Hair Loss Diagnosis

Dandruff can be described as excessive shedding of dead skin cells from the scalp. Shedding of dead skin cells is normal as long as it is not excessive and becoming visible. It is part of the normal process of cell renewal. The cells form in lower skin levels and are gradually pushed upwards by the new, growing cells that form underneath. By the time the cells reach the skin surface, they have died and become flat and they overlap each other like roof tiles and are ready to depart the scalp. In a normal, healthy scalp, the dead cells leave the surface unnoticeably. With dandruff, the whole process is accelerated and a larger number of dead cells are shed, forming big clumps that are visible to the naked eye. Dandruff is a very common condition and some estimates say that it affects up to 50% of the population at some point in their lives.

There are three leading causes and types of dandruff and each one of them has to be treated differently. Some people mistake dandruff for dry scalp and start shampooing their hair less frequently, which, in the case of dandruff, leads to a worsening of their condition. The most frequent cause of dandruff is the overgrowth of a fungus that normally lives in our scalp called malassezia. This fungus feeds on the natural grease in the scalp, converting it into oleic acid. The reasons for the sudden proliferation of this fungus are not exactly known.

Seborrhoeic dermatitis leads to a more severe form of dandruff than malassezia, causing greasy bran-like scales. Seborrhoeic dermatitis is usually accompanied by skin inflammation that, besides the scalp, also affects the eyebrows, ears, the skin around your nose and the lines on your cheeks, forehead and armpits. In moderate climates this condition usually improves in summer as direct sunlight relieves its symptoms. Cradle cap, however frightening it may look, is a mild form of seborrhoeic dermatitis affecting only infants and it clears itself by the time the baby turns one year old.

Psoriasis is the third known cause of dandruff, leading to its most serious form. It causes itchiness and inflammation of the skin and produces thick, silvery scales which occur most often in the scalp, knees and lower back. Psoriasis results in rapid shedding of the skin and, if this shedding occurs from the scalp, it is dandruff. This condition affects about 2% of the population and like the two aforementioned forms of dandruff, it is not contagious. An excessively oily scalp, autoimmune disorders, hormonal imbalances, elevated scalp sensitivity, extreme stress, heart problems, etc. are often associated with an increased occurrence of all forms of dandruff. It has also been observed that some cases of dandruff are triggered by chemicals contained in hair care treatments. However, the exact cause of any of the aforementioned dandruff-triggering conditions is not known.

When it comes to treatment options, for a start it sometimes helps to wash your hair more often and use a mild shampoo. In more severe cases it is advisable to try some of the special anti-dandruff shampoos freely available in pharmacies. For yet more severe cases you may need to ask your doctor to prescribe you a prescription strength shampoo, which typically contains the same active ingredients as OTC products but in a higher concentration. The active substances used in anti-dandruff shampoos can include any of the following: salicylic acid, coal tar, zinc pyrithione, selenium sulphide, sulphur, ketoconazole, corticosteroids and caffeine. Each one of them addresses the problem from a different angle. For the most serious conditions, corticosteroid and anthralin treatments will typically be prescribed by your doctor.

Gray hair at an early age can have different causes, such as vitiligo, vitamin B deficiency, thyroid imbalance, constant and extreme stress, anemia, bad diet, etc. but its greatest trigger is genetics, causing the premature death of pigment-producing cells in hair follicles. When it comes to treating gray hair caused by other health conditions then the focus must be on tackling the primary reason. In treating genetically determined, premature gray hair, any effective therapy should involve interference with our genes. However, at the moment, no such treatment exists that can effectively halt or reverse the dying of pigment-producing cells called melanocytes. There are some commercial products out there, though, containing vitamins, minerals and a Chinese herb Fo-Ti that promise to stop and reverse gray hair but the only evidence supporting the claims made by their marketers refers back to the old Chinese legend of an old villager, Mr. He, from one thousand years ago. Vitamins B, namely folic acid and PABA, have been observed to halt graying in individuals with diets poor in vitamins B but they cannot help reverse gray hair in people suffering from chronic vitamin B deficiency, let alone in cases of genetically-determined gray hair.

