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Americans believe stress is a leading cause of hair loss, according to a survey commissioned by hair-loss treatment makers Regaine, an over-the-counter preparation.

The firm asked Wakefield Research to survey Americans to see what their attitudes to hair loss were. 57% of those questioned said they were not attracted to people with thinning hair, while 40% of married respondents said they would prefer their partner to be overweight rather than bald.

The survey asked 1,001 adults how much they knew about hair loss. 75% said that stress was a leading cause of the condition – incorrectly – while 35% believed that wearing a hat frequenty could cause hair to thin. 24% said that overstyling hair could lead to hair loss. This last belief is partly true, as hair treatments such as hair extensions can put stress on hair and cause it to thin.

Dr. Robert Leonard, a member of the board of governers for the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery and a leading hair transplant surgeon, said that the survey showed that people were unaware that hereditary hair loss accounts for 95% of all hair loss. He warned that diet, vitamins and thickening shampoos and conditioners were not effective treatments for hair loss.

The survey shows how little the general public really know about hair loss, suggesting that many people suffering from the condition will turn to untested or pointless treatments to cure the problem. There are lots of shampoos and serums that claim to ameliorate the condition, but as hereditary hair loss is a medical condition with specific causes, they are not going to make a difference.

There are only two products which have been clinically proven to combat hair loss. The first is Regaine, the commissioners of the survey, which uses the active ingredient minoxidil to combat heridatary hair loss. It is believed that it encourages blood to flow to the hair follicles, encouraging regrowth.

While Regaine is available over the counter, the other option, Propecia, is only available with a doctor’s prescription. It is only suitable for men and contains finasteride, which stops the production of dihydratestosterone, responsible for attacking the hair follicles in the scalp.

During his trip to New Zealand, Prince William has got a lot of positive coverage. Newspapers around the world have published pictures of him cooking steak during a barbeque with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key as well as the future king exchanging the traditional nose-to-nose greeting with the head of a Maori tribe.

There has also been a fair bit of attention paid to a less statemanly aspect of his trip – photos that show the Prince is not just struggling with a receeding hairline but is clearly experiencing fairly severe male-pattern hairloss.

Local journalists were overhead discussing his exposed pate, with one female reporter quoted by the Daily Mail as saying to a colleague, “Oh my god, he looks really bald. But he is still handsome.”

William has clearly inherited a condition predominant in his family, male-pattern baldness. Often sons are more likely to see their hairline receed if their father also experienced the same thing. Prince Charles’ hair started thinning when he was aged 28 (Prince William is 27) while Prince Edward started losing his hair aged 21.

Male-pattern hair loss is caused by hormonal changes where the hormone testosterone is converted into another hormone called dihydrotestosterone. The hair follicles become more sensitive to this hormone and it causes the hair follicles on the head to shrink.

There are some treatments to halt the progress of male pattern baldness, such as Propecia or Regaine. Some men even resort to hair transplants. It all really depends on how the man in question feels about the hairloss.

The Maori women certainly weren’t put off by the glimpses of pink pate showing through – one women yelled, ‘We love you William!’ as he exchanged greetings with a group of Maori elders.

1 in three women over 25 are believed to be suffering from hair loss, as the strains of modern life and the pressures to look good take their toll on their locks.

A new survey, commissioned by the vitamin supplement manufacturers Vitabiotics WellWomen Tricologic, has discovered that 37% of women in the UK have noticed hair loss to some extent, with 4.7 million women reporting serious hair thinning to be a problem. The researchers claimed that as most women think thinning hair is a problem that occurs in older women, the stress from the loss of hair itself was adding significantly to the problem, making the hair loss worse.

Of the 3,000 women who took part in the survey, the majority admitted that they would be ashamed to say if they were losing their hair. A third of the women said their hair loss made them depressed, while a quarter said the problem was affecting their personal lives.

