[Kim Jaeho's Life Story]<252>If You Are Worried About Baldness Due to Excessive Hair Loss

We can easily encounter people around us who are worried about excessive hair loss. It is not difficult to find people who visit well-known clinics to get prescribed medication, apply treatments, or sometimes even undergo hair transplantation. Since no one likes to become bald, when they realize that their hair is falling out abnormally, they try every possible method to stop it. However, there is something important to remember.

There are many reasons why hair falls out abnormally, and they vary from person to person. A method that worked for someone else does not guarantee the same effect for you, and you must find and address the cause specific to you to fundamentally solve the problem. To do this, it is essential to understand the characteristics of hair and find the method that suits you best to resolve the issue.

Hair has several important functions. When the weather is cold, hair stands upright to regulate body temperature and protect the body from the cold. Hair also extends tactile functions by allowing us to sense something before an object touches the skin, and it protects our body from harmful substances such as solar heat, dust, and foreign particles.

Additionally, hair serves the function of helping us identify ourselves to others. People value this function and take care of their hair by growing, cutting, dyeing, or styling it to decorate themselves. It is precisely because of this function that people strongly dislike excessive hair loss.

Hair is invisible beneath the skin and consists of two parts: the hair follicle, which is the hair sac commonly called the follicle, and the hair shaft, which is visible above the skin and also called the hair strand. Our body has about 5 million hair follicles on all skin except the palms, soles, and lips. Among these, 1 million are hair follicles on the scalp, and about 100,000 hairs grow from them.

Hair grows and falls out through four stages: anagen (growth phase), catagen (regression phase), telogen (resting phase), and exogen (shedding phase). In the first stage, anagen, hair typically grows about 1 cm per month for 3 to 6 years. When hair grows above the skin surface, the cells above the skin surface are no longer alive. Eyelashes, eyebrows, and hair on the legs and arms have a much shorter growth phase of 30 to 45 days, so they do not grow as long as scalp hair.

The second stage, catagen, lasts 2 to 4 weeks, during which hair growth slows down. About 2 to 3% of all hair is in this stage. The third stage, telogen, lasts about 3 months, during which hair stops growing and remains in place until pushed out by new hair. This stage accounts for 10 to 15% of all hair, and the hair follicle rests during this phase.

In the final stage, exogen, new hair pushes out the old hair that has stopped growing, causing the old hair shaft to detach from the follicle and fall out. In this way, the hair follicle’s shedding phase of old hair leads to the growth phase of new hair, restarting the four-stage cycle of hair life.

Thus, hair continuously grows and falls out through these four stages. Normally, about 50 to 100 hairs fall out daily as part of the natural hair cycle. If more than 100 hairs fall out daily, hair loss is suspected. The cause of hair loss is that the hair life cycle does not proceed normally, such as when the growth phase is too short and hair cannot grow healthily.

If you are worried about excessive hair loss, it is important to find and address the cause rather than relying solely on hair loss treatments. It is crucial to identify and correct unhealthy habits that damage the health of hair follicles and cause hair loss. Inside the cells that grow hair in the hair follicle are genes that promote normal hair growth, so as long as the environment is appropriate, hair will grow normally.

Hair loss includes various types such as male pattern baldness, which is the most common chronic hair loss, alopecia areata, telogen effluvium, traumatic hair loss, and chemical hair loss. Since the causes of hair loss can often be easily identified depending on the type, preventing and treating hair loss requires removing the causes from one’s lifestyle and maintaining healthy and strong hair follicles by properly caring for hair and scalp.

To care well for hair and scalp, rather than seeking something special, it is best to improve unhealthy habits through a Newstart lifestyle (refer to Life Story Part 6), which creates an environment where the body’s best doctor, encoded in the genes of our cells, can work well.

Among the eight items of Newstart, the first is life diet, which involves eating a variety of plant-based foods including fruits, vegetables, and grains in their whole form without favoring specific foods. Along with this, it is important to reduce intake of sugar?which causes many problems when consumed excessively?as well as processed or refined bad carbohydrates, saturated fats, trans fats, salt, and alcohol.

Additionally, practicing the other Newstart items?exercise, water, sunlight, temperance, air, rest, trust, and love?is also important.