Therefore, the only available gray hair treatment option for premature and age-related gray hair is to cover it. There are two principal coloring options for covering gray hair, which include hair dyes and progressive hair colorants. Hair dyes can be temporary, semi-permanent, demi-permanent or permanent, depending on the durability of their coloring effects. The ability of the pigment molecules to penetrate into the hair shaft determines the stability of the hair color. Each hair consists of at least two layers, the cuticle, which is an outer protective layer, and the cortex, which is hidden under the cuticle. Permanent hair dye is, as its name says, the most stable of the hair coloring options, as its large molecules get trapped in the cortex of the hair and resist being washed out but it is also the most drastic method of dyeing hair. Hair dyes are popular, especially with female consumers. Men usually look for more subtle options of covering their gray hair as for a man dyeing hair is socially less acceptable. Progressive hair colorants, with their slow and gradual mode of action, seem to be the right product for men.

The marketing of progressive hair colorants is typically targeted at male customers but these products can be also successfully used by women. They color hair gradually and unnoticeably and only affect your gray hair. They can be applied selectively so that you can leave certain areas untreated to look more natural. Progressive hair colorants are easy to apply, no plastic gloves are needed to apply them (with very few exceptions), and you just have to spread them on your white areas. Their mechanism of action consists of the chemical reaction involving one or two substances from the colorant, which in the presence of atmospheric oxygen produce synthetic pigment on the surface as well as in the pores and for some of them also in the cortex of your hair. As the substance is drying in the air, the chemical reaction begins and lasts until the next shampoo wash. Hence, the longer the substance stays in your hair the better. The downside is that progressive hair colorants have to be reapplied quite frequently, which makes them more expensive compared with the majority of traditional hair dyes. Progressive hair colorants are either metallic based or use organic chemicals.

The occasional controversy surrounding these products results from a wrong understanding of their mode of action and the purpose they were designed for. They were not meant to cover all your gray hair with a single application. For people with more than 50% of their hair already white, it is almost impossible to achieve full white hair coverage with these products, no matter how often they apply them. They were designed for people who want to reduce the amount of their gray and would like to do it discretely and unnoticeably. Frequent shampooing reduces the effectiveness of these products as does exposure to direct sun.

A hair system is any type of supplemental hair in the form of a full wig, hairpiece, toupee, hair extension or a weave, which replaces your own missing hair. Hair systems are, for many hair loss sufferers, the only existing option to replace the lost hair and to regain the former appearance of a full head of hair. The quality and the price of hair systems depend on a variety of factors, such as the type of hair used, the production process used to weave the wig, the foundation of the hair system and how it is attached to the scalp.

The type of hair is among the first things most buyers will ask about. Both natural and artificial hair can be used. The natural hair can be of human or animal origin. Some hair systems blend human hair with animal hair to save on cost. The human hair can be of Asian origin (the least expensive option), Indian origin and European origin (the most expensive option). Asian and Indian hair must often be bleached, which makes it brittle and less durable. Considering the harvesting methods, virgin hair happens to be the most expensive and hair gained from combs and hairbrushes the least expensive option. Human hair requires more care than artificial hair but it looks more authentic, lasts longer and is more comfortable to wear. Its downside is its higher cost and the fact that it can lose its colour when exposed to direct sun for long hours or break, as normal human hair usually does.

As far as the wig’s manufacturing process is concerned, hair systems can be hand-tied or machine-tied. Hand-tied wigs can also be custom made, which happens to be the most expensive alternative. The foundation of a hair system can be either a polymer or a mesh. The polymer foundation is a more affordable but also a less comfortable option. A mesh structure breathes better than polymer structures and is thus more comfortable to wear but, besides being more expensive, it is also a less durable alternative and more difficult to maintain. Mesh is suitable for creating authentic-looking hairlines, therefore many wigs combine both technologies, mesh for the hairline and the polymer structure for the inside of the wig.