In an article in the Daily Mail, they suggested that the hair loss might be a result of women feeling pressure to stay thin, meaning that they weren’t getting the right nutrients for their hair. They quoted a trichologist, Sara Allison, as saying that women simply ‘don’t eat enough to get all the nutrients”.

While some hair loss can be stress related, other conditions are purely medical, such as alopecia areata. Most experts agree this is an auto-immune disease, which can be genetic or possibly triggered by a severe physical trauma. The Mail decided to illustrate their piece with a picture of Gail Porter who lost all her hair due to this condition, a fairly misleading choice as her condition is certainly medical rather than related to poor diet.

They also published the story of Paula Smith, implying that her hair loss was diet-related, despite the fact that she had given birth 7 months ago. Women who have just finished a pregnancy are at higher risk of losing their hair.

While the article does well to raise the issue of hair loss in women, it’s a shame that it didn’t seem to be especially well researched and that they didn’t make a clearer differentiation between medical hair loss and stress-related problems.  The fair number of distressed alopecia sufferers writing messages on the comment board also showed that those with medical hair loss were justifiably upset their problem had been trivialised.

Cricketing stars Shane Warne and Graham Gooch might be remembered for the spin they put on their bowling, but according to the Advertising Standards Agency, there was a bit too much spin in their adverts for the Advanced Hair Studio.

National adverts for the clinic were branded misleading after Warne claimed, “I stopped worring about my hair when I heeded the Warne-ing signs and saw Advanced Hair Studio”. Despite the fabulousness of the pun, The ASA launched an investigation when they received a complaint that the advert was misleading in its claims that the system used by the cricketers, AHS-FP treatment, could stop hair falling out or even cause it to grow back.

The adverts showed four different photos of Gooch’s scalp before and after the treatment, which involves a hair-replacement process called strand-by-strand.

The ASA concluded that Advanced Hair Studio was only entitled to claim that the system had a ‘cosmetic effect’, whereas the wording of the advert implied a physiological effect.  The adverts can no longer appear in their current format.

The chairman of Advanced Hair Studios, Carl Howell, said that the decision was unfair and that the company had asked the Committee on Advertising Practice for advice on the advert’s wording. He was especially critical that the process of investigating the advert had taken two years and that despite an decision in their favour in October, this was overturned without ‘any new arguments’ having been presented to them.

Generally hair loss is seen as an unfortunate part of growing old, something that can be ignored or panicked over, but a natural part of the aging process. However a Korean soldier has won a court case after he claimed that his hair loss was caused by extreme stress related to his duties.

The military worker first found circular balding in February 2007 and went to a military hospital for treatment However he then discovered that hair was falling out in other parts of his body, such as his eyebrows, armpits and body.

Despite being discharged from the army in November, he said that his hairloss did not improve and then sought legal advice, eventually suing the government.

The court heard that the 27-year-old man was put in charge of the postal exchanges of a land force squadron in September 2006. He described how he was overseeing three postal exchanges and working night and day.

The court found that he was in ‘good condition’ before he was given this responsibility and ruled that it was apparent that an excessive workload caused the hair loss.The Ministry of Patriot and Veteran Affairs were ordered to acknowledge him as a ‘man of national merit’ and pay him a monthly amount to compensate for the hair loss.

While previous studies have shown that British men are less likely to seek treatment for hair loss than men from other European countries, a survey has now suggested that they are nonetheless more likely to retain their hair for longer.

In a survey commissioned by the hairloss shampoo company, Alpecin, it seems that British men on average retain their hair for 6 more years than their continental counterparts. While men on the continent on average go bald at 52, British men only do so aged 58.

The study also showed that men in the south east and office workers are more concerned about premature hair loss, while of all the professions lawyers are most comfortable with losing their locks.

The study surveyed more than 1.5 million men across Europe and the results have formed the basis of Alpecin’s new ‘ baldness calculator ', which promises to accurately predict how old a man will be when he first loses his hair.

The creator of the calculator, Dr. Adolf Klenk, however warned UK men that though baldness might be less of a threat, they were likely to see their hair start thinning much earlier.

