The medical term for hair loss is alopecia. Alopecia can be partial, or what is usually referred to as balding, or complete, leaving your head with no hair whatsoever. Whatever you call the condition, you should gather all the facts you can about your hair loss before you act. There is some information you need to know about hair loss so that you can better decide among the possible treatment options. Your chances of stopping your hair loss are much better when you know your options early on.

You may begin to lose hair gradually, or in clumps; all over or just in some parts of the body. It is important to know what category your hair loss falls into, so that you can treat it appropriately. There is so much information about hair loss that focusing on your particular situation can help you deal with it. On the average, the typical healthy person loses about a hundred hairs daily, from a total of about one hundred thousand scalp hairs. Hair on the head grows about an inch a year, and any given hair lasts around four and a half years before it falls out. About half a year later, a new hair grows to take its place, unless genetic hair loss has entered the picture; this is when not enough new hairs are being produced to take the place of hairs that are shed naturally. In addition, excessive loss of hair may also be a factor.

Hair loss does not discriminate between men and women. Typically as people age they loose the same amount of hair, whether man or woman. The same is true for thinning of the hair. Inherited pattern baldness does tend to occur more for men than for women. One forth of all men will have begun to go bald by the age of thirty and two-thirds will have developed balding patters or be completely bald by the age of sixty. Male pattern baldness typically includes the receding hair line accompanied with thinning of the hair around the crown. The key factor contributing to male pattern baldness is testosterone. This means that men lacking n testosterone due to castration of genetic abnormalities will not develop male pattern baldness.

There are many causes of hair loss this is why it is extremely important to consider all available information on potential causes of hair loss before assuming that your hair loss is inherited. While baldness is typically the result of to aging, heredity or testosterone there are numerous other factors that must not be ignored.