Androgenic alopecia or common baldness - How To Cure Hair Loss and Hair Fall

Androgenic alopecia, also known as common baldness, is undoubtedly the most common type of hair loss in humans. Although more common in men is not unique to males, as it also affects women.

Begin by analyzing what happens in the majority of men: in the Caucasian population occurs in 20 percent of men aged 20 years, but increases exponentially with age, so that at age 80 to 90 percent of men this type of alopecia.

This loss of hair is very easy to identify as characteristically affecting the frontoparietal region (the classic "entries") and the region of the vertex of the scalp (the crown) of the man.
Their age of onset is around 18, but may occur earlier (this week I've just attended a 13 year old boy with hair loss of these features). The sooner you begin to manifest, has unfortunately proven to have a worse prognosis.

Both genes and hormones are involved in androgenic alopecia. Genetic predisposition to suffer and hormonal factors are the determinants in the absence of which it is not possible to have this type of hair loss.

According to how it is transmitted from parents to children, inheritance can be autosomal dominant (the person just need to get the abnormal gene from one parent to inherit the disease) or polygenic (controlled by the combined effect of several different genes) . In the case of androgenic alopecia transmission occurs both ways, so that the person concerned could have inherited much of one of their parents as both.

The influence of genes plays a major role in hair loss, as has been shown in studies of monozygotic and dizygotic twins. These genetic factors are responsible for modulating the influence of androgens in this type of alopecia. So we lose only genetically predisposed follicles. In some patients this is limited to entries, others to the crown, some to both regions and others alopecia progresses to affect the entire top of the head. Even in advanced cases of baldness only preserves a strip of hair, more or less wide, ranging from pre auricular area above and to the back area below the crown.

The hormonal role is fundamentally represented by testosterone. This hormone comes from the blood through the scalp but which is an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase (which only occurs in genetically predisposed follicles lost) as 5-alpha-dihydrotestosterone, which is ultimately responsible for the fall hair.

These factors are compounded by other factors that act as triggers of the process when it is dormant or aggravating when it is running. Among them we must mention the prevalence of stress. Also remember that the hair loss itself generates anxiety, which in turn aggravates the process. We must break this vicious cycle to succeed in treatment.

Summer School in El Escorial

Later, I will in the characteristics that male pattern baldness when it affects women.

In the next post will discuss the surgical treatment of androgenic alopecia in men and pick up the latest developments in this field will present in a few days during a conference that I run in the summer courses at El Escorial that dictates the Complutense University on the professional response to the aesthetic manifestations of today's society.

The theoretical course in El Escorial is complemented by a workshop to give at the headquarters of imem (Cabinet Dermatological Hair), whose program took the opportunity to post here.