If you could find out if and when you were likely to go bald, would you want to know? A new DNA test has been developed in the lab that is going to give anyone who wants it the power to look into their future (or at least the future of their hair.)

Dr. Alan Bauman, a board-certified hair restoration physician at Bauman Medical Group in Boca Raton, Florida said "This is exciting because it's the first lab test for hair loss."

Beauty editors have been getting excited about the prospect of a new treatment, Latisse, which apparently increases the growth of eyelashes. Approved by the FDA in America, it is applied like an eyeliner and vouched for by Hollywood actress Brooke Shields.

Now, men are  unlikely to be getting as squeakily excited about this as the beauty editor of Grazia, but a new announcement may change that. Clever boffs started thinking that if the medication, originally developed to treat glaucoma, made eyelashes grow then it might do the same for the hair on the scalp.

Now Allergan (who manufacture the medication) have announced that testing is going to start to investigate the potential for bimatoprost – the chemical name for the drug – to be used as a hairloss treatment.

Their head of research and development, Scott Whittcup, said that though bimatoprost was approved for glaucoma, as a treatment for hair loss the company were “sort of starting from scratch.”

We are currently trying to establish if Allergan has applied for a license for Latisse in Europe. We will bring you further news on this as and when we have it.

An Israeli dermatologist has concluded that frequent combing of the hair can lead to excessive hair loss. Studying 14 women over the course of a month, he found that when they combed their hair more regularly, they were more likely to shed more of it.

Though Dr. Alexander Kidman himself admits the study was not particularly high-tech, he says that his simple study has shown women – and presumably men – are best off not fiddling about with their hair too much if they want to keep it.

He got the 14 volunteers to count the hairs caught in their comb after each time they brushed. For one week, they combedonce a day, the next week twice a day, and so on for a month. Dr. Kidman said that once the results had been tallied there was a clear link between the number of times they combed and the amount of hair that came out.

He said that when the team compared the amount of hairs lost in the twice-daily week to those of the once-daily week, more combing increased hair loss by almost 30%. Normally we can expect to lose between 100-200 hairs each day.

Dr. Kiderman added that hair loss was one of the most common reasons that younger women visited a dermatologist. However he claimed that a dermatologist could only treat about only 0.5% of those cases, so the best solution was “not to stretch your hair when its not necessary.”

A new study from a British hair loss clinic, the Belgravia Centre, has indicated that British men are more likely to be concerned about hair loss in their earlier life, with most deciding to take action aged 30.

Figures released by the clinic showed that there was a significant rise in the number of men seeking treatment for hair loss who were under 30, but then there tended to be a decline in patient numbers.

Out of all the 10,660 men the Belgravia Clinic is treating for hair loss, young men make up a significant proportion of the customers.  The senior hair loss specialist, Leonora Doclis, said that statistics show that men are first noticing hair loss at a younger and younger age and the number of people affected is growing.

Ms. Doclis said that various aspects of life for men in their 20s – career expectations, exam stress, frequent moving – could be triggers for early onset male-pattern baldness.She added that while there was a fair amount of scepticism about hair loss treatments, younger men were more likely to be better informed about the medical developments, such as the creation of Propecia, that have taken place over the last decade.

The New York Times has run a story claiming that the Republican ex-vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s hair has started thinning with the stress of the past year. They quoted her hairdresser Jessica Steele as saying that Ms. Palin needed emergency help to cover up the loss, after a spate of political setbacks “just broke her heart.”

Hair loss in women is still seen as a rather taboo subject, though it is increasingly common. Like men, women often find that their hair loss can be triggered by stress.

Looking at Sarah Palin, the shock could be any number of stressful events in her life, from an investigation into her taxes, allegations that she abused her position to get her brother-in-law fired and a public feud with the American TV host David Letterman after he make a joke about her daughter. This has all been topped off by her resignation as the Governor of Alaska, a move some say is part of a run-up to a shot at the White House.

