Understanding the Causes and Treatments for Hair Loss

">Weight Loss | Understanding the Ca ... Understanding the Causes and Treatments for Hair Loss Submitted by Michael on 2006-08-28 and viewed 1115 times.
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View Comments (0) | Publisher | Print | Download as PDF A discussion about the causes of hair loss including the treatments that are available these days for people with thinning hair. Anyone who has experienced a disease like alopecia can tell you that it is the emotional pain that hurts the most of all. Losing ones hair is like losing a part of your identity. Every time you take a shower a little piece of you goes down the drain. Your mind goes into a defensive mode and you want to stop the loss of hair any way you can. Suddenly, your life is dominated by constant thoughts of how to deal with your thinning mane. You ! turn to science and medicine in hopes of a cure, but their off! icial an swer goes something like this: nobody can stop the hair from falling out faster than it is growing back. They can tell you what the stars in a distant galaxy are made of but they cannot find a cure for hair loss. The cold reality of the situation is that there really is no cure for this problem. There are only ways to treat the symptoms of the disease and cover up the problem to make it look like there is no problem.

Some treatments of alopecia, or baldness are better than others. It all depends on how much money you are able to spend and how far you are willing to go with your commitment to battling your disease. Some men accept their fate and walk around bald and proud, while others take on the fight to reverse their fateful condition with a vigor and passion that would make you think their life depended on it. In the old days you just walked around bald unless you wanted to wear a wig or hat all the time. Now there are a few more choices to treat conditions and dis! eases of the hair and scalp.

If you happen to be one of those people who chooses to take advantage of the latest treatments available for hair loss, then your first step should be a trip to a dermatologist. A dermatologist deals with diseases and conditions of the hair and skin and they will be able to steer you in the right direction for treatment. They will do a thorough evaluation in an effort to find the specific cause of your hair loss. There are a lot of different factors that determine the causes of thinning hair such as diet, medications, family history, hair care habits and menopause to name a few. A dermatologist will ask you a series of questions, examine your scalp and take a few hair samples to put under a microscope for further analysis. They may also perform a blood test and a scalp biopsy if they feel it is necessary for an accurate diagnosis.

The most common cause of hair loss is a certain gene you can inherit from your mother or your father! . In this case the disease is literally in your DNA and there ! is not m uch you can do about it. If you have a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle that has/had a problem with baldness then you are definitely at risk of having a problem too. The good news is that you can be ready to attack the problem right away if you know that your family has a baldness gene. Also, the mental anguish will be less if you prepare yourself psychologically ahead of time.

Hereditary balding can happen to women as well as men, but it is much less common. The official name of this disease is androgenetic alopecia and it can also afflict young women in their teenage years. This disease usually does not result in complete baldness with women. As is the case with men, there is no cure for womens baldness. However, there are some very good treatments available these days and women are much better off regarding alopecia then they were just twenty years ago.

Another thing that causes baldness is poor hair care. Constant bleaching, dying, shampooing, straighte! ning, combing and brushing can do damage to hair and follicles which leads to an excessive amount of hair falling out. A relentless use of pony tails and braids can also cause this to happen due to the constant pulling.

Once you have received your diagnosis from your dermatologist you will be ready to take advantage of the treatments that are available for hair loss. Minoxidil is a lotion that is used on the scalp. Both men and women can use this lotion and both have seen positive results. Propecia, or finasteride is a pill that men can take several times a day to block the hormone that causes alopecia with most males. There have been some very positive results with men who have used Propecia and it is the most widely used treatment. Both of these products can be purchased at any brick and mortar pharmacy store. You can buy Minoxidil over the counter and Propecia can be purchased with a prescription. Propecia can also be purchased safely and securely online at an on! line pharmacy. This way you can have your hair loss product de! livered right to your door which saves you the embarrassing trip to the local pharmacy where you run the risk of experiencing an awkward moment in public.

