Hair Restoration and Replacement

If you have spent any time at all looking for hair loss products that will actually help you deal with your balding and thinning hair problems then you know it can be very difficult to separate the truth from the fiction.  Every body claims that their hair loss product is the best and it will miraculously re-grow your hair in just a few days.  The fact is there are no miracle treatments for hair loss but there are several several hair loss products that can alleviate the problem.

First lets look at what causes hair loss in men and women.  Although there are several causes the overwhelming majority of cases involve a genetic condition known as Androgenetic Alopecia.  The common name for this ailment is Male Pattern Baldness for men and Female Pattern Baldness for women.  This is a genetic condition which means it is passed down from the parents to the patient with all the other genes that makeup a person’s genetic code.  For years it was assumed that only the mother could pass this gene but now it has been proven that it can come from either parent.

When a person suffers from Pattern Baldness they have a situation in which the hair follicles that reside in certain areas of the scalp are susceptible to being shut down by a hormonal metabolite known as dihydrotestosterone or DHT.  When a hair follicle is functioning normally it will use oxygen and nutrients from the blood supply to produce hair shaft material.  As this material is created it pushes on the hair shaft and that is how hair grows.  When a person has the genetic makeup that leads to androgenetic alopecia the DHT bonds with receptors on the hair follicles and interrupt the normal creation of hair material.  The hair becomes thin and whispy and eventually breaks off at the scalp or falls out.  A person will normally lose about 50 to 100 hairs a day but when suffering from Pattern Baldness they will lose over 500 per day.  The best hair loss product is one that will treat the causes of the hair loss and not just the symptoms.

Best Hair Loss Products

There are two ways to attack the problem of premature balding.  The first is to limit the levels of DHT in the body and the second is to counteract the effects of the DHT on the hair follicles.  For a hair loss product to be effective it must do one or the other.  A hair growth product that only treats the hair shafts instead of the roots is not going to have much effect in the long run.

The best way to limit the amount of DHT is to take a drug called Finasteride which has been proven by the Food and Drug Administration to be effective as a hair loss treatment.  This is the best hair loss product for men because it limits the levels of DHT which then can not interrupt the growth of hair from the follicle.  There are side effects that must be considered though.  Most importantly, women with hair loss are not approved to take this drug because of the possibilities for birth defects in male fetuses.  The active ingredient has been shown to affect the normal development of male sex organs in the babies.  It also has some side effects for men that should be considered such as lowered libido levels but these are mostly not very drastic.

The best hair loss product for women contains another drug that has been approved by the FDA.  This drug, Minoxidil, is applied to the scalp and it appears to inhibit the bonding of the DHT with the receptors on the hair follicle.  This allows the follicle to continue producing hair material in a normal and healthy manner.

If you are looking for a hair loss product that will be effective these are the only two drugs that have been proven by the FDA to be effective for hair growth.  If the product you are looking at is not based on these drugs then it more than likely will not be very effective.  There are a lot of good hair loss treatments that contain these substances but you will have to decide which is best for you by trial and error.