The stress-related hair loss syndrome is known as telogen effluvium and describes when hairs in their growing phase are pushed suddenly into their resting phase by a shock to the system. The resting phase then prompts them to fall out.

There are some specific options for women than can halt the hair loss, such as the version of the topical gel Regaine which has been developed especially for females. Unfortunately, the prescription-only medicine Propecia only cures male-pattern baldness, and cannot be taken by women. Some women are opting for the more extreme – and expensive – option of hair transplants.

We quite often get enquiries from women who are suffering from hair loss but there is not much that we can do for them as in most cases, the sort of hair loss that they are suffering from is something called alopecia areata. The appearance of this type of hair loss is when large areas of the scalp shed hair and form bald patches. In extreme cases, people can lose all the hair from every part of their body.  It is not known exactly why this happens and it is heart-wrenching telling patients that there is not much that we can do for them. It is thought that alopecia areata is caused by an autoimmune disease so it is often treated with steroids to suppress the immune system. The problem with this is that the hair loss usually resumes as soon as the patient comes off the steroid treatment so it is not very satisfactory. Some people will grow their hair back and others will suffer sporadically thoughout their lives.

Here is a link to a diary kept by Lulu O'Hagan who suffers from alopecia areata and published in The Times

For all those men worried they may go bald in later life, a new product has hit the market that promises to let them know either way – the ‘baldness calculator’. It sounds improbable, but the program promises to tell users the exact age at which they will start losing their hair.

The program was designed by German scientists due to the high incidence of hair loss in the country, where half the male population suffer from hereditary hair loss. By looking at users age, occupation, hometown, family history and stress levels, the scientists say that they can predict whether there will be hair loss.

So far, half a million German men have made use of the program within 10 days of it being unveiled. Over half of those using it – 60% - have been relatively young men aged between 18 and 30. Dr. Adolf Klenk, who is head of research and development at hair care company Dr Kurt Wolff, is not surprised that many users are young men. He pointed to the fact that at that stage of life, they are socialising a lot and starting to think about finding a long-term partner. As hair loss can cause severe loss of self-confidence, at that stage of life they are particularly concerned that hair loss will make them less attractive.

He added that there were various risk factors that made men more likely to go bald, including a history of hair loss in the mother or father’s family, increased and prolonged stress and a poor diet. He then warned that men who regularly wear headgear, including headsets and helmets, might be pulling their hair out or reducing density.

Dr Kurt Wolff has also created a range of shampoos and hair tonics to combat hair loss, which have gone on sale in the UK. They contain caffeine and after tests on 500 volunteers, showed that the stimulant promoted hair growth.

A new survey has shed light on the difficulties faced by those who are losing their hair, whether male or female. Commissioned by Viscera, a hair loss supplement company, it was revealed that around a third of Brits suffer from hair loss, or have suffered from it previously. While most of the 1,400 respondents were not overly distressed by the loss of their hair, there was a significant proportion who found the experience extremely difficult.

A quarter of those surveyed said they felt distressed when they looked in the mirror, while a further 33% said it made them overly self-conscious. 20% said their hair loss had lead to them losing confidence in social situations. The negative emotions prompted by hair loss also seemed to open the door to damaging the relationships of those involved, as respondents said they were worried their sexual attractiveness would be affected.

The survey also showed that some people believed that hair loss could lead to discrimination at work, especially for women. 15% believed that men would suffer in their careers as a result of baldness, but more than twice that number thought when women were the sufferers, they would face difficulties in their workplace.

The report was timed to coincide with Hair Loss Awareness month. Dr. Nigel Hunt, a psychologist and author of the report, said that those suffering from the condition should perhaps have better access to therapy to help them cope with their baldness.

A small bio-tech firm in San Diego has been making encouraging progress in the development of a new treatment to combat hair loss. Histogen, which mimics nature to use the same science driving stem-cell research, has been working on their formula ReGenica for a while now and has just revealed the early results from a five-month clinical trial currently in progress.

