Baldness or hair loss in both men and women is sometimes due to disease. Hair loss can occur with excessive weight gain or loss in a short period of time or when recovering from a high fever. Hair loss may occur when taking anti-cancer medications. Anemia due to lack of iron, can cause some hair loss. Hair loss can result from an over-or under-productive thyroid gland.

Hair loss isn't always due to an illness or a medical condition. Many men have male pattern baldness. Women can get pattern baldness, too, but it is not as common. This runs in families and usually comes from the mother's side of the family. If you want to know if you are likely to go bald in the future, look at your mother's father to get your best guess.

Hair has a limited life span. Each hair usually lives about four to five years and then falls out. A new hair then starts to grow. In male pattern baldness, when a hair falls out, a new one does not start to grow. This usually happens above the forehead, giving the familiar receding hairline look. It also happens at the crown of the head. Over time, the bald spots increase in size until the entire top of the head is bald and there is only hair on the sides of the head.

One in four men begins to go bald by age thirty. By age sixty, it goes up to two out of three men. Male pattern baldness affects over 20 million men in the United States. Some men accept their baldness and do nothing. Many women say they find balding men attractive.

The only medication approved to treat balding is Rogaine. This is applied directly to the scalp. It helps slow the balding in most men. In about 10 percent of men, it makes a dramatic difference and starts a great deal of new hair growth. It may work best in men in their twenties and thirties who are just beginning to go bald. It may take as long as a year to find out how well this medication works. The ongoing treatments can be expensive and if treatment is stopped, hair loss will begin again.

Other medical options are the punch graft hair transfer, which takes little tufts of hair from the back of the head and moves them to the front or top of the scalp. Scalp reduction is a surgical approach where the surgeon actually moves the back of the scalp up to the crown of the head. The most popular nonmedical option is a hairpiece.

If you have sudden hair loss, especially if you notice lots of hair on your pillow when you get up in the morning, contact your primary healthcare provider for a checkup. If you treat the problem, the hair should return in most of these cases. Health insurance does not usually cover most treatments for baldness.

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