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Hair Loss

Hair loss and your hair griowth cycle is influenced by genetics, nutrition, metabolism and your general health and wellbeing.

6 Hair Loss Myths

Wearing a hat leads to hair loss

If you wore a tourniquet twisted tightly round your head for hours on end, you would collapse before your hair fell out! This theory started because many men returning from wars had experienced some baldness and proceeded to blame it on the compulsory wearing of hats. Men go to war at an age where they are more prone to hair loss; it's just a coincidence that they wear hats. It is also possible that the stress of war can accelerate any tendency towards hair loss.

Baldness is inherited from the mother's family

It can be, but it can also be inherited from the father's side, or there may be no history of baldness on either side of the family and you are simply unlucky to have thinning hair. Somewhere in your genetic pool your genes help to control what your hair does. It takes two, a male and a female, to make a baby, and the genes of either sex can affect the onset of baldness. It really is just a matter of luck.

When a hair comes out with a white bulb, the root is dead

You may notice than some of your fallen hairs have a small white lump at the root and therefore you think that the root of the hair has also been removed. This white bead is simply part of the hair follicle lining which is similar to skin and, like your skin, is continuously being replaced.

Bald men are more virile

This myth may well have been instigated by bald men. It is a fact that bald men almost always have hairier bodies, particularly on the chest and back. The reverse is true of men with full heads of hair. Hairy chests and backs might have been associated with virility because gorillas and apes have hairy bodies and it is thought of as being more male, just as a lack of body hair on women is thought of as being more feminine. Men with very little scalp hair have follicles that are more sensitive to androgens (male hormones), which makes it thin. Body hair is quite the opposite; androgens stimulate it to grow.

Frequent shampooing makes hair fall out

It is natural to lose up to 100 hairs a day and a percentage of this comes out when you shampoo. The act of shampooing simply dislodges hairs that have already become detached from the follicle’s base and are ready to come out.

However, on a day you don't shampoo, while some of those strands will come out when you brush and style, some of them will also remain sitting loosely in the hair follicle. This means that the more days you leave between shampooing, the more you will see in the drain. You would not see that same amount if you were to shampoo every day! In fact, frequent hair washing encourages healthy hair as it stimulates the scalp and creates a good environment for healthy hair growth.

Women have more hair than men

In a clinical study in the early nineties it was established that the average number of hairs per square centimetre was 279 on women and 312 on men – about 10 per cent difference. It also indicates that men have finer hair than women and, because each hair takes up less space, there is room for more of them.

If you would like to find out more information, our clinics based in London and New York specialise in hair and scalp issues.