Hair growth and loss can be influenced by a lot of different causes, but when you break them down, they often group into major areas of concern that are easier to check up on or rule out. Before you worry about the fine details of rare causes, it’s a good idea to review the most common reasons you may notice thinning hair or a receding hairline. Depending on your age and family history, it may be easy to exclude some factors, giving you a faster route to investigating the issue.
- Heat damage
- Family medical history
- Hormonal changes
- Environmental damage
- Diet
Some causes, like environmental damage, can be hard to pin down. Pollution can damage hair and even lead to thinning, but more often the issue is something more along the lines of a harsh hair treatment that is overused or exposure to chemicals through a job. Hormonal changes of all kinds can affect hair loss as well, including high testosterone levels, pregnancy, menopause, or even the use of hormonal supplements. Similarly, a diet that is short on necessary nutrients can wind up leading to thinning hair.
Hereditary Traits
Your family medical history is often the key to learning what causes hair loss because it can determine the extent of the other influences on your hair growth. For example, those with thinner, more fragile hair that dries easily may find damage from harsh hair treatments or other chemicals act faster than it would on someone with a different hair type. Your tendency to develop conditions like alopecia are also often linked to your genetic history, since many rare conditions that involve hair loss are linked to those hereditary traits.
Understanding how your genetics influence both your hair type and your likelihood of developing conditions like hormonal imbalances will help you get a handle on the best treatments for hair loss, whether that means hair growth pills, dietary changes, or a combination of approaches.
Hair Styles To Avoid
People who are at risk of hair loss or attempting to treat it have to worry about the damage done by over-styling more than the average person does. While it’s never good to push things like harsh chemical treatments or heat-dependent styles too often, indulging in them at all can cause big setbacks for those already experiencing hair loss symptoms. Anything that requires a heated press or curling iron will dry hair and make it more prone to breaking or falling out, as will anything that relies on harsh chemicals to relax the hair, curl it, or change its color.
The more your hairstyle depends on natural products that nourish it and help maintain its moisture balance, the better your chances of reducing hair loss. Anything that requires a lot of intensive styling can damage the hair even without harsh chemicals, just from overbrushing. The more you can simplify your hairstyle and rely on its natural shine, the better it is for your long-term hair growth and the more effective your other treatments like hair growth supplements for men will be.