Getting a hair transplant is another option that is available for anyone seeking treatment for their thinning hair condition. This is definitely the more expensive and most ambitious choice. You have to be very serious about looking good to take on this option, for it requires actual surgery where they cut a strip of your scalp from the back of your neck at the bottom of the hairline. The idea is that you have an overabundance of hair on the back of your head so that area is not going to miss it if you cut a little strip away. The donor strip is then harvested of its follicles. The follicles are then surgically implanted on the bald areas of the scalp so that you will have your own actual hair growing in that area again. After surgery is performed it then takes a few months before you see any positive results.

Huma! n beings can put enough information to fill a large library on a computer chip the size of a pinhead but they still have not discovered a cure for hair loss. Losing your hair may be inevitable, but there are ways to get some of them back. It may be in your DNA that your hair will start to thin, but fret not. There are a lot more choices these days for treatment than your poor ancestors had only a couple of decades ago. Science and medicine can help you out if you are willing to apply a lotion to your scalp, take a pill a couple times a day or go under the knife. You can be on your way to a thick head of hair again, depending on your bank account and your level of commitment.

© 2006 Copyright. Michael Connelly

Source: http://www.articlesalley.com/article.detail.php/13660/175/Weight_Loss/Fitness/2! 5/Understanding the Causes and Treatments for Hair Loss
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Ordering Propecia Online is a Pain-Free Experience

">Weight Loss | Ordering Propecia On ... Ordering Propecia Online is a Pain-Free Experience Submitted by Michael on 2006-07-16 and viewed 1158 times.
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View Comments (0) | Publisher | Print | Download as PDF A discussion on the advantages of ordering hair growth products like Propecia online. When it comes to buying hair growth products the internet is the best way to make your purchases with the least amount of embarrassment. It is a great way to avoid awkward moments at the local pharmacy store and a very wise way to save money as well. You can avoid that excruciating moment at the check stand when the boisterous clerk decides to ask for a price check on "PROPECIA, the Hair Growth Product?!" The fact of the matter is anyone who buys products for their thinning hair knows exactly what I am talki! ng about, and for anyone else, consider yourself lucky.
The ac ceptance is always the most painful part; you finally come to the realization that you cannot stop the loss of your hair without some help from hair growth products. You visit your local brick and mortar pharmacy store to buy Propecia. You just want to get in, get your product and get out without so much as a word to anyone other than the necessary ones said to the pharmacist regarding your order. Unfortunately, this never happens. Life never works that way.

You end up seeing someone you know as the pharmacist is helping you at the counter. This person just happens to be standing right behind you in line. It could be an old buddy, an old girlfriend or just someone you went to school with a long time ago. The pharmacist calls out your name to an assistant in the back as they search for your order. This prompts the person behind you to tap you on the shoulder to see if it you really are the person they think you are.

They are happy to see you at first, but they! quickly notice that you are acting a little stand-offish and gradually their face changes to a look of curiosity. They glance down at the counter as the pharmacist throws your order down proclaiming "Okay that's 180 1milligram Propecia tabs. That will be $527.32." You are horrified in two different ways at the same time. The insensitivity of the clerk and the price of your order have suddenly sent your blood pressure level through the roof! You turn towards the clerk, and then back towards the person you know from the past. As you are fumbling for words to say to this person they glance up at your hair line. Their face turns to a pitiful look of sorrow as they turn back and make eye contact with you. They realize that you have come to that store to pick up your hair growth medicine. This person always has a full head of hair.

Alopecia (baldness) is a cruel disease. It is only relatively recently that science and medicine have come up with any kind of treatments. In! the old days when a person was afflicted with this condition ! they jus t had to suffer. Your only option was to wear a wig or a hat, and both of those methods only covered the problem.

Nowadays there are several ways to treat the symptoms of hair loss and most of them have been proven to actually work rather well. Propecia is one of the best products available. It is a drug that blocks the hormone that is responsible for hair loss. A significant number of men using this product have shown an increase in hair growth. It is an FDA approved drug that has been around for years now and has withstood the test of time.

