The Best Time To Do Something About Your Hair Loss Is Now

Hair. You groom it, dye it, cut it, style it, and spend a fortune on it throughout your life. It plays a major role in how you feel about your appearance and in the image you project to the world. A head full of healthy hair is associated with youth, attraction, and even wealth. Yet you may not realize how much importance it has for you until you start losing it.

Hair loss affects both men and women. As many as 30 million women in the US alone report experiencing some sort of hair loss. For men, the numbers are even higher, with 25% beginning to see signs of thinning before the age of 21 and around 85% with visible hair loss by age 50. Hair loss can manifest as a general reduction in the volume of hair follicles, which you may notice as an increase in strand buildup in the hairbrush, or if you notice more hair going down the drain when you shower. It can also be localized, showing up as balding spots on the scalp, or as a receding hairline or widow’s peak. If you’re concerned that you don’t seem to have as much hair as you used to, read on to learn about the causes and modern solutions for treating permanent hair loss.

What Causes Hair Loss?

Your susceptibility to hair thinning and balding, especially at an early age, is primarily genetic. However, even though we’ve all heard that male pattern baldness is passed down from the mother's father, there’s no true way to determine who’s going to inherit the “baldness gene.” What trichologists (hair experts) do know is that hair loss can be tied directly to a hormone called dihydrotestosterone, or DHT. For people with a higher sensitivity to DHT, the hormone causes hair follicle shrinkage, leading to weaker hair and eventually, less hair growth. DHT-related hair loss typically manifests as a receding hairline and the telltale bald spot at the crown of the head.

Beyond genetics, lifestyle factors can play a huge role in how long you can maintain a thick head of hair. Stress has been shown to trigger hair loss, so taking care of your mind and your physical wellbeing is important. For women, life events that cause major hormonal shifts, like pregnancy and menopause, contribute to thinning hair as well. Unlike with genetic causes, sometimes hair lost to external factors will grow back over time—but all too often, once the hair is gone, it’s gone for good.

When to Do Something About Our Hair Loss

If you have concerns about hair loss or hair thinning, it’s best to act now. You can speak to your doctor or dermatologist, but the best person to tell you whether your hair loss is permanent is a trichologist. They can do a full evaluation to determine whether your hair loss is genetic or due to lifestyle factors. Once they’ve discovered the cause, there is a range of solutions to promote hair growth in cases where the hair loss isn’t permanent. These could include dietary changes, topical treatments, supplements, or prescription medications.

In some cases, the appearance of thinning hair can be improved via lifestyle changes, over-the-counter products, or a change in your hair care regimen. Some medical therapies, such as the serum minoxidil or the pill Finasteride, have been in use for a long time and are known to be effective at improving the hair growth over time—but they come with serious side effects. For those with permanent hair loss, however, the treatments listed above may fall short or show no visible improvements at all. In this case, it’s time to consider the effective, long-lasting results of a medical aesthetic treatment.

Treatments to Reverse Permanent Hair Loss

Though hair loss is one of the most dreaded physical changes for both men and women, it doesn’t need to be. Thinning hair and balding can be treated quickly and effectively using new technologies that recapture what you’re missing most; the look of a full head of healthy hair. Hair restoration has come a long way since doctors started looking for a way to treat hair loss in the 1930s. Modern advancements in medical aesthetics for hair loss are already one of the most popular and sought-after treatments around, and they’re the second most-researched cosmetic treatment for men. 

The hair restoration procedure in the highest demand for men and women concerned about lair loss is Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE). During an FUE session, the treatment provider extracts individual hair follicles from the back or sides of the head using a specialized device and then implants them in the area where more hair growth is desired. The newly implanted hair follicles continue the natural hair growth cycle and results improve each week, with full realization at 9-12 months post-procedure. Unlike previous methods, which involved surgically removing a strip from the back of the patient’s scalp and grafting it to a new area, FUE procedures are minimally invasive, enable a faster recovery process, and leave no linear scarring. Follicular Unit Extraction is the new gold standard in hair restoration because transplanting the hair follicles individually allows for a more natural-looking result, giving you back a full head of hair that you’ll be happy to see in the mirror every morning. Visit our before and after photo gallery to see for yourself just how amazing the results of this treatment can be.

Venus Concept treatments using our NeoGraft^® or ARTAS^® systems use state-of-the-art FUE technology to treat your permanent hair loss discreetly and successfully. Starting with deciding whether hair restoration is for you, our certified treatment providers are ready to walk you through every step of the process. To discover your customized solution for permanent hair loss, find a treatment provider near you by using the search field below: