Stop Male Hair Loss

To understand male hair loss and how to combat male hair loss, a simple understanding of how hair grows is useful. If you understand how hair grows, it makes deciphering the different hair loss products a lot less difficult

Like a lot of other things in the human body, hair growth is a cyclic event and occurs in three phases.

The phases of hair growth are
Anagen
Catagen
Telogen

The hairs on your head are not all in the same phase of the growth cycle. Usually 90% are in the Anagen phase, about 2% in Catagen and the others in telogen.

Also the length of the hair cycle varies for different parts of the body so the hair on the eyebrows, for example, have a shorter growth cycle than head hair. For the rest of this discussion, we will focus on head hair.

Hair grows in a cycle that consists mainly of three phases:

Anagen, Catagen and Telogen

The growth cycle involves the hair going from growth through to regression and shedding and rest.

Anagen Phase [Growth Phase]

During the anagen phase the hair follicle is pretty active. It grows down into the dermal layer of skin to secure a good blood supply. The cells in the dermal papilla are also pretty active, rapidly dividing to produce the hair shaft. As the hair shaft grows up through the pore in the skin, it becomes keratinized.

It’s interesting that the length of the Anagen stage relative to the other phases in the hair growth cycle directly determines how long you can grow your hair. It stands to reason really, the longer the follicle remains in the growth stage, the more time the hair has to grow. This implies a lot of person to person variation in the Anagen phase. The average is two to four years.

Catagen Phase [Transitional or Involution Phase]

Catagen follows Anagen and can last two to four weeks. During catagen, growth stops. The follicle reduces in size. The dermal papilla separates from the blood supply forming bulb hair. The hair however remains in the pore. It is shed during another phase called exogen phase.

Telogen Phase [Resting Phase]

There is no hair growth in the telogen phase. The club hair which was produced in the catagen phase remains quiescent. It is not at it’s full length and is composed of a root, a dermal papilla with no blood supply and the keratinized shaft. At the end of the telogen phase which can last two to four months on the scalp, the hair is shed in the exogen phase

On average, 50 to 100 hairs are shed a day but the number varies from person to person and from time to time