The technique of attaching a wig to your scalp and blending it with your existing hair is a critical factor. There are semi-permanently attached hair systems that are either glued to your scalp or woven into your existing hair and these can only be removed in a hair salon once every five or six weeks for cleaning. These systems cling tightly to your scalp but can be unhealthy and uncomfortable to wear after a couple of weeks of continued use. The temporarily-attached hair systems use double-sided sticky tape or clips to fix the hairpiece to your scalp and existing hair. They can be removed and cleaned any time you like but they can also be easily and unexpectedly removed, thus leading to embarrassing situations.

The final, determining factor when choosing a hair system is the price. Any hair system is temporary in nature, it will not last for ever like hair transplants do. Nevertheless, they can be pretty expensive. Hair transplants can cost as much as ten thousand dollars or more. Although you can get a wig for a few hundred dollars, the more authentic pieces cost a few thousand dollars and require regular maintenance costing a couple of hundred dollars a month. In addition, you need to buy at least two identical pieces, one to wear while the other is being maintained by your hair salon. Though not cheap, hair systems are often the only option to replace the lost hair for many alopecia areata patients, as well as a large number of female hair loss sufferers.

Baldness can be caused by a great variety of different factors but heredity seems to be the number one reason why men and women lose their mane. Hereditary baldness in men and women has the same main cause, which is dihydrotestosterone (DHT) attacking our hair follicles. DHT is a metabolite of the male hormone testosterone but it is also present in the female body. Hair loss sufferers lose their hair not because of increased levels of DHT in their bodies but due to the susceptibility of their hair follicles to harmful DHT attacks, although the exact mechanism and reasons why certain hairs, mostly those on the top of the head, are more vulnerable to such attacks are not yet know.

The most visible difference between the male and female form of hereditary baldness is in its shape. The male form has a characteristic horseshoe pattern whereas the female form is a diffuse thinning across the entire scalp and is for that reason less easily-recognised. The female form of hereditary hair loss is, in its form, practically indistinguishable from hair loss caused by various other factors. The second most common reason for a woman to lose her hair are hormonal imbalances during and after pregnancy or menopause. Such changes are typically of a temporary nature and so also is the hair loss, although post-menopausal hair loss is in most cases permanent.

When it comes to treating hair loss in women there are several specifics. First, most women are not very good candidates for hair transplantation due to their diffuse thinning pattern, which makes it impossible to identify the hair that will be resistant to future miniaturisation and will not die. Secondly, finasteride, which is one of the only two FDA-approved hair loss treatments available today, cannot be used on women and neither can dutasteride, which is its closest relative. Rogaine (generic name minoxidil) is the second FDA-approved hair loss treatment and its approved concentration for women is only 2% versus 5% for men. However, many doctors recommend their female patients use 5% minoxidil formulations such as Rogaine foam. Aminexil is a molecule similar to minoxidil and it is often recommended to women who are pregnant or breastfeeding as a safer alternative to minoxidil.

Although some anti-androgens such as finasteride (better known as Propecia) or dutasteride cannot be prescribed to women, there are other anti-androgen medications that can be effectively used to treat baldness in women. Spironolactone (trade name Aldactone) and cyproterone acetate (used in contraceptives such as Diane 35, Diane 50 and Ginette 35) are anti-androgens most commonly used to treat female pattern baldness.

Another treatment for females with seemingly good rates of success is topical estrogen solutions such as Crinohermal, which use a female hormone, estradiol, as their main active substance. Estradiol is capable of inhibiting the conversion of testosterone into follicle-harming DHT. Hormone replacement therapy is another hormonal treatment suitable for women at menopause, with estrogens and progesterone pills and creams being the most common forms of this treatment. Estrogen levels in the body decline with time. As women enter the menopause, estrogen levels decline and more of the male hormone testosterone is then bioavailable to be converted into follicle-harming DHT.

