Your hair grows in cycles. It's pretty amazing, actually: every strand grows for a period of two to six years, and during that time it grows about a half inch every month. (You may notice that a bad haircut seldom lasts too long!) At the end of the growth period each strand of hair goes dormant and eventually dies. It's pushed out of the scalp by a replacement hair and the whole cycle starts over. Most of the time, on a healthy head of hair, over ninety percent of hair is in the growth phase and ten percent is dormant or dying. Normally, you'll lose about 150 hairs every day with no thinning or balding.

But sometimes things go awry. You might begin to see thinning hair, or balding spots. If this is true for you, then there are steps you can take to prevent it, but you need to make sure you understand all of the underlying factors involved. By answering a few questions you can determine what the most likely cause is, and begin to address your hair loss. Here are a few things that you should do right now:

1. Examine your diet carefully. An improper or poorly balanced diet can cause your body to change for the worse, and your hair is not immune to this influence. Healthy hair requires essential oils, vitamins and minerals to grow. Make sure they're in your diet.

2. Check your stress levels. Anxiety and stress are common causes of hair loss. Some stress cannot be avoided - death of a loved one, divorce, loss of job, financial worries - but you can take steps to reduce their affect on your body. One of these is regular exercise. As well, you need to develop relaxation techniques, such as breathing therapy, Yoga, or meditation. Whatever works for you, increase it!

3. Be sure to rule out disease. There are several diseases that exhibit symptoms of hair loss. Diabetes and Lupus are to examples. If the onset of hair loss is sudden, and it's not explainable by stress or diet, you should make an appointment with your doctor to rule out more serious health concerns. A good clean bill of health is necessary before you attack your hair loss problem.

4. How are your genetics. Heredity is at least partially responsible for pattern baldness in both men and women. Do your parents still have their hair? The heredity comes from both sides of the family, so check them both out. There isn't much you can do about heredity, but the hair loss you experience from a result of it can be halted or reversed with the right treatment.

5. Make sure you don't have a fungal infection. Fungal infections such as ringworm first appear as concentrated, spotty hair loss. If your hair loss fits this pattern - again, see your doctor. This is very treatable once diagnosed.

6. Don't wash your hair with caustic shampoos. The surfactant - the stuff that makes shampoo lather - contained in some shampoos can irritate the scalp. An irritated scalp produces less new hair to replace the hair that is aging and falling out, and thinning hair results. Look for shampoos that are gentle on your scalp and hair.

7. More severe hair treatments can cause hair loss. Frequent blow drying, permanents, colorings and curling irons damage hair and can also irritate the scalp. This interrupts the cycle of healthy hair growth again, because healthy hair gets damaged and falls out prematurely.

If you find that you are doing everything right and have no diseases or scalp conditions, you will want to try other remedies, which fall into three categories.

1. Pharmaceuticals designed to prevent loss of hair. There are a few over-the-counter solutions that have varying results with different people. They come in the form of pills, creams or shampoos, and most of them work for some population of subjects. Your job is to find one that works for you.

2. Natural remedies are available as well. Most of these include essential oils, that is, concentrated oils from specific plants. Provillus is a very good example of this method of hair loss treatment. Provillus is an oral supplement, which works to block DHT, a form of testosterone that is responsible for 95 percent of hair loss. It also works to stimulate the scalp and bring dead follicles back to life. You can use Provillus as a preventative tool, starting the program before hair loss becomes severe, or you can use it after DHT has already begun to take hold of your hair and scalp. You can get it at www.provillus.com.

3. Surgical hair modification. This can be very expensive and time consuming. It requires a number of visits to the doctor's office, some mild pain, and about $10,000. Hair transplant surgery works - but you should consider it your last option should all else fail.

So be sure that your health or your lifestyle aren't the basic causes of your hair loss. It's important to do this to make sure that you address an underlying medical condition should one exist. Once that's done, if you're still losing hair - find a treatment that works for you. Provillus is a good place to start and may save you a lot of time spent hunting. Start looking early - keep the hair that you still have. And once you find a solution that works for you, make sure to use it regularly.