The trial, though primarily aimed at seeing whether or not the formula is safe for human use, seems to indicate that ReGenica starts improving hair quality in just 12 weeks. Trial subjects developed “more hair, thicker hair shafts and what appears to be the growth of completely new hair follicles in the areas that received the ReGenica treatment”, according to Dr Craig Zimmerman, who was the principal investigator of the study. There was also no reported adverse reactions.

The treatment was developed using man-man fibroblasts, early stem-cells, grown in an environment that mimics embryonic conditions. The fibroblasts then cause certain proteins named WNT proteins to be produced. In mice, WNT was shown to be responsible for initiating the formation of new hair follicles and improving function in existing follicles, and when the proteins were harvested and used on humans similar results were observed.

Histogen have reported that they are planning to meet with the FDA (the US Food and Drugs Administration), the body responsible for granting new drugs licenses to be sold publicly. While this is still some way off, many healthcare professionals and balding men will be watching the performance of the company with interest. Let’s wait for the next round of clinical trial results, but its still good to hear promising news!

Botox is adored by millions for helping them achieve – well, if not eternal youth, then as least a rather shiny-faced and rigid approximation of it. However, an American doctor who specialises in cosmetic surgery is now claiming that Botox can also help combat baldness.

Dr. Simon Ourian, who is Medical Director at a firm of cosmetic surgeons in Beverly Hills named Epione, claims that he discovered this new method of treating the condition when he read studies indicating that Botox injections to the scalp might help with migraines. His mother had been undergoing chemotherapy and was suffering from them, so he decided to - and please applaud the pun – give it a shot. But low and behold, Mummy started sprouting hair around the site of the injections.

Intruiged and with a supply of patients willing to volunteer to try this out, Dr. Ourian spent three years ‘refining’ the treatment. He is now offering a botox-and-vitamin cocktail, injected into the scalp, at his clinic for quite a lot of money. He claims that because hair loss is a significant source of insecurity for many people, both men and women, there was no shortage of volunteers with thinning hair. The results for many were astonishing, and for some, a single session yielded dramatic results.”

He is certainly right that hair loss can be massively upsetting for many. It’s a bit creepy though to acknowledge this and then use that insecurity to encourage people to get toxins injected because it ‘worked for my mother’. Still, I suppose that were it not for crazy risk-takers we wouldn’t have penicillin or cookie-dough ice cream. It remains to be seen whether there will be any more detailed research done into this treatment method and we reserve the right to stay dubious for the time being. However, if it does actually work then it will probably prove wildly popular, considering how quickly people jumped to inject the stuff into their faces. Injecting into the scalp probably will seem less scary!

Its rare on this blog that we get to share a bit of celebrity news, but men experiencing male-pattern baldness will doubtless take an extra interest in this story. One of the UK’s best-loved comedians and actors John Cleese recently went on Richard and Judy’s new chat show New Position to reveal that he had had a hair transplant. While discussing his recent hip replacement, the star said nonchalantly, “ As we are talking operations, since I last saw you I’ve had a hair transplant.” He went on to explain the procedure to the couple, describing how it involved taking two strips of hair from the back of his head, where the hair grew normally, which were divided into 800 separate inserts. These were then transplanted back into his head.

Asked why he had gone through this fairly drastic procedure, Cleese, with the eccentric humour he is famed for, answered: “Because I’ve got a very strange shaped skull, very pointy and I don’t like wearing wigs.” Fair enough. However, his glib response suggests at the societal stigma still attached to hair loss, particularly in Britain. It is rare to hear someone publicly describe how distressing hair loss can be, though clearly for Cleese to have opted for fairly invasive surgery, the condition must have been seriously upsetting for him. A survey in 2004 showed that while British men have the second highest incidence of baldness in Europe, only one in ten men will seek treatment for the condition. Though the survey revealed that three-quarters of men who have started losing their hair suffered from self-esteem problems, and half the British men questioned said hair loss made them feel less attractive, there is still stigma attached to seeking help for the problem.

