What Can You Do To Prevent Or Manage Hair Loss?

Hair loss is a reality for a significant amount of people. Two-thirds of men experience some form of hair loss by the age of 35, and while it might be somewhat less, one-third of women is not a small number, and that’s how many will experience hair loss at some point in their life. With that in mind, it’s important to understand that it will happen to you. If your hair is important to how you feel about yourself, your self-confidence, or how you present to the world, then you should be aware of the different options that you can prevent, treat, or otherwise cope with hair loss. Let’s look at some examples.

Ensure your diet is in the right place

Unless you’re severely deficient in certain key nutrients, you’re not likely to be losing your hair directly as a result of your diet. That said, your diet can certainly influence your hair health and may make it easier for other conditions to cause hair loss more easily. The best way to combat this is, of course, to improve your diet. In particular, you want to make sure that you’re getting enough protein, especially the form known as keratin, which is often found in eggs, nuts, beans, and fish. Vitamin A is also vital for healthy hair growth and is very common in spinach. Get to know the foods best for your hair.

Use supplements specifically for your hair

Making some changes to your diet can certainly strengthen your hair, but if you’re looking to mitigate or prevent hair loss, you might want to choose more targeted ways to offer your hair and scalp the nutrition that it needs, as well. To that end, there are various supplements that can be highly helpful. Vitamin D deficiencies are very common, especially in northern parts of the world, where sunlight intake can drop severely, and vitamin D is vital for hair health, so getting these supplements might be a good idea. Multivitamins contain a wide range of nutrients that can be important to hair growth, as well. Aside from the aforementioned vitamin D, they can contain vitamins A, B, and C, as well as iron, zinc, and selenium. All of these are crucial for both growing and retaining hair.

Take care of your stress

Your hair health and mental health might be more connected than you realize. There is a certain stereotype about being so stressed that you’re “pulling your hair out.” While stress-related hair loss doesn’t work quite like that, extreme levels of stress and pressure can cause issues with hair thinning, which can lead to noticeable bald patches. As such, if you’re feeling stressed and noticing that your hair is coming out, you might want to look into management strategies and professional help to enable you to better cope with extreme emotions.

Invest in the necessary hair care

While it’s important to understand that many of the issues that can affect your hair’s strength, how easily it falls out and how easily it breaks, are rooted in your diet first and foremost, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t also take a direct approach to improve its health. Washing your hair regularly is vital for keeping it healthy and clean. There are certain hair products that can offer it some protection, too. Coconut oil is great for protecting your hair from breakages by binding the proteins within it, while olive oil works as a conditioning ingredient, as it helps to lock moisture into the hair. Dry hair is much more likely to break away, after all.

Avoid treatments that might be overly taxing on your hair

Just as good hair care can help strengthen your hair, subjecting your hair to too many harsh treatments can end up weakening it and making it much more likely to break. Bleaching your hair while dyeing it can make it significantly weaker, for instance. Similarly, you should be aware of the harsher chemicals commonly found in shampoos and other hair care formulas that you might want to start avoiding. It’s not just the products you should be mindful of, but how you style your hair, as well. Overexposure to heat can dry out your hair, making it brittle and weak, for instance. Hairstyles that pull on your scalp stress the follicles of the hair, which can cause it to fall out much easier.

Treating related conditions

Just as hair loss can be caused by everyday things, such as how you eat and how you care for your hair, it can be caused by all manner of health issues and conditions. There are several illnesses that cause hair loss, and for most of these, treating the underlying condition may be vital for treating symptoms such as hair loss. Aside from alopecia conditions, there are also fungal infections, autoimmune disorders, diabetes, and more that can cause hair loss. Many of these conditions will be picked up during a routine physical, so it’s important to make sure that you’re keeping up to date on your health, especially if you’re worried about seeing some of the signs of hair loss.

Over-the-counter shampoo

For conditions that are characterized primarily by hair loss, first and foremost, such as the different types of alopecia, and other forms of pattern or hereditary baldness, there are some options to try. The most common option is Minoxidil, also commonly known under the brand name Rogaine. This is a formula that can be bought over-the-counter, with no need for a prescription. Coming as a shampoo, liquid, or foam, these are used every day, or twice a day for men, and are designed to slow the rate of hair loss. In cases of non-permanent hair loss, it can also help hair regrow to some degree. This is a slow process, however, and it can take months for progress to show, so patience is necessary.

Prescription treatments

There are also prescription treatments that your doctor might recommend. For instance, there are oral options such as spironolactone and dutasteride. However, the most common prescription medication is Finasteride, more commonly known under the brand name Propecia. This drug is taken specifically by men, as it works by stopping the hair loss caused by high amounts of the male hormone testosterone, which is rarely an issue for women. Like all medical treatments for hair loss, this is a slow-working approach, which may take months to begin to show any effect, and it’s also known to sometimes be less effective for men who are over 60 years of age.

Consider a transplant

At some point, you may have to accept that you’re going to regain the hair that you have lost and that while you can care for the hair you still have, you might want to try and restore yourself to the confident head of hair that you had beforehand. There are two main options for this, the surgical and the non-surgical. Hair transplant surgery can be done in a variety of ways, but typically the involves using hair-bearing skin that is grafted to places where hair is thinning or the scalp is bald. It’s important to do your research into hair transplant cost ranges, as they can require some level of investment. That said, a lot of people find their confidence greatly restored by these procedures.

Look at some wigs

The non-surgical option, when it comes to restoring the aesthetic of a full head of hair, is to invest in wigs. Although they might not be as long-term a solution as hair transplants, wigs can still be very expensive, so you need to make sure that you’re able to set aside the budget for them. It’s important to understand that wigs come in a wide range of qualities, as well, so you need to find high-end wig providers near you or those who can deliver online. Some care has to go in to ensure that wigs can maintain their volume and luster, and they can take a little getting used to. However, wigs also make it much easier to access a much wider range of gorgeous hairstyles once you’ve built up your collection.

Coping with hair loss

The above points largely focus on the steps that you can to prevent, manage, or replace hair during the hair loss process. However, it’s important to recognize the emotional component of living with hair loss, as well. People can come to grieve their hair, and you might find yourself going through that process. It’s vital to acknowledge your emotions and to process them healthily. There are hair loss support groups out there that can listen to you, understand where you’re coming from, and even offer some practical advice to help you move on and get into a healthier headspace down the line.

There are plenty of ways to treat and manage hair loss, from strengthening your hair now to thinking about procedures to replace or bolster it after hair loss has started taking place. Get to know more about the type of hair loss affecting you so that you can find the right solutions.