Buying Propecia online is like mowing your lawn with a tractor/mower. It is the act of performing a chore minus the hard work and loss of dignity. The internet takes away the risk of experiencing an embarrassing situation at your local brick and mortar pharmacy store. You get to carry out this task in the comfort of your own home. Your order arrives at your door the next day in a plain package by way of FEDEX delivery, an! d not even the delivery person is wise to the fact that you are taking products to help you grow more hair. The prices are also much better when you order online than if you buy at a local pharmacy store. There is very little overhead with an online pharmacy. Because they have no employee salaries or building leases to pay for they are able to pass the savings on to their customers.

© 2006 Copyright. Michael Connelly

Source: http://www.articlesalley.com/article.detail.php/8910/175/Weight_Loss/Fitness/25/Ordering Propecia Online is a Pain-Free Experience
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Does Propecia Really Work?

">Weight Loss | Does Propecia Really ... Does Propecia Really Work? Submitted by Michael on 2006-09-30 and viewed 1027 times.
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View Comments (0) | Publisher ! | Print | Download as PDF A discussion about whether or not the popular hair loss drug Propecia works to re-grow hair. When a person is losing their hair they will try almost anything to stop it from happening. They will put their faith in almost any product or procedure that comes down the pike, hoping against hope that this one is really going to work for them. In the battle against hair loss, Propecia is one product that seems to have risen to the top, at least in terms of publicity. When you read the vast amount of press that this product has received many people say that it has been responsible for hair growing back on their heads. However, an enormous amount of publicity does not necessarily mean that a hair loss product actually works.

Although thousands upon t! housands of people afflicted with alopecia have put their trus! t in hun dreds of different products and spent millions of dollars, most of this time, effort and money has been spent in vain. Sadly, very few of these people have ever had any hair grow back on their heads. Even sadder is the fact that there is no shortage of people and companies out there that will market so called miracle cures for baldness, preying upon people who are desperate to get their hair back.

If there is one product out there that people afflicted with balding conditions seem to be embracing it would have to be Propecia, or finasteride as the scientists who developed it in Merck laboratories call it. It is an FDA approved pill that men can take daily by mouth. In fact it is the first and only FDA approved pill approved for the treatment of baldness, and it has shown positive results for balding conditions on the vertex and anterior sections of the head, otherwise know as the top and middle front areas of the head. There is no solid evidence that it works for men! with receding hairlines at the temples.

An independent panel performed a five year study on men aged 18 to 41 who took Propecia and the results were quite impressive. They studied photographic evidence and determined that most of the men who participated in the study began to see positive results 3 to 12 months after starting Propecia. These results ranged from a lot of hair growing back to a small amount of hair returning to their head. Subjects that did not see positive results after 12 months did not see positive results at all by the end of the study. However, this was an uncommon result as 9 out of 10 men involved in this study saw some degree of hair re-growth.

Although Propecia has received rave reviews, there are some downsides. One of the biggest ones is the fact that it can only be used by men. Although baldness strikes mostly adult males there are thousands of women and even children around the world who suffer from various hair loss conditions. T! hey cannot take Propecia. Another downside is that some men ex! perience certain sexual side effects. The most common of these side effects are a decrease in the desire to have sex, problems with erections and a decrease in semen amounts. These side affects occurred with less than 2% of the men studied and they disappeared once the men stopped taking the pills. This brings us to another downside, which is the fact that any positive results achieved with hair re-growth will be lost if you stop taking the pills. That means that if you want to keep the hair that grows back on your head you have to take the pills for the rest of your life. Most men would agree that it is a small price to pay to get their hair back.

Propecia is available by prescription only. If you decide that you want to start taking it you can visit your doctor and they will set you up. A lot of online pharmacies now offer U.S. licensed physicians that can give you an evaluation and write you a prescription over the phone or over the internet. Although there are some shady! online pharmacy web sites there are many more that are reputable U.S. licensed pharmacies that sell FDA approved drugs. You just need to do a little research to find the good ones.

