Not all hair loss remedies on the market today is created equal - but you probably know that already, or you wouldn't be looking for something to deliver the promises of the other "snake oil" potions that have left a gaping whole in your purse or wallet, and a distinct lack of anything else.
The good news is that there are hair growth products and remedies available today that do work - but you probably won't find them in your doctors surgery, or the local pharmacy, or many of the websites that you've recently visited.
So, at least for a minute or so, feel confident that there are options out there that help with hair loss in women (I'll tell you about them in a few minutes) and kick back and let me help reassure you about hair loss and how it affects us (and how we can deal with it).
When it happened . . .
- Anna, 24, a beautiful nurse, called off her wedding.
- Ross, 45, a former army officer, felt he would never satisfy a woman again.
- Hilary, 35, the sophisticated wife of a city industrialist, spent a fortune trying to get her hair back - only to lose it all in the shower of her Mediterranean villa.
- Joanne, 7, suddenly stopped wearing dresses. She felt like a boy.
- Toni, 9, a star of BBC TV's Bob says 'Opportunity Knocks', was tormented cruelly by other children.
- Sally, 18, tried to kill herself with an overdose of alcohol and drugs.
- Duncan Goodhew, swimmer, turned his affliction to advantage.
The Olympic gold medalist says. 'If it hadn't happened to me when I was 10 years old I might never have made it as a champion in sport. Adversity either makes or breaks.'
These people have one thing in common. They have all lost their hair, rapidly and frighteningly, through the scalp disease alopecia areata. It can happen to anyone, man or woman, at any age. It happened to me, when I was in my thirties and appearing on television for a living.
It could happen to you.
So you have suddenly lost your hair? Maybe you are only starting to get small bald patches, or perhaps you have lost it all. You are shocked, horrified and panic-stricken, and all you can think about lately is finding some effective hair growth products that can undo the damage.
Of course you are. One minute you are taking your hair for granted - complaining, perhaps, that it is too dry, too greasy or that your hairdresser has cut it too short. Or maybe you just dislike the style. Then wham! Out of the blue, for no reason you know of, your hair falls out. The process may take six months or just a day or two. It can even happen overnight.
The result is the same. A scalp made unsightly by large bare patches, a thin top layer of hair you can see through... or a shiny, completely bald head. Miserable enough for a man. A downright catastrophe for a woman.
When you suddenly lose your hair as an adult, you feel immediately humiliated. It destroys your confidence in yourself in every aspect of your life.
You see a different person in the mirror. That unfamiliar hairless head - is that mine?
You feel unattractive - how could anyone possibly fancy such a poor, bald freak? To be attractive you need to feel - at least a little - enamored of yourself. When your hair goes and self-esteem with it, your self-image is shattered.
So, probably, is your sex life. Without hair, many people find that their first problem is sex. Their second problem is sex. And their third problem is sex. To survive severe hair loss you need a whole new outlook on yourself and your relationships.
With my blog and articles I will do more than tell the story of the thousands who suffer. I will also tell you how to survive, how to come out of the situation looking as good as you did before - perhaps even better!
One in a hundred
As many as one in a hundred people lose their hair through the scalp disease alopecia areata, according to leading American dermatologist Dr Sigfrid A. Muller of the Mayo Clinic
For years, no one has known how many people suffer this freak hair loss. This is because only a tiny percentage of victims ever goes to a hospital. Many don't even see their family doctor. Medical statistics, therefore, reflect only a tiny fraction of the problem.
To find out the true incidence, Dr Muller led a team of doctors in a major epidemiological survey in Rochester, Minnesota, USA.
He asked: 'Just how many of the population get this disease?' His conclusion was staggering. Over the next 60 years, he discovered, approximately one per cent of the population will have alopecia areata - not the gentle, gradual balding of old age, but sudden, devastating hair loss which can happen at any time.
