Bellevue Health Clinic

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Vitamins are crucial for regulating various functions in our body and if you have hair loss problems, you may need to review your vitamin intake. It is known that lack of balance in vitamin consumption significantly impact the overall condition of hair and can even lead to hair loss and balding. So if you want to fight hair loss, you have to think about the vitamins you take on a regular basis.

You probably know that vitamins come with food, so the diet you follow plays a very important role in keeping your hair in good condition. If you’re not receiving all the vitamins you need with food, you may start experiencing hair problems. And even if the overall balance of vitamins is good, your hair may not receive them all due to other health problems that can impede the distribution of vitamins in your body. That’s why you need to review your food regimen before actually using any drugs to treat hair loss – most probably your hair problems are caused by poor nutrition or vitamin imbalance. There are numerous vitamin supplements available on the market that you can use to get proper amounts of vitamins every day. However, it is strongly recommended to consult with a doctor before starting a course of vitamin supplements, because taking most vitamins in amounts that are larger than necessary may also have negative effects on your health.

It is also important to understand that nearly all vitamins are essential for keeping your hair in a good condition. There isn’t any specific vitamin that is responsible for keeping your hair healthy. All the vitamins from A to E contribute to good health in general and have their effects on hair. However, in most cases hair loss takes place when there’s a deficiency of Vitamin B6, biotin, folic acid and inositol. Besides, all the vitamins from B group are essential for adequate hair growth. This is especially important for men, who tend to be more sensitive to vitamin B6 deficiency and may go completely bald when there’s an acute shortage of this particular substance.

But before you start a course of vitamins instead of using Propecia or any other prescription drugs you should first consider the right dosage for getting the desired effects. Because you don’t use drugs like Propecia without knowing the right dosage, do you? The same goes for vitamins.

Vitamin B group

Foods that are rich with Vitamin B include beans, peas, carrots, nutritional yeast, soy, eggs, cauliflower, nuts and bran. Daily norms for this group of vitamins are:

Vitamin B3 (niacin) – 50 mg 3 times per day.
Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic acid) – 100 mg 3 times per day.
Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine) – 50 mg 3 times per day.

Biotin

Biotin is responsible for keeping your skin, and hair in a good condition. Foods rich with biotin include green peas, oats, brown rice, bulgur, lentils, brewer’s yeast, walnuts and sunflower seeds. The daily dosage:

Biotin – 50 mg 3 times per day.

Inositol

Inositol is crucial for keeping your hair healthy as well. Dosage:

Inositol – 100 mg twice a day.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is generally good for your health and it keeps the blood circulation in the scalp in a proper condition. By doing so, it helps feed the hair follicles will all the substances they need by keeping a good blood flow. Dosage:

Vitamin C – 3,000 – 10,000 mg per day.

It’s not a big revelation that most men don’t want to see their head going bald. Of course, there are people who are perfectly fine with such a situation and embrace their balding as a natural thing. But millions of American men spend millions of dollars on different drugs and preparations to stop and reverse hair loss, hoping to keep their natural hair for as long as possible. But before trying to cope with the problem, it’s logic to learn what are the actual causes behind it, right?

In most cases hair loss occurs due to nutritional, hormonal and circulatory factors and combination of thereof. These factors may differ in intensity but they all lead to the same problem – lack of proper nutrition of the hair follicle, which leads to drop in natural hair growth rates to the point when it becomes lower than the natural hair loss rate. And since the amount of hair grown is lower than the amount loss, balding starts to develop.

As you may see, there are different factors that may contribute to hair loss problems, so it’s crucial to pinpoint the exact cause of the problem before you start doing anything about it. Serious illness, trauma, stress and even medication side effects may contribute to hair loss, and it doesn’t matter how old are you. It’s a common mistake for men to think that hair loss is an age-related condition. In fact some 20 year olds may experience severe hair loss problems while their 70 year old grand parents keep their hair in perfect condition.

Earlier it was believed that genetics play an important role in the hair loss process. People assumed that if a parent had balding problems the child will ultimately have the same issues in the future. However, recent studies have shown that the main reason for hair loss in men is abundance of a specific androgen (male hormone) called dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which is the result of testosterone transformation. This hormone is not harmful for the overall health, however it has very negative effects over the hair.

When there’s too much DHT in the bloodstream it comes into contact with the hair follicles. This makes the hair follicles shrink and become mush weaker, which results in slower hair growth rates or complete halt of thereof. And as any person loses 100-200 hairs daily (this is the natural hair loss rate), sooner or later the combined effect is observed in gradual hair loss and balding.

One would assume that the best way to fight male hair loss is to prevent DHT formation in the body. And that’s exactly what drugs like Propecia are used for. Propecia and other similar medications prevent the transformation of testosterone into DHT, reducing the impact this hormone has on the hair follicles and thus improving the quality of hair. Taking Propecia on a regular basis stops and even reverses the process of hair loss even in men who have tried other solutions and had hair loss issues for quite a long time.

So if you notice that your hair starts to thin, think about paying your doctor a visit and consider all of your options. The sooner you start addressing the problem the easier it will be for you to resolve it effectively.