This list of female hair loss treatments is not exhaustive, though. There are a number of other remedies that are often claimed to help promote hair growth in women, such as alfatradiol, ketoconazole, fluridil, flutamide, as well as different substances of natural and mainly herbal origin. Despite the fact that there are female patients who will swear by some of these treatments, none of them has ever been sufficiently clinically studied, let alone approved by any major national health supervisory authority as a treatment for female hair loss and the claims of their guaranteed effectiveness should be taken with a grain of salt.

Propecia and Rogaine may be the best sellers amongst the hair loss treatments but their market share is not too big. Combined sales of natural hair-loss products are due to their sheer variety already exceeding the sales of medicinal hair-loss treatments. The key to the growing popularity of natural products is a general belief that they are as effective as medicinal treatments but less expensive and do not carry the risk of negative side-effects. However, none of these claims seem be true.

There is an array of herbal and naturally-derived substances out there that are assumed to treat hereditary pattern baldness in humans but none of them has ever been clinically proven and independently verified in a statistically significant sample. Hence, no matter what the marketers of the natural hair-loss treatments say about the superior effectiveness of their products, you should take their word with a grain of salt. That does not automatically imply, though, that all natural hair-loss products are a scam. Natural treatments are a mix of numerous components that are thought to promote hair growth and they may work for some people but their mechanism of action is a mystery and their results usually vary significantly between patients. Nonetheless, you will always find some hair loss sufferers who will swear by their natural remedy.

It is needless to say that herbal and naturally-derived supplements have not been subjected to any rigorous clinical testing regarding their safety, either alone or in interactions with other substances, as medicinal drugs. Most plants and naturally-derived substances are only tested on rodents not on humans. In addition, increasing numbers of herbs and herbal products are recently becoming responsible for nasty allergic reactions. Many marketers tell you that saw palmetto is as effective as finasteride in treating hereditary baldness and that it can be used as its natural alternative. Its mode of action is to reduce the dihydrotestosterone (DHT) levels in your scalp, the same job finasteride does. However, saw palmetto is supposed to have no negative side-effects. Saw palmetto simply enjoys the best of both worlds; it is as effective as finasteride but as harmless as drinking bottled water. A quick internet research turned up the following list of side-effects experienced by saw palmetto users: stomach pains and diarrhoea, severe bleeding during saw palmetto use, allergic reactions, difficulty with erections, testicular discomfort, decline in sexual desire, breast tenderness and enlargement and a warning that saw palmetto extract is not recommended for women who are pregnant or breast-feeding because of its possible hormonal activity. This shows that herbal substances after closer examination may not be so harmless at all.

And lastly the price comparison does not always speak in favour of natural hair-loss remedies, either. They happen to be some of the most outrageously-overpriced hair loss products on the market. Sure, it is not easy to beat the price of cheap generic minoxidil. But why should you pay ten times more for the same generic minoxidil just because it comes in a box with a few herbs and vitamins? Natural hair-loss products usually come as a complete treatment, consisting of topical and oral applications and a shampoo. You are advised to use the entire therapy, as the individual components complement each other. This ensures very good profits for the manufacturer although some of its components such as shampoo can never grow you new hair.

In spite of the fact that the hair loss industry generates worldwide annual revenues of many billion US dollars, there seem to be only a few treatment options proven to deliver measurable and satisfactory results. One such option is hair surgery. Hair surgery alone is estimated to earn revenues of three billion dollars from the nearly 300,000 hair transplants that are expected to be performed around the world this year. In addition to that, there are billions of dollars to be made annually from the sales of diverse hair loss products. But how many of them really work? One would not be exaggerating to say that at least 90% of all non-surgical, hair loss treatments are a scam. Having said that, billions of dollars are spent every year wastefully on useless rubbish. One thing is wasting money and the other no less important thing is losing the battle against time while the hair loss continues, most likely becoming irreversible. This guide should help you identify a treatment which is not a waste of your time and money without trying it out first.

Once you have pinpointed the product you are considering trying, check the independent consumer reviews to get a basic understanding of its effectiveness. Do not use testimonials from the manufacturer’s website, they are most likely fake. It is best-advised to use references from large independent websites across the web such as Folica, Amazon, GreyHairLoss or RateItAll and crosscheck with reviews at various hair loss forums. Since it is difficult to recognise right away who is telling the truth and who is cheating, you will need to come back and check the arguments again here once you have done your research and gained a better understanding of the product and its individual components.

