Hair Loss Causes

There are many cause of hair loss. Hair loss may be of genetic type or due to some unknown disease or many other reasons.

Specific causes of Hair loss:

Androgenic alopecia or the pattern baldness is caused by genetic reasons. Heredity is largely responsible for growth pattern of your hairs, developmental speed or extent of baldness in this condition.

Alopecia Areata is considered as an autoimmune disease and exact reason is not known. A family history of alopecia Areata may also be responsible.

Scarring or Cicatricial alopecia is seen in many skin conditions like lichen planus. Permanent hair loss is caused by inflammation when it damages and scars hair follicles.

Stress or shock of any type, emotional or physical may cause hair roots to go into the resting stage prematurely. Later these hairs fall in normal course. Conditions like high fever, nutritional deficiencies, drastic weight loss or any metabolic disturbance may cause this. This condition of hair loss is called telogen effluvium.

Other form of hair loss, called traction alopecia, is caused by excessive hairstyling or chemical treatments of the hairs. Regular pulling of hairs may cause permanent damage of hair follicles.

General Causes of Hair Loss:

Any poor diet which lacks in proteins, iron or other essential nutrients is major cause of general hair loss. Certain eating disorders, crash diets may lead to this condition

Certain disease like diabetes, thyroid disease may cause serious hair loss.

Intake of certain medications like the ones used for heart problems, arthritis, gout or high blood pressure may cause hair loss.

Certain treatments like chemotherapy or radiotherapy usually cause alopecia.

Fungal infections like when ringworm attacks the scalp, cause hair loss. This can be treated with topical fungal medications.

Hair growth is greatly affected by any change in hormonal activity. Hair loss may occur during pregnancy, 2-3 months after delivering a baby, starting or stopping birth control pills, beginning menopause or thyroid malfunctioning.