How Long Does It Take For Thinning Hair To Grow Back
Generally, a hair strand grows by half an inch every month, i.e., 6 inches per year. Can thinning hair grow back? Yes. Since hair thinning is because of the reduction in follicle size, it reverses by improving follicle health. If you recognise hair thinning symptoms in an early stage before the follicle dies, treatments work faster to get back the healthy hair growth.
Scientific research proves that Ayurvedic treatments work effectively for reversing hair thinning within 16 weeks compared to Minoxidil. However, hair regrowth depends on the underlying cause of thinning hair.
Scarves Hats And Turbans
Many people find that scarves and hats are the easiest, most comfortable, and versatile solution for managing hair loss from breast cancer treatment. Scarves and hats can hide your hair loss, help keep you warm, protect you from the sun, and they can be stylish and fun to wear. Learn more about Scarves, Hats, and Turbans for managing treatment-related hair loss.
Could Your Hair Loss Be Stress
Excessive levels of stress can cause hair loss in men and women. Many people do not realize that stress can have a physical impact on your body. Severe stress over the course of a few months can lead to extreme fatigue during the day and hair loss.
If you start to notice your hair thinning, eliminating stress is a great first step. You can start engaging in more activities you enjoy and try to decrease the number of extreme stressors in your life. If stress was the cause of your hair loss, then when your stress level decreases, it’s likely that your hair will grow back.
Also Check: Why Does Stress Cause Hair Loss
Supplements For Supple Hair
You can make sure youre getting your nutrients in with a whole-food diet of colorful fruits and veggies . But, you can also consider taking a multivitamin specially designed for hair, skin, and nail health.
Getting your vitamins and minerals is crucial for healthy hair. The most important nutrients for hair growth include:
- vitamin A
- iron
Can Hair Grow Back After Thinning
Its absolutely feasible to regrow hair after it has thinned, because some hair loss is related to temporary stress, medications, or blocked hair follicles. Certain products can stimulate blood circulation around hair follicles or clean foreign materials out .
If you purchase certain hair growth products, they may not ever reach the roots of your hair. If your hair follicles are clogged, even the most expensive tonic wont be able to find and nourish the living base of your hair.
Do you want to know how to encourage new hair growth? Heres the way our Simfort shampoo does it:
The concentration level of carbonic acid in Simfort is 8,000 ppm . Thats far stronger than the 1,000 ppm that is typically used in carbonic acid therapy. You can be sure itll clean out dirt and open your follicles by simply applying it as part of your normal shower routine. Its simpleand even recommended by dermatologists.
Read Also: Does Cutting Hair Help With Hair Loss
Consider Using A Caffeinated Shampoo
If you dont already use a caffeinated shampoo, consider switching to one. Caffeine applied directly to the scalp has two beneficial effects. It relaxes smooth muscle fibres surrounding the hair to improve blood flow. More importantly, it also inhibits the enzyme, 5–reductase, which converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone within scalp hair follicles and which is associated with male and female pattern hair loss.
A growing body of evidence supports the effects of caffeinated shampoos in stimulating hair follicles, and Ive certainly noticed a dramatic improvement in hair thickness since starting to use one. Just two minutes contact with the scalp during shampooing allows the caffeine to penetrate into hair follicles, where it remains for up to 48 hours after washing.
Leave-on caffeine solutions are also available and have been shown to increase the cross-sectional area of scalp hairs by 10%.
Drinking caffeinated beverages such as tea or coffee does not have the same effect, as the caffeine must penetrate into the hair follicles itself to inhibit 5- -reductase.
Why Is Thinning Hair In Women Such A Challenge
Each of your hair follicles goes through a cycle of hair growth, during which the hair lengthens, followed by a resting phase, in which the hair follicle shrinks and the bulb pulls away from the root. The hair then remains at a constant length until it loosens and falls out.
Because each hair has its own cycle, you normally lose between 80 and 100 scalp hairs per day. If daily losses are greater than this, gradual thinning occurs, especially in later life when hair growth also slows.
After the resting phase, the follicle may reactivate to produce a new hair, but this cycle does not repeat indefinitely. On average, each hair follicle reactivates around 25 times before it switches off, or produces hair that is increasingly wispy and short.
