Doctors Differ on Why Hair Is Gone Tomorrow
Santa Fe cosmetologist Janice Meidam believes that heredity is only a part of the cause of the most common type of hair loss, male pattern baldness. The hair stylist at West San Francisco Street salon D.F.W. Bodhisattva says she has found that poor nutrition, stress and inferior hair products greatly speed genetically determined loss of hair in men and women (see accompanying story). However, some Santa Fe doctors sharply disagree.
While acknowledging the role of stress and nutrition in certain unusual types of hair loss, two local dermatologists maintain that male pattern baldness is a function of genetic makeup alone. However, one Santa Fe general physician says lifestyle definitely contributes to the onset and severity of hair loss in men.
“The most common type of hair loss, male pattern baldness, has to do with male sex hormones and the
heredity,” said dermatologist Thomas Holmes. All people men and women both ultimately lose their hair if they live long enough, he added. However, he said, women do not generally experience hair loss until after menopause, when they are no longer protected by the Itdinme hormone estrogen.
But it is the younger man contemplating his rapidly receding hairline who provides the moat ready market! for hair-loss treatments. “Usually nutritionists and people who claim to have magic potions are targeting this group of people,” Holmes said. However, he added, dermatologists think that there is “probably no strong relationship” between male pattern baldness and lifestyle, or specifically stress and nutrition.
Holmes, however, emphasized that there are many other types of hair loss, some of which are caused by stress in the form of illness or even pregnancy. And, of course, chemotherapy treatment of cancer patients is a direct cause of sometimes-total hair loss, although the hair usually grows back when the chemotherapy is discontinued.
Dr. Norman Kaczmarek, also a dermatologist, agreed that stress and nutrition can cause temporary hair loss in some cases, but do not necessarily figure in male pattern baldness.
Acute stress causes hair loss, Kaczmarek said. “Generally it is manifested three months after stressful instances, such as a heart attack, a child running away or childbirth,” he commented. He added that hair lost to sudden stress generally grows back.
He also said that crash dieting and certain strict vegetarian diets can cause hair loss. But he added that he could not say whether “chronic, low grade stress” would speed up loss of hair in male pat- tern baldness.
“Basically, it’s genetically predetermined,” he said. “In male pattern baldness some teen-agers start losing their hair, and most men and women will lose their hair if they are old enough.” He added that male pattern baldness is inherited from either side of the family. “You only need it from one side,” he said.
Both Kaczmarek and Holmes said they were aware of the high-blood-pressure medicine Minoxidil that is said to promote hair growth and is being studied by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in correcting baldness. They added that they were interested in watching its progress.
“It’s between 8 and 40 percent effective, depending on which study you read,” said Kaczmarek. “It would involve a liquid applied to the person’s scalp daily for six months just to find out if it works.” If it did provide beneficial results, a person would have to use it for the rest of his or her life, and the cost could run between $500 and $700 a year, he said.
While Kaczmarek suggested that Minoxidil may one day be a remedy for male pattern baldness in some people, he could not say that stress and nutrition have a significant effect on commonplace hair loss in men. “I don’t think I can say yes or no,” he commented. Dr. Willard Dean, a medical doctor whoi also practices natural medicine, disagrees with Kaczmarek and Holmes on the role of nutrition and stress in male pattern baldness. According to him, those factors can indeed be significant. “Male pattern baldness is genetically predetermined, but there is a lot that can be done to minimize or even reverse what that predisposition could be,” Dean said. “Given a certain genetic predisposition, people have a lot of leeway.”
Dean described how he sees the role of stress and nutrition in hair growth. At its roots in the scalp, hair is alive and is dependent on the flow of blood to the scalp for oxygen and nutrients, he said. Blood that lacks in nutrients will affect the quality of hair growth.
“Stress,” he continued, “impacts on the hair because it depletes the blood of certain nutrients that are necessary for cell growth and reproduction. Baldness is the lack of hair cells that can reproduce,” he noted, adding that stress definitely plays a role in hair loss, even in male pattern baldness.
However, stress is not the only cause of nutrient deficient blood, he said. Environmental factors such as poor soil, pesticides and other pollutants in air and water, and even synthetic fabrics can deplete the system of necessary vitamins and minerals.
“My feeling is that even someone with an optimal diet needs supplements,” Dean said. He added that the B vitamins, particularly pantothenic acid and PABA, or para-aminobenzoic acid, are beneficial to hair growth. He also recommended Vitamin C. and said that calcium and magnesium are known to help stress although “their direct contribution to healthy hair is not significant.” While Dean does not dispute the role of heredity in baldness, he thinks that by paying close attention to health and diet people can retard or even reverse what may have once seemed to be inevitable. “It’s like a card game,” he said. “We’re dealt a hand, but how we play the hand is up to us.”
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