As a second step, you should look at the composition of the remedy you are considering buying. If you cannot find the list of individual, active ingredients, ask the manufacturer or his marketers to provide it. If they fail to provide you the required breakdown, consider it a scam. You need to verify the stories behind active substances and if you want to get a really good understanding of their science, you must verify references to clinical trials and peer studies. This is probably the most difficult and the most time-consuming part of this job.

The third thing you might need to do is to check the manufacturer’s claims. If they sound unsubstantiated and too good to be true or the before and after pictures appear unrealistic, raise your guard. And lastly, if the product you are looking at is promoted on the web, check on the site and in the whois directory who is behind the website promoting it. If the name and the address of the owner is hidden behind a WHOIS guard, apply a deep discount to your valuation. Any person or company that truly believes in its product will be proud to have its name and address attached to that product.

Although these tips may not be exhaustive, they should guide you in estimating the potential of the hair loss product you are considering buying and might save you frustration with wasting time and money on useless rubbish. If you have tried certain hair regrowth products already and want to share you experiences, there are several useful places where you can have your word spread and heard by other hair loss suffers, such as the aforementioned Amazon, Folica, RateItAll and GreyHairLoss, to name just a few.

Adhering to certain principals is a must if you want your hair loss therapy to be successful. The first thing you should do before you start looking for a suitable hair loss treatment is to determine whether you are a hair loss sufferer at all and what type of hair loss you are suffering from. For male patients who have already lost a substantial portion of their hair on the top and front of their head, it is easy to self-diagnose. But if you are suffering from diffuse hair loss or your hair loss began only recently, you need to go and see a dermatologist. It would be senseless to treat a condition that does not exist. It is very common for hair loss patients to skip the doctor’s consultation while many others simply deny their condition. This very often leads to hair loss progressing too far for it to be treated successfully. In order to regrow hair you must have fine miniaturised hair left in your balding areas. Once your hair follicles have died and there is no baby hair left, no miracle can rejuvenate them.

Once you have determined which type of hair loss you are suffering from, the journey can begin. Whether you intend to follow you doctor’s advice or experiment with your own treatments, you must have realistic expectations. False hopes necessarily lead to frustration, no matter how effective the treatment is. Do not believe that there is a hair loss remedy that can re-grow all of your lost hair. You will be lucky to find a treatment to arrest your balding process and if you manage to re-grow a few hairs, take it as a bonus. Keep in mind that the ‘before and after’ pictures on promotional websites are forged. The best possible improvement one can expect from any treatment is to re-grow the hair you have lost in the previous three years.

Many patients fail to follow professional advice of using proven treatments and instead opt for allegedly safer natural remedies, as they get scared off by the potential negative side-effects of medicinal drugs. This is a common trick used by the shrewd marketers of hair loss scams - to spread stories exaggerating the harmful side-effects of proven medicinal drugs. They lure you into buying their own alternative product, which is most likely a waste of your time and money. Starting with unproven remedies deprives you of the opportunity to test some of the best hair loss treatments available today.

The key to any successful treatment is, besides picking the right remedy, adherence to the prescribed daily regimen. Many people, in their impatience, fail to follow their doctor’s instructions and start experimenting with two or more different treatments simultaneously. This often leads to abandoning certain treatments before they have started producing results. Any hair loss treatment requires a minimum of four months to kick in and you should give it at least six months to deliver measurable results. Overdosing will not speed up or improve results.

And finally, do not overreact to shedding. Shedding is common in any effective hair regrowth therapy. If you start a new treatment, such as minoxidil, you will first have to shed the old hair. Minoxidil stimulates hair follicles, resulting in an increase in the thickness of your miniaturised hair. But this will not happen overnight. First, the old thin miniaturised hair must be shed, and then the hair follicles rearrange themselves and start producing hair that is thicker in diameter. Typically, the first indication that the treatment is working is accelerated hair loss.