The way your hair changes with age depends partly on the genes you have inherited. It is also impacted by changing hormone levels around the time of menopause, as well as your diet and lifestyle.
Recommended Reading: Does Pcos Cause Hair Loss
Make Sure You Have Enough Protein In Your Diet
Hair mostly consists of keratin protein, which is produced using amino acid building blocks obtained from your diet.
To maintain a constant protein supply for your follicles, eat some with every meal, whether its poultry, lean meat, fish, eggs, nuts or beans. If you eat a plant-based diet, you may be more prone to thinning hair as some amino acids essential for healthy hair and micronutrients are often difficult to obtain in sufficient quantities without taking a vegetarian-friendly supplement.
Do not skip meals, as this puts your body into survival mode so that the supply of protein and nutrients to hair follicles is reduced.
Hair Loss: Diagnosis And Treatment
Dermatologist examining a patient with hair loss
To find out what’s causing your hair loss, a dermatologist may use a tool called a dermascope to get a closer look.
Effective treatment for hair loss begins with finding the cause. To get an accurate diagnosis, it helps to see a board-certified dermatologist. These doctors have in-depth knowledge about the many causes of hair loss and experience treating the diverse causes.
You May Like: Does Nicotine Gum Cause Hair Loss
What Is The Outcome For Someone Who Has Hair Loss
With an accurate diagnosis, many people who have hair loss can see hair regrowth. If you need treatment for regrowth, the earlier you start, the more likely you are to see regrowth.
Its important to understand that:
-
Not every type of hair loss can be treated, but a dermatologist may be able to prevent further hair loss.
-
It can take months before you see results from treatment.
-
No one treatment works for everyone, even two people with the same type of hair loss.
-
Sometimes, hair loss is stubborn and requires trying different treatments before finding one that works.
Self-care also plays an essential role in preventing and treating hair loss. To find out what dermatologists recommend, go to Hair loss: Self-care.
Images1,2: Getty Images
3: Property of the American Academy of Dermatology, A to Z Video Series
4: Image used with permission of Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology: J Am Acad Dermatol. 1998 39:578-89.
ReferencesAdil A, Godwin M. The effectiveness of treatments for androgenetic alopecia: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2017 77:136-141.
American Academy of Dermatology:
-
Research demonstrates potential of platelet-rich plasma therapy for hair loss News release issued March 1, 2019. Last accessed May 22, 2019.
-
New generation of laser and light therapies could provide future treatment options for skin, hair and nail conditions, News release issued March 16, 2012. Last accessed May 22, 2019.
What Dose Do You Need
Most people wont be deficient in any of the vitamins and minerals listed above simply by following a normal healthy diet.
But, finding the optimum dose for hair regrowth using supplements is next to impossible. That’s because the actual amount of each nutrient that you need is dependent uponmany things: digestive system efficiency, nutrient utilization, age, lifestyle, etc.
And clearly all these things will vary from person to person.
Note: The Dietary Reference Intakes or DRIs do give general guidelines for daily intake of vitamins and minerals. But these are often considered to be set too low. And it’s for this reason that no DRIs have been given in this article.
Don’t Miss: What Can Cause Rapid Hair Loss
Medications To Treat Hair Loss
Treatment depends on the underlying cause, says Dr. Scott. Sometimes simply addressing a medical condition prompting hair loss will be enough for the hair to regrow. In other instances, a woman might consider a medication like minoxidil , which helps with certain types of hair loss, or another treatment to replace or regrow lost hair.
A newer option being used to treat hair loss is platelet-rich plasma injections. For this treatment, the doctor draws your blood, divides it into its separate components, recombines the blood fluid with a high concentration of platelets , and introduces the resulting preparation back into the scalp.
The science on this isnt totally worked out. We still dont completely understand the mechanism behind PRP, but growth factors contained in platelets can stimulate regeneration of hair follicles and other tissues as well, says Dr. Scott.
In addition, low-level LED laser lights have been found to be helpful in regrowing hair in some cases. Its likely that even more treatments will be developed in the near future.
Procedures To Help Regrow Hair
While at-home treatments offer convenience, a procedure performed by a board-certified dermatologist tends to be more effective. For this reason, your dermatologist may include one of the following in your treatment plan.
Injections of corticosteroids: To help your hair regrow, your dermatologist injects this medication into the bald areas. These injections are usually given every 4 to 8 weeks as needed, so you will need to return to your dermatologists office for treatment.