Britain seems to have a certain ‘put up and shut up’ attitude to baldness, despite the very detrimental impact it can have on a man’s sense of self. It is refreshing to hear a man in the public eye say unashamedly he has sought treatment. Perhaps even more refreshing is when such a man expresses the distress that hair loss can cause, as when Mark Oaten, the disgraced Liberal Democrat MP, wrote in the Sunday Times, “ I became more and more obsessed by its (his hair) disappearance. For me it was a public sign that my youth had ended.”

While hair loss is not the greatest excuse for a political scandal, it is certainly true that it can have a big impact on how a man feels about himself. Speaking as a woman, whether a man has a bald patch or not doesn’t bother me at all - but that really doesn’t matter, because I know from worrying over a few extra pounds that no one noticed, feeling good about yourself depends not on how others see you but how you see yourself. Surgery should always be a last resort, but there are medications that can help. It is terribly depressing to think of all the men who let themselves be shamed into suffering in silence. So lets say bravo to the men brave enough to take action.

We recently reported on The Online Clinic news blog that hair loss was one of the major health concerns for men over the age of forty. It was something that many men regarded as an unavoidable part of the aging process and something that they could do little about. It also ranked higher in their list of health concerns than the possibility of erectile dysfunction.

Last week on The Online Clinic health blog we reported a new government initiative to make men over the age of forty aware that forty percent of them would suffer from Erectile Dysfunction after reaching that age. The initiative was based on a survey of men’s health concerns that highlighted the fact that men were not aware of potential risks to their health or how to recognise them. These risks included prostate problems, cardiovascular disease and Type 2 Diabetes. The report did not, however, refer to the health issue which men were most concerned about over the age of forty. What was it you may ask? The answer was hair loss.

New research, which has been published in the May 17 issue of Nature magazine, could, potentially, be the most exciting development that has ever been made in the treatment of hair loss. Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered a way to make the hair follicles in mice regenerate by reactivating genes which are only normally active in developing embryos and have ceased to function by the time of birth. The implications of these findings are massive.

Hair loss is completely normal. An average adult of either sex loses about one hundred hairs a day. In most people these are being constantly replaced and the loss of hair occurs evenly over the whole scalp. When a person’s hair loss goes beyond this level, however, the results can become a major problem, both in terms of physical appearance and psychologically too.

We have just seen some very interesting research in the Archives of Dermatology which suggests that the amount of cigarettes that a man smokes can influence the extent to which he will go bald.  Male pattern baldness is influenced by genetic and hormonal factors but some research by scientists in Taiwan has concluded that there was a definitive link between men who were moderately to severely bald and the number of cigarettes that they smoked.

It is not clear how the cigarettes influence baldness but if there is a link then it is likely that it emphasises an already pre-existing predisposition to go bald.  It has been suggested that smoking destroys hair follicles but surely this would be the case with female smokers as well.  Whilst this research is interesting, further work needs to be done to determine if such a link does indeed exist, how it actually operates.

Scientists have made a groundbreaking discovery that could lead to a new drug that is actually able to reverse baldness.  Experiments have taken place with mice that have demonstrated that hair follicles can be reawakened by deliberately activating a protein call Wnt.  Wnt is essential for the formation of hair follicles but it was previously thought to be operational in embryos only. The critical role of Wnt was confirmed in two further studies which inhibited the production of Wnt and the hair regrowth in the mice was much diminished.

A drug which uses this method of hair regrowth may be at least a decade away as the only way that the scientists were able to activate the Wnt was to create a large surface wound on the back of the mice which would be wholly inappropriate for cosmetic use in humans.

There are currently two hair loss treatments available to purchase, both of which have reasonably high rates of success.  Regaine is a topical solution that is applied twice daily to the scalp but most people find this less convenient that the once a day pill, Propecia, which is available on prescription only.  Both of these treatments are available through The Online Clinic.