What Makes You Bald?

There are many reasons that could make you bald. Let us see take a short look at some of the common causes:

• Lack of proper nutrition.
• A self-induced hair loss by pulling it out (traction alopecia).
• Heredity and old age
• Changes in hormonal balance
• Childbirth.
• A serious illness or fever.
• Medication like cancer chemotherapy or too much Vitamin A.
• Emotional or physical stress.
• Disease.
• Treatments of hair and usage of chemicals.
• Infection of the scalp.

Also prevalent are other kinds of baldness.

Trichotillomania refers to hair loss that occurs when a person compulsively pulls at and bends his or her hair. This condition is more common in children than in adults. Here, the hairs do not become absent from the scalp but are broken. If they get broken very near to the scalp, they cause short, “exclamation mark” hairs.

Traction alopecia which is very common among people who tend to pull on their hair with excessive force. People with ponytails or cornrows, for instance.

Telogen effluvium: This is a condition caused by traumas like chemotherapy, childbirth, major surgery, poisoning, and severe stress.

Another common cause of hair thinning is a deficiency of iron in the body. However, here also, frank baldness is not common.

Childbirth, too, is also often followed by worrisome hair loss, but it does not cause actual baldness. In such cases, the hair would actually be thicker during the period of pregnancy, because of increased circulating oestrogens. After the birth of the baby, the levels of oestrogen fall back to the normal levels before pregnancy. And the additional hair foliage drops away. A condition similar to this occurs among women taking the drug clomiphene, for stimulating fertility.

Hair loss can also be caused by hypothyroidism. Here the loss of hair would typically be frontal, and is associated particularly with thinning of the outer third of the eyebrows. (There is another possible cause for the loss of hair in the outer third of the eyebrows - syphilis).

Hyperthyroidism, too, can also be a cause. However, here the baldness would be parietal rather than frontal.

Radiation to the scalp also leads to baldness of the concerned areas. This usually happens when radiotherapy is applied to the head, for treating certain types of cancer.

Certain mycotic infections can also be a cause for hair loss on massive scale.

Another condition causing hair loss is ‘alopecia areata’, which is also known as “spot baldness“.This is an autoimmune disorder. This can cause hair loss ranging from just one location (alopecia areata monolocularis) to all hair on the entire body (alopecia areata universalis).

Another instance of baldness is localised or diffuse hair loss which may occur in cicatricial alopecia (lupus erythematosus, lichen plano pilaris, folliculitis decalvans, central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia, postmenopausal frontal fibrosing alopecia, etc.). Localised baldness is also induced by tumours and skin outgrowths (sebaceous nevus, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma).

Sebaceous cysts can also cause hair loss, but of a temporary nature. In such instances, loss of hair is observed where sebaceous cysts are present for long periods: one to several weeks in length, normally.

Now we know baldness is not just something to be laughed away.