Hair

Hair is generally the same as skin health in that anything that will make your skin healthier will also aid your skin by supporting the embedded follicles.

General Health

I don’t wish to superfiscial care for hair health, you can find that elsewhere. Here, I want to focus on the scalp and caring for the follicles since that is ultimately where your hair quality will come from.

In this view, the scalp is simply another patch of skin with a few special nuances:

1. it needs to “breathe”
2. it needs to feed on light
3. it needs a healthy microbiome

And of course, you need to be internally healthy for skin to be healthy. Hair is not special in these regards.

What is special is that you have a LOT more hair on the scalp than elsewhere and it has genetic programs baked in that cause hair loss. A few notes on general health:

1. The scalp will benefit from red light therapy, the same sort covered in Skin. The difference is you will want a laser system, like a headband, that parts the hair so the light can actually reach the skin.
2. Hair causes oils to get trapped on the scalp, you will want to make sure to scrub the oils from the scalp every week to help the skin “breath”.
3. Shampoos and conditioners can damage the microbiome of your scalp, you want to focus on non-synthetic and prebiotic materials where possible
4. Blood flow to the scalp will aid the follicles, so techniques like micro needling, massage, or topicals, that promote bloodflow will help your skin, thus the follicles, and thus your hair.

Hair Loss

Many have genetic hair loss. It’s inexplicably programmed in to minaturize follicles until they disapper on the sides and back of the scalp. At 36 I’m starting to see thinning at the temples as I write this.

It’s more observable in men because men produce higher levels of testosterone which is converted into another hormone, DHT, which triggers the minaturization. But it applies to men and women.

Thinning without the androgenic pattern

If you see thinning for other reasons, and it doesn’t follow the androgenic alopecia pattern, then it’s likely you are unhealthy as a baseline — hair caps out on internal health. Tackle your health holistically rather than vainly attempting to make your hair look good.

In this position you have two choices:

1. accept the genetic inevitability and roll with it
2. fight a losing battle until a gene therapy is created

There is no right answer here, you are definitely judged by your hair, especially as a female, it’s simply an animal instinct. Also, having partial hair loss is messy and sucks while shaving your head bald is also a fair amount of upkeep.

Overall, it’s an annoying situation to be in.

How Hair Follicles Work

Before we talk about the losing battle, a crash course in hair follicles is helpful.

Hair follicles are cells which go through a multi-year lifecycle.

Under DHT exposure, susceptible follicles shrink cycle by cycle. Each new hair grows thinner, shorter, and lighter than the last until the follicle can no longer produce a visible hair at all. Though general poor health can also lead to shrinking and loss.

Keeping & Growing Hair

The first step, is to be healthy in general. The higher your base the better your skin, the better your hair.

Otherwise, to stop genetic hair loss you have to prevent the hormone DHT from affecting the follicle, if you catch it early enough the best solution is to apply topical finasteride or dutasteride or a similar blocker.

There is no other way without a gene therapty (that doesn’t exist).

But what about hair growth treatments?

You can compensate with Minoxidil or even rosemary oil which extends the growth phase of the follicles, and if they are still in their growth phase it will keep them growing longer and thicker. It won’t resurrect follicles that have already died off, which is why catching miniaturization early matters — once the follicle is gone, no topical will bring it back.

This slows the minaturaization process by extending the growth phase, basically if the follicles lifecycle is longer, then it will take more time to minaturize even if it’s the same number of cycles.