Hair Regrowth Separating The Fact From The Fiction

Hair loss is a problem that most people have to cope with at one point in their lives or another. For some it only manifests late in life, while others seem to have it crop up inconveniently early on. Unfortunately, the number of cases of early to mid life hair loss is steadily increasing these days, and people have begun to turn in desperation to various hair regrowth solutions to try and stave off a problem that they see as belonging only to "older folks". Not all of these solutions actually work however, so you should be careful which treatment method you look into.

The most common treatment method that most people in America are trying these days is to use scalp medication. This commonly takes two forms, either ingested medication or hair-growth shampoo solutions. In the case of ingested medication, hair recovery is often a hit and miss success, with about half of the users seeing mild regrowth or at least a cessation of hair loss. Since genetics and lifestyle both play a large part in hair loss, however, it doesn't work for everyone. Hair growth shampoo solutions likewise vary in effectiveness.

For the most part, however, hair treatment shampoos actually don't promote the regrowth of hair over bald spots, but instead increase the hair growth rate of the remaining hair strands. Shampoos are therefore more effective for mild cases of hair loss, whereas people with larger bald spots would be better off seeking oral medications. On a rather bizarre related note, some people actually discovered that some forms of herbal horse-hair shampoos used by professional horse breeders worked on humans too, and actually promoted hair regrowth over balding areas. If medication doesn't work, the only other form of hair regrowth commonly used and accepted these days is to go for scalp surgery. The most widely accepted and proven type of hair surgery is transplanting. This basically involves taking hair from one patch of the scalp then grafting them into the bald patches.

This technique used to make people think that they would look "artificial". However, modern hair grafting and transplanting techniques have evolved to a point where transplanted hair looks perfectly normal except on extremely close inspection. Some doctors also opt to use synthetic hair in case the patient doesn't have enough remaining hair for a good transplant. These synthetic strands still look enough like the genuine thing to be visually acceptable, though their texture feels tougher than real hair.

The second surgery method is newer and more radical, and is still in it's experimental stages. It involves actually transplanting entire patches of scalp to bald spots. This method is theoretically a better long run solution because the transplanted scalp patch actually allows natural hair growth on the bald spot. However, since the techniques have yet to be refined you might not want to go for this method yet. Lastly, one effective treatment method often overlooked by most people is lifestyle alteration therapy.

This is ONLY effective in cases where hair loss is caused by non-genetic factors like stress, bad diet, and constant exposure to harmful chemicals. By going through a change in lifestyle to remove the things which triggered hair loss in the first place, this actually not only stops hair loss but can even cause the bald patches to grow back naturally. However, IF the cause is genetic (aka your dad went bald early too) then this method will not work for you.

About the author: John Tulley manages the Alpha7 Provillus hair regrowth web site. Our web site has more detailed information on how to stop hair loss.