Hair Loss - The Top 7 Causes and What You Can Do About It

Hair loss is always something people do not want to deal with.

Perhaps seeing extra hair in the shower or on the brush is what alerted them to their hair loss. Or, maybe a friend or family member has made a comment as to how thin the individual's hair has become.

Regardless of how it came to be noticed, hair loss means something.

Here are a few things to look into regarding why hair loss happens and if there is something that can be done about it.

1. Medicines are often a large cause of hair loss. Such medicines as blood thinners, birth control pills, and antidepressants can cause hair loss.

Chemotherapy drugs, gout drugs, and even high doses of vitamin A can cause it.

To stop the hair loss, the drugs must be stopped. Usually normal hair growth will return at this point.

2. Hormones are a large cause of hair loss as well. Often this will be due to the over-activity or the under-activity of the thyroid gland.

This creates an imbalance of such hormones as androgens and estrogens and leads to hair loss.

Treatments for thyroid disease often fix this problem and hair loss stops.

3. Pregnancy. Often times, the levels of hormones in the pregnant women's body are so high that they do not allow the normal growth cycle of hair to continue.

This means that during pregnancy, women lose less hair. About 3 months after pregnancy, though, many women experience high levels of hair loss that is just the hair that never fell out during pregnancy.

Hair loss will soon stop and regular hair cycles will begin again.