Dr Muller emphasizes the good news. He told me that as many as 95 per cent of these cases may be only mild ones, but his earlier research suggests that the number of people who lose all their hair could be as high as 30 per cent.
Alopecia areata (from the Greek for 'mangy fox') usually starts with a tiny bald patch the size of a 10 pence piece. Sometimes it becomes diffuse alopecia, spread over the entire scalp. Younger patients often find their alopecia areata begins as a diffuse loss.
When it happened to me, it was first diagnosed as post partum telogen effluvium - hair loss related to a recent pregnancy; later, by a consultant dermatologist, as classic alopecia areata; and later still, by another consultant, as diffuse alopecia.
Worldwide, experts have suspected for the past 30 years that there has been an increase in diffuse alopecia, particularly among women. As far back as 1960, a team of German dermatologists reported an increase in diffuse hair loss in women. This came at a time when - coincidentally - women were beginning to take the contraceptive pill. All over the world, women were swallowing high quantities of synthetic hormones, progestogens and estrogens.
Several years later, dermatologist Dr Frank E. Cormia of Comell University, New York, linked cases of female hair loss directly with the pill and suggested that it could trigger 'male pattern' baldness in women, telogen effluvium and other types of diffuse hair loss.
His report prompted the question: 'Is a generation of balding women the price we pay for the convenient chemical?'
Alopecia areata is the mystery scalp disease which strikes savagely without warning, so that someone who has had a perfectly normal head of hair suddenly loses it. Hair comes out from the roots in ugly clumps. You may be lucky and have only a small patch, which clears up and never reappears. You may be unlucky and lose the lot - all scalp hair plus eyelashes and eyebrows (alopecia totalis). You may lose all body hair, including scalp (alopecia universalis). Or you may be plagued by odd patches all your life.
At the same time, nails often become pitted and ridged. You won't know why, neither will your doctors. They know the mechanism, that it is almost certainly an autoimmune disease in which some of the white blood cells - the lymphocytes - overwork and produce antibodies which attack the hair follicles as though they were foreign bodies. But doctors don't know what triggers it or, more important, how to stop it.
After years of research across the world, dermatologists admit that they are still baffled. Too often they are forced to tell patients: 'There is nothing we can do. Go home. Leam to live with it.' Or without it! Doctors daily carry out miraculous treatments on tragic cases of cancer, heart disease, polio, but when it comes to the apparently simple fact of baldness there is - too often - little they can do.
When it happened to me, I was perfectly happy with a young family and an exacting career as a television journalist. I felt totally alone and a complete freak. I thought I was the only young woman in the world to go bald, but an article I wrote in a top women's magazine, and a radio feature on BBC Radio Four's Woman's Hour convinced me I was wrong.
Countless letters poured in, all from people in the same boat. Sudden baldness had isolated them, had caused marital, social and psychological problems. One woman, who had been a glamorous nightclub dancer, confessed: 'There's never a week when I don't consider suicide.'
They wrote from the United Kingdom, Europe, America, the Far East. All over the world women were spending their lives in headscarves or wigs, terrified of revealing their secret, that underneath they looked like plucked chickens or victims of Chemobyl. Men wrote that alopecia areata (AA) had shattered their confidence and wrecked their relationships. The moth-eaten patches had played havoc with their appearance and made them look slovenly. They felt odd, different from other men.
For years, the subject had been swept under the carpet. Pre-mature baldness, particularly in a woman, is by no means a seductive sight.
Some doctors, embarrassed perhaps by their inability to help, have blamed it vaguely on stress or shock, or prescribed tranquillizers with advice to 'stop worrying'. Some have suggested that it is imaginary. In a few rare cases, they are right. The patient may have a distorted body image. But for most of us, when hair falls out suddenly it is an all too horrifying fact.
As I mentioned above, there are several effective hair loss treatments that work and actively stimulate and encourage hair regrowth, but because they're not medical treatments, you won't hear about them through your doctor. But you can learn more about them at this site, and discover the best hair loss treatment for your specific condition.
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