Common vs severe hair loss: When to sound the alarm

You were showering or combing your hair as usual, when suddenly, a big chunk of hair clings into your fingers or comb. What is wrong? Is it normal?

According to board-certified dermatologist Dr. Maria Julieta “Mariel” Arambulo-Cordero, hair transplant associate physician of Asian Hair Restoration Center, studies show that 50 to 80 percent of people globally, including Filipinos, will lose hair in their lifetime.

“Most of the time, it’s (because of) genetics,” Arambulo-Cordero said in a DAILY TRIBUNE exclusive.

She said that if your parents or either of them suffer from hair loss, one would have 40 percent risk of getting the same fate.

“It’s like a ticking time bomb,” she noted. Depending on your relatives’ hair loss severity, the same could happen to an individual starting at 17, although it usually begins at 30.

Diagnosis, she stressed, is important to know the type of hair loss before one starts treatment. Some hair losses, like a type of male alopecia in the likes of Princes William and Harry of the United Kingdom, is harder to treat because it should be treated forever.

Shedding off a few strands within the day is normal. But if it gets to more than 100 strands of your hair for seven days, then one should immediately seek a doctor, Dr. Mariel advised.

Root causes

Besides genetics, hair loss could be triggered by stress, pregnancy and illnesses like Covid, hypertension and diabetes.

“We can’t avoid stress, but since the scalp is hormone-sensitive (you experience hair loss),” Dr. Mariel shared.

She added that using hair care products and salon treatments with a lot of chemicals like phthalates and parabens can be irritating to some scalps.

As a functional medicine doctor, she also treats the root cause, which could include nutrient deficiencies like iron deficiency anemia and lacking in vitamin B. She added that inflammatory food like saturated fats and crash diets like Omad (one meal a day) decrease protein that can cause hair fall.

Ozempic, a brand-name prescription drug used to manage blood sugar in adults with type-2 diabetes, recently became viral for weight loss. Dr. Mariel, however, warned that Ozempic could decrease protein and cause hair loss.

While some cases can be addressed by simply stopping Ozempic or treating anemia, other hair loss dilemmas need sustainable solutions like exosomes, genetic testing and other modalities like treating the gut, said the doctor.

TrichoPAT, according to her, is now their center’s most famous treatment as it helps the release of peptides and hair growth factors with a 90 percent success rate after 46 sessions. Every session costs P25,000 or P20,000 for a package of six, and recommended by Dr. Mariel to be done every year. A more permanent alternative is hair transplant, which she assured to last forever.

From choosing hair care products with gentler ingredients to having preventive checkups with a dermatologist — the authority in hair loss as compared with trichologists who are not doctors — Dr. Mariel urged everyone to not take their hair for granted because every strand is a boost of youthful confidence.