Advice on dealing with hair loss
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The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Now, I'm joined in the studio by Rosemary Coleman, consultant dermatologist at the Black Rock Clinic. Good morning to you, Rosemary. Good morning, Clare. We're talking about hair loss this morning and we're talking to people maybe who have noticed that their hair isn't as thick as it used to be or that there are more strands of hair on the hairbrush than there might have been. But lots of us have strands of hair on the hairbrush and that is normal, isn't it? Absolutely.
We shed about 50 to 100 hairs a day. So that's completely normal. People will start to panic if they start to see more. People with long hair often worry more, but that's because their hairs are very long and they look worse on the hairbrush.
But if you notice an increase, maybe you should start asking questions about what's going on.
Yes, if you notice an increase, but also more importantly, if you notice a change in your scalp hair. So if you start to think my ponytail is getting thinner or am I receding on my hairline or is my parting looking broader?
What are the common signs of hair loss?
Am I covering it up? Then start to ask about it. Don't wait until you have got a really severe hair problem to start to look for advice.
But a lot of people will think, well, this is normal, comes with ageing and you just have to accept it.
Yes, I spend my time explaining that you don't. So just because it comes with ageing, we can still fight it. So it was fine when we used to dye in our 40s, but now that we're surviving on average to our 80s, we do want our hair. It is our crowning glory. And the important thing is to remember that, particularly for male pattern baldness, we often tend to fuss more about girls. People often say to me, oh, my 18-year-old son is losing his hair. He's a bit upset. He's going to cut it short. And I say, no, no, no, get some help, get him on medication, get advice early, because it's one thing losing your hair in your 40s as a man. It's another thing losing it in your teens. So even if we can get them through the 20s and 30s with a good head of hair.
they may eventually get some hair thinning.
How many hairs do we normally shed in a day?
So there's an awful lot you can do about it. But people tend to think, oh, I'm menopausal. Well, you're meant to have lousy hair by now, aren't you? No, you don't have to. When your oestrogen levels go down, that makes you more susceptible to the byproducts of testosterone. The hair can thin and we can counter it with very simple medications that are really well tolerated and highly effective.
Is it the case, though, that once the hair is gone, once the follicle is gone, it is gone forever? It's like Harvey Norman. When it's gone, it's gone. Right.
There's nothing you can do about that apart from a hair transplant. There's no point in putting loads of fertilizer on that soil. You're not going to grow tulips. So we want to get the hair when people are starting to see thinning because you get what's called miniaturization. The hair follicles shrink.
What should you do if you notice increased hair loss?
If we put you on a drug, for example, minoxidil, that will reverse that shrinkage, thicken up the follicle and stimulate it to grow again. So we want to get it early if possible. And that's for age-related hair loss. There are lots of other causes of hair loss. Like? Oh, there are many. Okay, so you can get hair loss after a shock, such as the shock of having a baby. Wonderful as it is, the body has a shock. A hundred days later, we shed, we lose hair. You will grow that back after six months, but you just need reassurance. The same can happen after a severe illness, after COVID, after a bad car crash. after grief, trauma. So that's called telogen effluvium and that's a reversible cause of sudden hair loss when the hairs suddenly go into the resting phase and they'll all shed about 100 days after the event.
What about genetic hair loss? Genetic hair loss, there are a couple of different types, but the most common type would be what we call male pattern baldness. And the important thing is that doesn't just happen in men and it doesn't just come down the father's side.
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