We can divide hair loss treatment options into dihydrotestosterone (DHT) blockers, also called antiandrogens, and hair growth stimulants. Considering methods of application, they can be split into oral treatments, topicals and others, such as laser therapy. And lastly, hair loss treatments can be broken into medicinal treatments and natural treatments.

The hair loss treatment options can be surgical and non-surgical. Although there are only a few surgical techniques currently used, the non-surgical spectrum is wide and confusing. There seem to be arrays of non-surgical treatment options available to those who want to avoid hair surgery. Propecia and Rogaine might be the best known medicinal hair loss treatments, while dried fruits of saw palmetto and a Chinese herb, He Shou Wu, also known as Fo-Ti, are the natural ingredients most often used in alternative hair loss remedies.

Furthermore, the non-surgical hair loss therapies can be broken down into medicinal and alternative treatments, whereas when considering methods of application, they can be divided into oral treatments, topicals and others, such as LaserComb or scalp exercise. Irrespective of the aforementioned breakdowns, hair growth treatments work either by blocking the activity of dihydrotestosterone, also called antiandrogens, or by stimulating new hair growth.

Minoxidil, also known under its trade name Rogaine, is the best-known hair loss medicine amongst hair growth stimulants. It is assumed that hair growth stimulants work by directly stimulating epithelial growth of hair follicles and some of them may also counteract the hardening of the hair follicles but the exact mechanism has never been described. One thing that all hair growth stimulants have in common is their ability to increase the length of the hair growth cycle, thus improving the ratio of hair in the growth phase and to increase the hair’s diameter.

The natural hair loss treatments are in principle assumed to work by the aforementioned modes of action and are usually promoted as safer alternatives than medicinal treatments. There are not too many hair loss treatments out there that have been clinically proven and independently verified to be effective in treating any type of baldness. Of those few existing, all happen to be medicinal drugs. Natural hair loss treatments have still to live up to manufacturer claims.

When deciding about the most suitable hair loss treatment option, one should always think about approaching the problem from different angles. It is best advised to use a combination of antiandrogen and hair growth stimulant, such as a Propecia with Rogaine. Alternative, hair loss treatments, for instance natural remedies, should largely be considered as a method of fine-tuning this basic regimen in order to achieve additional benefits.

Men have been searching for an ultimate cure for hair loss for thousands of years but until very recently all available cures were either cosmetic cover-ups or vitamin/mineral pills and herbal lotions, with far too many of them just being scams. It was only with the advent of finasteride and minoxidil and improvements made in hair transplantation techniques in recent fifteen years that the new era began, enabling hair loss sufferers to halt the further progression of the balding process and replace the missing hair on top of their head using the hair left at the back of their scalp. However, to this day no ultimate cure for baldness is available.

There are presently several promising medical drugs and new surgical techniques under development but none of these new therapies is expected to hit the market before 2010. NEOSH101 is being developed by the US firm Neosil and it is currently undergoing phase IIb clinical trials. NEOSH101 has been shown to be a more powerful and faster-acting hair growth stimulant than minoxidil and it only needs applying once daily. Though considerably improving the current hair loss treatment options, NEOSH101 is not going to become an ultimate cure for hair loss. The clinical trials seem to be advancing slower than most hair loss patients would like and, hence, do not hold your breath for it hitting the market anytime soon. NEOSH101 is largely expected to replace minoxidil and other less powerful hair growth stimulants.

Another promising line of development is the telomerase research. Telomerase is an enzyme that is able to put natural caps on telomeres and thus protect them from shortening. Telomerase thereby helps maintain the genomic integrity. Shortened telomeres are associated with occurrence of the premature aging processes. However, the uncontrolled activation of telomerase can cause cancer. Cancer research is the main focus of the telomerase study but scientists are also seeking other applications, such as anti-aging drugs and drugs against hair loss and gray hair. Although still under development, there are already some products available on the market that seek to emulate the mechanism of telomerase action but they apparently have no scientific backing and should be avoided. Telomerase research could really change the world of medicine but its commercial application might be a good decade away.

