Hair Loss

Americans spend billions on hair-care products each year, a remarkable investment for a part of the body with no real function. We clean it, nourish it and style it -- and we definitely mourn its loss. Lots of products and procedures promise to restore thinning or disappearing hair. One especially intriguing option is the HairMax LaserComb, a hand-held laser device that supposedly revives hair follicles.

It almost goes without saying that hair is huge business in Hollywood. Healthy, beautifully coiffed and colored locks are a key calling card for those in the spotlight. Exhibit A: Jennifer Aniston's headline-generating honey-blond shag, hyped year after year by fashion magazines as the "best hair in Hollywood. " While jaws flap about First Lady Michelle Obama's bangs or Miley Cyrus' extreme crop, it is something else entirely when the subject moves to supermodel Naomi Campbell's dramatically receding hairline, Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie's ever-growing part or Prince William's bald spot.

It almost goes without saying that hair is huge business in Hollywood. Healthy, beautifully coiffed and colored locks are a key calling card for those in the spotlight. Exhibit A: Jennifer Aniston's headline-generating honey-blond shag, hyped year after year by fashion magazines as the "best hair in Hollywood. " While jaws flap about First Lady Michelle Obama's bangs or Miley Cyrus' extreme crop, it is something else entirely when the subject moves to supermodel Naomi Campbell's dramatically receding hairline, Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie's ever-growing part or Prince William's bald spot.

Shaun White is fearless, right? Just look at some of those tricks he's pulled off in becoming a skating and snowboarding legend. Most people would be too terrified to even try some of the stunts that helped him win two Olympic golds and 22 X Games medals. But there's one thing that apparently sends chills down his spine, something most people do on a regular basis. Getting a haircut. Maybe it's because he likely hasn't had one in a long, long time, as evidenced by the flowing red hair that has made him instantly recognizable pretty much everywhere he goes.

A beauty queen with no hair ? that turns expectations upside down. At the 90th Miss America competition in Las Vegas last weekend, Miss Delaware, Kayla Martell, was that girl. Martell usually ? but not always ? competes for titles wearing a wig, but far from trying to hide her baldness, she uses her beauty queen status to raise awareness about alopecia areata, the autoimmune disease that caused her to lose her hair as a child. FOR THE RECORD: Women's hair loss: An article in the Image section elsewhere in this edition, about thinning hair in women, identified Dr. Monte O. Harris as being affiliated with Cultura cosmetic medical spa in Washington D.C. Harris is with the Center for Aesthetic Modernism in Chevy Chase, Md. The error was discovered after the section went to press.

Kellie Pickler shaved her head this week in a sign of solidarity with a close childhood friend facing cancer, and to raise awareness about early prevention of the disease. But the country singer might not know how many other cancer patients were moved by her gesture. Cancer patients endure a particular kind of hell when they lose their hair, said Nancy Lumb of Chevy Chase, Md. For many -- especially women -- it's the single hardest part of their battle. Lumb should know. She never cried when she was diagnosed with breast cancer four years ago. She stayed strong when she had to tell her husband, her friends and her family about the diagnosis.

I am a 39-year-old nurse who is experiencing drastic hair loss. I started taking atenolol for high blood pressure about four months ago. One month after beginning the med, I started losing hair. I have asked the doctors that I work with, and their only advice is to start exercising and try to get off the atenolol altogether. I am going to take that advice, because my biggest fear is losing my hair. No wonder you worry. Losing a lot of hair is not a pleasant experience.

Americans spend billions on hair-care products each year, a remarkable investment for a part of the body with no real function. We clean it, nourish it and style it -- and we definitely mourn its loss. Lots of products and procedures promise to restore thinning or disappearing hair. One especially intriguing option is the HairMax LaserComb, a hand-held laser device that supposedly revives hair follicles. Hailed on TV news programs as a potential "cure for baldness," the device received FDA clearance for men in 2007.

A protein called interleukin-1, found naturally in the human body, may be the key to stopping hair loss in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, University of Miami researchers report this month in the FASEB Journal, published by the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology. "This is the first drug that has been found to be effective against hair loss from chemotherapy agents," said biochemist Adel Yunis.

Though Asian men generally have less trouble than Caucasians with the most common form of hereditary male baldness, cigarettes may erase that edge, researchers said Monday. Smoking may destroy hair follicles, interfere with the way blood and hormones are circulated in the scalp or increase the production of estrogen, said Lin-Hui Su of the Far Eastern Memorial Hospital and Tony Hsiu-Hsi Chen of National Taiwan University in Taipei.

