How would you know if you are losing your hair? Basically, you look for changes in your hair.
The very earliest sign is that your hair looking less lively and duller than previously. It just seems a little lifeless.
What is interesting about hair loss, and a factor that no one really understands is that the hair is lost in phases and for quite long periods your hair can stabilize, often getting no worse for about ten years, and then will suddenly start being lost again. Usually the younger you begin to lose your hair the more aggressive the hair loss is, which sadly means you are more likely to be completely bald, rather than have hair remaining at the front of your head.
The next sign people see is general transparency in their hair, in other words, you look straight through someone’s hair and see their scalp. This general hair thinning is usually seen on the crown of your head first, although some people can experience a thinning at the temples (either side of their forehead).
With the balding process, the thinning hair spreads from the crown, so you get a receding area, which is where the bald pate is going to appear. This tends to reach a size of a few inches across, and then the hair thinning continues until a bald patch appears. Sometimes this can happen in isolation, sometimes your hair recedes from the front at the same time. When your hair recedes from the temples, it tends not to go thin, but instead, the hair stops being produced at the extremities i.e. at the very front of the hair and the hair loss moves backwards from there. A way to think about it is that the bald area “grows”.
In general, baldness starts with either a bald patch on your crown or receding from the temples and expands from the edges. It is not like alopecia, where it disappears in clumps. It is a very steady process. Eventually, the bald pate can expand to meet the receding of the temples, usually leaving a few strands at the frontal area of your head which are often the last to disappear.
Although hair loss is not a disease, like all similar conditions the earlier you act, the more effective the intervention can be.
