What Can Cause Hair Loss in Men?

Are you having trouble sleeping and losing your hair?

There might be something wrong with your thyroid.

Close to 20 million Americans have some type of thyroid disease. Unfortunately, about 60% of those affected by the disease aren’t even aware of their condition. Besides causing fatigue, depression, and constipation, thyroid problems can also cause hair loss.

Luckily, by reaching out to a doctor right away, you can help your thyroid and reverse hair loss. Along with thyroid problems, what can cause hair loss in men? Read on to find out.

Thinning Hair and Other Hair Loss Symptoms

There’s more than one way for hair loss to appear for men. Some will see a gradual thinning over the entire head; others will notice sporadic bald spots.

Age-Related

When the hair is thinning, it’s likely due to age. As men get older, their hairline naturally resets on their forehead. On the other hand, women usually broaden their hair with age.

Skin Condition

What can cause hair loss in men that’s not age-related? If it’s sporadic bald spots, there might be some type of skin condition. Dry, itchy skin will have trouble keeping the hair follicles in place.

Emotional Hairloss

If you experience a sudden loss of hair, it could be an emotional problem. Extreme shock, for instance, can cause handfuls of your hair to come out.

The excellent news about sudden hair loss is that it’s a temporary condition. Whereas gradual thinning or patchy bald spots are more likely a permanent biological condition.

Ringworm Signs

Another type of hair loss to watch out for is patches of scaling that take place all over the top of your scalp. If you’re noticing patches of scaling over your entire scalp, you might be dealing with ringworm. Other symptoms of ringworm include swelling, hair breakage, seeping wounds, and redness.

Medication-Related

Are you experiencing hair loss over your entire body? It could be due to a new medication that you’re taking.

For instance, cancer patients will experience hair loss over their whole body during chemotherapy. Since the drug is causing hair loss, the hair can regrow once you stop taking it.

Treating a Scalp Infection

If there are small black dots all over your scalp, you might be dealing with an infection. Scalp infections can make your hair scaly, and it causes a lot of inflammation.

Instead of your hair follicles growing to their full length, they’ll stop when they’re only tiny stubs of hair. The good news is that there are many treatments to help with different types of scalp infections.

Your doctor might recommend massaging the affected area with a special ointment to promote healing. The cream might contain different kinds of nutrients such as vitamin e. You’ll probably also have to use a topical antibiotic that can stop the bacteria from growing.

As far as home remedies go, baking soda has excellent antifungal properties. You’ll be able to kill the pathogens that are causing the infection while also minimizing your itchiness. Baking soda can even neutralize your scalp’s pH level, which helps with inflammation.

However, before you go and whip up a baking soda paste for your head, we suggest reaching out to your doctor. If the infection is severe, you might need injections of anti-fungal medicine.

How Genetics Affect Male Pattern Baldness

If you didn’t already know, male pattern baldness is also called androgenetic alopecia. This type of hair loss is passed down from your parents’ genes.

It can be hard to tell how much male pattern baldness passes on through genes. However, if you have close relatives experiencing male pattern baldness, you probably will experience it too.

What causes androgenetic alopecia? As you get older, hormonal changes cause the hair follicles to shrink. Instead of growing long and full, hair stops in its tracks.

Male pattern baldness starts with thinning hair, and can begin as early as 13 years old! At the starting stages, the hair starts to get thin. It’ll then soften up, and stop growing to full length.

Treating Androgenetic Alopecia

When you catch androgenetic alopecia soon enough, there are ways to intervene. The treatment you need will depend on the severity of your case. For instance, you might be able to start taking medications like RU58841 that can stop hair loss.

While you won’t be able to get back the hair that you’ve already lost, you’ll be able to prevent any further hair follicles from falling off of your scalp. Other treatments include hair transplants so that you can minimize the area of bald skin.

There are also natural-looking hairpieces nowadays, so it’ll be virtually impossible for anybody to tell that you’re balding.

Hair Loss From Stress

Earlier, we mentioned that extreme psychological conditions can cause you to lose hair. For instance, if you’re experiencing a lot of stress or grieving over the death of a loved one, you might start to lose some hair.

Once you can minimize the amount of stress you experience daily, you can stop the shedding. Once the excessive shedding stops, you can expect your hair to return to its normal fullness within 9 to 12 months. During this time, you’ll want to be as gentle with your hair as possible.

For instance, you need to avoid excessive brushing, shampooing, and above all else, dying your hair. Coloring or perming your hair will only exacerbate hair loss. You’ll be damaging the hair follicles that are trying to regrow, and you might wind up with permanent bald spots.

Understanding What Can Cause Hair Loss in Men

Now you know what can cause hair loss in men. If you don’t like the way your hair looks, now’s the time to do something about it. You can invest in a quality hairpiece, or explore using regrowth medications.

As long as the baldness isn’t from an infection or problem, you could always embrace your new look. After all, being bald can make you look wise and sophisticated.

At the end of the day, it’s about what makes you happy. For more ways to see what’s available to you, take a look around the rest of our website.