While there are many products and services out there that are claiming to be the latest cure for baldness it is important to keep in mind that most of them do not work. However, Propecia is not one of them. It is the only FDA approved pill for the treatment of hair loss. This is because an independent five year study has proven that 9 out 10 men show some re-growth of hair 3 to 12 months after starting Propecia. Some showed a little bit of success in re-growing their hair and some showed a lot of success. A very small percentage experienced sexual side effects. When you think about it, taking a pill every day is a small price to pay for getting hair to grow back on your head.

© 2006 Copyright. Michael Connelly

Source: http://www.articlesalley.com/article.detail.php/20124/175/Weight_Loss/Fitness/25/Does Propecia Really Work?
About Weight Loss Diets

Quick Ways to Lose Weight

">Weight Loss | Quick Ways to Lose W ... Quick Ways to Lose Weight Submitted by Kelvin on 2007-02-05 and viewed 995 times.
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View Comments (0) | Publisher | Print | Download as PDF With so many diets and weight loss plans on the market, there are many quick ways to lose weight nowadays. With so many diets and weight loss plans on the market, there are many quick ways to lose weight nowadays.

Among them, the South Beach Diet is one that has been gaining some attention. This diet focuses on the glycemic index where good carbs are separated from bad carbs, and bad fats from good fats. There are no calories to count. You eat until you are full, three times a day with two snacks in between. This diet works in phases where the first phase is extremely limited, followed by a second phase with the addition of good carbs, and finally the third phase which is a liberal maintenance plan.

Another diet, the Atkins Diet, is often conf! used with the South Beach Diet. However, these two ways to los! e weight differ in many ways. In the Atkins diet, all carbs are limited. The aim is to consume as few carbs as possible. No protein or fat is limited. This diet has raised some eyebrows due to its lack of concern for saturated fats.

Then there is Nutrisystem, a complete eating plan where the food comes prepackaged in 4-week parcels. It focuses on the glycemic index, like the South Beach Diet, and offers a variety of foods you can choose from. All foods are instant, meaning that little preparation is required. Because everything is measured for you, this is an easier plan for those with portion control problems.

Another way to lose weight is through the Fat Loss for Idiots diet plan, where foods and types of calories consumed changes every few days. With a menu that constantly changes, you will be able to eat many kinds of foods. The logic behind this diet is swap the menu when your body becomes accustomed to one menu.

Still, other effective ways to lose weigh! t include exercises and there are many exercise plans to choose from these days. You can opt for video and DVD programs like The Firm or Tae Bo. You can also take up classes or training programs at the gym. Results vary due to the individual effectiveness of each program and the way participants eat during the day.

Quick ways to lose weight also includes the Mediterranean Diet and the traditional Mediterranean lifestyle. In this type of diet, foods are rated as frequent, occasional and rare. Some foods are consumed everyday and with every meal while other foods are eaten once every few days. Then, there are foods that are consumed rarely. It is believed that the long lives of the Mediterranean people can be attributed to their diet.

Among ways to lose weight, one of the oldest diets is the low-calorie, low-fat diet. In such a diet, you are restricted to a certain number of calories per day, usually 1600 or less. Carbohydrates can be consumed regularly, while! fat-free and low-fat foods are encouraged. The results of thi! s type o f diet is questionable as some claim that weight loss attained through this method may be loss of water and muscle.

As you can see, there are many quick ways to lose weight. The trick with any diet is to stick to it and to maintain weight loss at the end of the diet. A diet should be looked at as a lifelong plan. With any diet, weight loss cannot be permanent without some diligence on the part of the dieter. So decide on a plan, take action and stick with it!

Source: http://www.articlesalley.com/article.detail.php/47776/175/Weight_Loss/Fitness/25/Quick Ways to Lose Weight
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