Do Vitamins Really Help For Hair Loss

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Every once in a while some one comes along claiming their new vitamin regimen will stop hair loss and allow you to re-grow hair in all your bald spots. Have you ever noticed that these new vitamin products never stay around for long. The reason for this is the fact that most of the hair loss in the developed world is not due to poor nutrition. Instead, male pattern baldness is the culprit in 95% of the cases.

The problem with using vitamins for hair loss is that the western diet is not really that deficient in most nutrients. Our problem is that we eat way too many calories on a daily basis. Our bodies were never meant to consume and process the amounts of high caloric food that makes up a large portion of our diets. Proof of this is seen in the epidemic levels of Type 2 diabetes and obesity we see everywhere in our culture. So if nutrition isn't the culprit what is?

For men, 95% of the cases of early hair loss are caused by androgenetic alopecia. This condition is marked be an increase in the levels of the hormone DHT in the blood stream. DHT has the capacity to bond with receptors on the hair follicles and cause them to slowly stop producing hair shaft material. As more and more DHT bonds with the follicle the hair shaft becomes smaller and smaller and eventually breaks off at the scalp line and will not grow back.

If you are interested in hair loss prevention then you would do better to treat the levels of DHT in the blood stream or the effects of the DHT on the hair follicles instead of taking massive amounts of vitamins. Don't get me wrong, you should definitely take the vitamins that have been shown to produce healthy hair but you also should be looking into treatments that limit or block the DHT. There are actually two drugs that have been approved by the US FDA as being effective at limiting the effects of DHT and thus the hair loss associated with it.

Finasteride is taken in a tablet form once a day and works to actually limit the production of DHT. This drug is not recommended for women with hair loss because it has been shown to cause birth defects in male babies. The second drug, minoxidil, is approved for both sexes. It is applied topically, which means rubbed into the scalp, two times a day. Minoxidil stops the DHT from bonding with the hair follicles by inhibiting the receptors from attaching to the free DHT.

In a nutshell, vitamins are important but in the west you are more likely to be suffering from male pattern baldness caused by high levels of DHT than you are from any other reason.

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