[0:13]Hi, I'm Dr. Ricardo Mejia, Jupiter Dermatology and Hair Restoration. I'd like to spend a few minutes just explaining to you a little bit about some of the common causes of hair loss in women. There are two major causes of hair loss in women: the first is genetic and the second is a shedding type of hair loss. The genetic type of hair loss is typically a slow, gradual progression of hair loss over time. Most patients don't see a significant amount of shedding, but it's just a gradual loss over time where they notice most of the thinning in the frontal area and the back is usually pretty good. This is a genetic type of hair loss which occurs, which occurs in a variety of different women. and in a variety of different patterns, but generally it's most of the thinning up front. Usually they retain the frontal hairline and it's more of a slow, gradual progression of hair loss. It happens over years. Now, the other common cause of hair loss that I typically see and is actually very distressing to a lot of women, is the shedding type of hair loss, which is called Telogen effluvium. This is a type of hair loss where patients come in and they state, Doc, my hair is shedding all over. Look, it's coming out in globs, or they bring in a bag of hair, or they state, look at all the hairs in the shower. You know, it's it's just more than I've ever experienced before. And that is a shedding type of hair loss. There are many different reasons for shedding type of hair loss, which I'd like to discuss. First of all, you need to understand some of the stages of hair loss to understand the cycle. Generally speaking, 90% of our hairs are in a growth phase. 10% are in a resting or shedding phase. These hairs that are in the resting or shedding phase are called the telegen hairs. And that is where they shed over a three-month period. And typically in that stage, 10% of your hairs constitute about 50 to 150 hairs that are shed per day. We typically say we have about a hundred hundred thousand hairs on our scalp. So a normal type of hair loss is 50 to 150 hairs per day. Now, when women start complaining that their hair is shedding like crazy, or falling out like crazy, or there's tons on the floor, or they bring in bags, this is a significant amount of shedding. And what happens is that the hairs that are in the growth phase get shifted into telegen and you get a much higher than normal proportion of hairs in telegen than in the anagen or the growth phase. The growth phase typically lasts two to five years, after it grows two to five years, usually about a centimeter a month, it enters into this resting phase. Now, all of a sudden, if we have an event, and there's a shift into telegen, you'll notice through a significant amount of hair loss three months after that event. So what is the event that we're talking about? There are many different causes for the events that can cause telegen effluvium or shedding. And typically, when patients come in and they say, for example, today, look, I just woke up and my hair's shedding like crazy. I have to ask them, what happened three months ago? Because that's typically the cause of the hair loss today. It's not today where the hair loss is, it's three months ago. And typically, they might say, oh, I was fasting, or I was sick, or I was hospitalized. And many of these events on our body play havoc with our hair loss, but unfortunately, on a three-month delayed cycle. So let's take a look at some of those events. Weight loss. Stress is a big factor for hair loss in women. Uh, infections, fever, hospitalizations, medications, new drugs, or new pills can cause a delayed telegen effluvium. Uh, if you're on, if you're recently put on an iron medication. Sometimes, uh, blood loss, especially menstruating females during their cycle, if they tend to menstruate heavily, during sometimes, they can experience some shock loss a little bit later. Chronically, this can lead to iron deficiency anemia, or low values and ferritin, and we typically recommend that a ferritin level be checked, or a iron level be checked, with a CBC to check their blood count. Uh, additionally, uh, there are a variety of different medications that have been known to be associated with hair loss, such as beta blockers for the heart, or cholesterol, some cholesterol lowering medications. So, when we think of hair loss in women, or especially the shedding type of hair loss, and this can also be in men, typically, when there's a shedding problem, we have to go back three months earlier and try to do a little detective work to figure out, what is it that caused it? And what are what were the factors involved there? And typically, there's always something, okay? A new job, or stress, or a divorce. Some of these can place significant stress on the body and our hair starts to show the signs of that three months later. Now, what can we do today? Sometimes, the answer is just time and patience. That hair will regrow, but it may take a while to grow back, because hair grows slowly, on the order of about a centimeter per month. So it's not going to come back immediately, it's going to take time. Sometimes Rogaine can help stimulate regrowth of new hairs. It can stimulate the hairs in the anagen phase, but once you start Rogaine, it's kind of a continual process to help the hairs, especially, if you have a genetic or female pattern type of hair loss. So, when we're talking about in hair loss, in summary, there's two categories, the genetic type, which is a slow gradual progression, or the telegen type, or the shedding type, which is more sudden, and it's usually due to an event that may have happened three months ago.
[6:15]And you have to look at all the events that happened three months ago to see if there's anything that was done that could have caused a shift in your, in your, in your body, either medically, emotionally, or physically. And those are typically the major causes of hair loss in women. Another possible underreported problem with hair loss in women is hair breakage. And in today's societies, there's over chemicals, lots of treatments, that can cause fragility to the hair and fracture of the hair. And when we're combing our hairs, and if we actually take the hairs and look at them, if the hair is fractured and you don't see a little bulb or a little root, then we're talking more about hair breakage. And in that case, it's just more gentle care with your hair. So hopefully, this has helped explain some of the different causes of hair loss in women to better understand the process and realize that in most cases, it will get better on its own, but it takes a little time and patience to allow those hairs to grow. Thank you very much.