Ask Tommy Lee Jones about his cantankerous performance as radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" and the veteran performer bristles. Perhaps mistaking the question for a personal comment, the Harvard-educated, Oscar-winning actor feigns ignorance: "Cantankerous? I don't know what the meaning of that word is!" He paused, adding: "And I hear that word all the time. " If the "No Country for Old Men" star has been hearing the C-word more than usual lately, it's likely due to Jones' spirited portrayal of the fiery abolitionist congressman in the acclaimed biopic, which arrived in theaters earlier this month featuring Daniel Day-Lewis as America's 16th president.

Kellie Pickler shaved her head this week in a sign of solidarity with a close childhood friend facing cancer, and to raise awareness about early prevention of the disease. But the country singer might not know how many other cancer patients were moved by her gesture. Cancer patients endure a particular kind of hell when they lose their hair, said Nancy Lumb of Chevy Chase, Md. For many -- especially women -- it's the single hardest part of their battle. Lumb should know. She never cried when she was diagnosed with breast cancer four years ago. She stayed strong when she had to tell her husband, her friends and her family about the diagnosis.

In mice and men, baldness is a scourge that cries out for a cure. Fortunately, a far-flung group of American researchers is on it - and on Wednesday reported progress on this front in the very sober journal Science Translational Medicine. Plucking hair follicles from the pates of 22 men with male-pattern baldness(think George Constanza here) and an army of mice, researchers detected a key difference between patches where hair was growing and patches where it was thinning or bald: In humans, a prostaglandin called PGD2 was far more plentiful in areas of the pate that were bald than in patches where hair continued to grow; and in mice, the same prostaglandin was in large supply when they were in the shedding phase of their normal hair follicle cycle.  The team was led by dermatologist Luis Garza (then of the University of Pennsylvania, now at Johns Hopkins University)

Vin Diesel has embraced his baldness. And it's doubtful Michael Stipe spends much time browsing for toupees. But not all of the 40 million American men with follicularly challenged scalps are going quietly into that bald night. They're raging -- with Rogaine, among other things. Men who want to hang on to their hair have many options, including medications and surgical transplants, says Dr. Marc Avram, hair transplant surgeon and clinical professor of dermatology at Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York City.

It's getting harder for me to deny that I've reached middle age, and the most obvious sign is that the men in my life are losing their hair. Many men struggle to come to terms with hair loss and yearn for a way to turn back the clock. Although I'm no expert on the subject, I've suggested they look into Propecia, a medication used to treat male pattern hair loss. Invariably, they're intrigued. It works by preventing testosterone from turning into another hormone that causes hair loss.

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details. Hold that hot comb, say a team of researchers -- African American women suffering from scarring hair loss may have weaves, braids and other hair-grooming traditions at least partly to blame. Central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia is a type of hair loss that spreads from the middle of the scalp outward. It spreads as hair follicles die and are replaced by scar tissue, and it seems to be a particular issue for African American women, though its causes are not well understood.

A potential new way to prevent hair loss resulting from cancer chemotherapy has been discovered by researchers at the University of Miami School of Medicine and Cell Technology Inc., of Boulder, Colo. They have been working with a bacterial preparation, called ImuVert, that stimulates the immune system to react more effectively against cancer cells. Hair loss is one of the more demoralizing side-effects of chemotherapy, and some patients have refused treatment because of it.

Halloween may be over, but ... Ayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee !!! You would scream too if it were your hairs carpeting the bath in drifts each time you shampooed. I mean, how many hairs does one scalp hold? And how many hairs can one woman shed before she starts looking quite bald? (Hmm, catchy. Maybe I should turn it into a song.) That I can be obsessed with losing a few hairs at such a time is testament to the deep-rootedness and indomitability of the human vanity instinct. I'm 42!

Hair-loss products that contain the drug finasteride and are sold under the brand names Propecia and Proscar are known to cause sexual side effects in some men. But a new study suggests that the sexual dysfunction can last for several months after stopping the medications. Researchers interviewed 71 men age 21 to 46 who were in good health but claimed they experienced sexual side effects after beginning finasteride. The men reported various problems such as erectile dysfunction (92% experienced this)

A beauty queen with no hair ? that turns expectations upside down. At the 90th Miss America competition in Las Vegas last weekend, Miss Delaware, Kayla Martell, was that girl. Martell usually ? but not always ? competes for titles wearing a wig, but far from trying to hide her baldness, she uses her beauty queen status to raise awareness about alopecia areata, the autoimmune disease that caused her to lose her hair as a child. FOR THE RECORD: Women's hair loss: An article in the Image section elsewhere in this edition, about thinning hair in women, identified Dr. Monte O. Harris as being affiliated with Cultura cosmetic medical spa in Washington D.C. Harris is with the Center for Aesthetic Modernism in Chevy Chase, Md. The error was discovered after the section went to press.