This is considered the most effective treatment for people who have a few patches of alopecia areata, a condition that causes hair loss. In one study of 127 patients with patchy alopecia areata, more than 80% who were treated with these injections had at least half of their hair regrow within 12 weeks.
Hair transplant: If you have an area of thinning or balding due to male pattern baldness, your dermatologist may mention a hair transplant as an option. This can be an effective and permanent solution.
Laser therapy: If using minoxidil every day or taking medication to treat hair loss seems unappealing to you, laser therapy may be an option. Also called low-level laser therapy, a few studies suggest that this may help:
-
Hereditary hair loss
-
Hair loss due to chemotherapy
-
Stimulate healing and hair growth after a hair transplant
Studies indicate that laser therapy is safe and painless but requires many treatment sessions. To see a bit of hair growth, you may need several treatments a week for many months.
Recommended Reading: Do You Go To A Dermatologist For Hair Loss
My Hair Is Thinning Will It Grow Back
Losing hair is a natural process that happens to everyone, every day. We all lose an average of 80 hair strands a day, but our hair is continually growing in cycles to replenish itself. However, if you have been noticing an unusual amount of hair loss, you might be worried you are going bald.
Many men will notice their hair thinning when they are still in their 20s or 30s. Some of the most common signs of balding include a receding hairline, more hair appearing in the sink and shower, and a sudden change in how your hair reacts to brushing.
Don’t panic. Hair thinning and baldness are two different things, and both have multiple treatment options.
What Are The Common Causes Of Hair Loss In Women
What causes hair loss?
- Hair style: Your style of hair can cause hair loss when your hair is arranged in ways that pull on your roots, like tight ponytails, braids, or corn rows. This type of hair loss is called traction alopecia. If hair follicles are damaged, the loss can be permanent.
- Vitamin deficiency.
- Over processed scalp hair .
What causes anagen effluvium hair loss?
- Toxic substances, including chemotherapy, radiation therapy and some medications. These cause sudden hair loss that can occur anywhere on your body. It happens to hair in the growth stage. Sometimes, this type of hair loss can be permanent if your hair follicles are damaged.
What causes telogen effluvium hair loss?
- Extreme physical stress or shock to your body: This causes temporary hair loss. This category includes events like losing a lot of weight, surgery, anemia, illness and having a baby.
- Extreme emotional stress: mental illness, the death of a loved one, etc.
- An abnormal thyroid.
- Medications and supplements: blood pressure medicines, gout medicines and high doses of Vitamin A.
- Hormone changes caused by pregnancy, menopause or birth control pills.
What causes FPHL ?
- Genes: Your familys genes can cause thinning of hair along the top of your head.
- Aging: Hormone changes as you age can cause balding.
- Menopause: This type of hair loss often gets worse when estrogen is lost during menopause.
There are also some conditions that affect hair loss:
Recommended Reading: How To Regrow Thinning Hair Female
Causes And Risk Factors For Thinning Hair
As your hair continues to thin, you probably want to ask, or even scream, Why is my hair falling out?! Its a very frustrating and often bewildering occurrence when the hair thins. According to Mayo Clinic, the exact cause of abnormal hair loss is not completely clear, but typically its related to one or more of the following:
- Heredity
- Physical or emotional shock
- Excessive hair styling and/or hair treatments
1. Heredity
The No. 1 reason why both men and women experience excessive hair thinning and hair loss is hereditary. For men, its a more well-known phenomenon called male-pattern baldness, but women can also exhibit female-pattern baldness. Both of these predictable, gradual hair loss patterns are linked with a family history of hair loss. For men, it can start as early as puberty. In addition to thinning hair, men may also notice their hair becoming shorter, softer and finer.
2. Hormonal Imbalances
Hormone imbalances and changes can contribute to thinning hair. Some hormone changes are temporary, like with pregnancy or menopause, and hair thinning or loss resulting from these temporary changes should be temporary as well. However, if you have an ongoing imbalance of hormones, you may have a thyroid problem that needs to be corrected.
3. Thyroid Problems and Other Medical Conditions
4. Medications
Many different types of medicines may contribute to hair thinning, including some of the following types of medications:
- Acne medications
- Thyroid medications