Hair multiplication, often called hair cloning or follicular neogenesis, is the next hopeful treatment option being currently developed. This technique involves extracting the hair follicles from the back of the patient’s scalp, culturing and multiplying them in vitro and injecting the newly-grown hair cells into the bald scalp. Among several teams of scientists on three continents exploring hair multiplication, the UK healthcare firm Intercytex appears to be the frontrunner. Intercytex reported results of the latest stage of the clinical phase II study of ICX-TRC (a suspension of a patient’s own dermal papilla cells) in March 2008 and they were largely positive. The next release is expected in Q4 2008. This therapy might hit the market in 2010 at the earliest. The main benefit of hair multiplication would be solving the shortage of donor hair which is the main limiting factor in hair transplantation.

Generating hair follicles in hair-free skin wounds is an utterly new approach to regrowing lost hair. It was discovered accidentally as wounded skin in mice started producing new hair. This technology is currently being developed by the US medical device company, Follica, that licensed this technology from the University of Pennsylvania. Though this method may sound weird it only uses common medical devices and drugs that have already been medically approved and thus it might not take too long for it to become commercially available.

This is the list of only a few promising treatments for hair loss that are being currently developed but many others are in the pipeline. It seems that becoming bald will soon be by choice rather than destiny.

The hair loss treatments most frequently prescribed by dermatologists and hair loss clinics around the world are Propecia, or some other form of finasteride, such as Proscar, and Regaine/Rogaine, or its generic form - minoxidil. Some doctors will also recommend you to use supplementary vitamin and mineral pills, special shampoos, such as Nizoral, and perhaps a laser comb. But very few dermatologists and hair loss clinics will recommend their patients buy herbal hair loss treatments. But there are so many of them out there and most of them claim that they work better than Propecia or any other medicinal treatment prescribed by your doctor, while being free of potential negative side effects so typical of prescription medicine. And some of the manufacturers seem to be so convinced about the effectiveness of their product as to offer you a full money back guarantee. Or is it a catch?

First, one needs to differentiate between medical practice and the pharmaceutical industry on one hand and the cosmetics industry on the other. The medicinal and pharmaceuticals fields are strictly regulated in almost every country in the world, ensuring patient’s safety. Doctors can only prescribe permitted medications for certain conditions and the safety and efficacy of such medications has to be approved by the national health supervisory authority. Such products are considered safe and clinically proven to help treat the given condition. If your doctor recommends you some other, unproven herbal hair loss product, they will be taking the risk of supporting a treatment that has not been subjected to any rigorous clinical examination. Most doctors would not dare to do that since they have no guarantee that such a product would be beneficial to their patients and recommending a bad product could hurt their reputation.

Although some of the active ingredients in herbal hair loss products may pose a health risk, despite the common belief that they are safe, this is not their main controversy. The principal question is whether the herbal hair loss remedies are effective in treating hair loss. They might be effective to a certain degree since some of them also contain minoxidil, the only existing, clinically-proven and FDA-approved, topical medicine for treating hereditary baldness. Additional components, besides herbal extracts, usually include minerals, vitamins, amino acids and essential fatty acids. Most of these substances are either essential to ensuring healthy growth of hair and skin or they have been shown to promote new hair growth, mostly in small studies conducted on rodents. They have never been clinically tested for treating hereditary baldness and thus their effectiveness and mechanism of action are unknown. They may or may not help promote hair growth but since no clinical proof of their efficacy exists, the only way to find out is to buy them and try for yourself. And should they fail to work as promised, you may find out that the generous money-back guarantee, after deducting their incurred costs, only applies to a small fraction of the original price. This is the way some herbal hair loss product manufacturers earn their money.

In summary, no herbal hair loss remedy has ever been clinically proven and independently verified to effectively treat hereditary baldness. This does not necessarily mean that all herbal hair loss remedies are ineffective as they might work for some of us. However, they are usually overpriced and should at best be expected to maintain your existing hair rather than grow new hair from a bald patch.