunity even more. So you might see improvement initially but in the later part of treatment even the remaining hairs also falls down). You can't even opt for hair transplant cause the body is already in a destructive mode. So eventually all the transplanted hairs will fall off.

2. Homeopathic constitutional treatment that cures the disease by just increasing your body immunity. So that your body gets the required immunity to combat the situation by stopping the production of unnecessary antibodies.

Now for androgenic alopecia that is mpb & fpb, few treatments options are there. But most of them are hoax. There are options like hair transplant, mesotherapy, stem cell therapy, platelet rich plasma therapy. Among all these except hair transplant all are temporary treatment procedures. Only hair transplant can be a permanent solution provided of the fact your body accepts the transplanted hair follicles and it does not start antigen antibody reaction to fall them off.

The most effective alternative to all these hazards is homeopathy & Cosmetology. The line of treatment in these case is combination of three procedures.

1. Constitutional homeopathic medicine to arrest the hair fall & form the base for growing new hair.

2.  Specific medicine for sure shot hair growth. 

3. Cosmetological treatment that involves microneedling of scalp with Dermastamp which helps the medicines to get absorbed to the dermis layer to produce new hair follicles & it also helps in collagen formation. It is the latest cosmetological treatment for hair regrowth.