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Hello and welcome to How to Beat Hair loss, a podcast brought to you by Rahal. I’m your host Chad Cooper, a patient advisor here at Rahal, and I want to thank you for listening.

Today we’re going to discuss how to prevent hair loss in men and women. The two most common medications out there that help people to prevent hair loss or even sometimes maintain hair that they have are Minoxidil and Propecia.

Minoxidil is also known as Rogaine, it’s a topical solution used by both men and women and helps to increase blood flow to the scalp. It helps open the capillaries where the hair follicles grow through and helps to promote a stronger, healthier follicle.

Minoxidil will help regrowth in some cases. It’s not going to regrow any hair that’s already gone but sometimes with the miniaturized hairs it can help to promote them to grow in a little bit stronger and a little bit thicker. So minoxidil comes in two forms, a solution and a foam and both are topical. You can learn more about minoxidil by going to www.rogaine.com, rogaine is spelled R-O-G-A-I-N-E.

The other most common medication to prevent hair loss in men would be Finasteride, which comes in two forms, Propecia or Proscar. Finasteride should not be taken or handled by women. The main ingredient of Finasteride should be taken 1 milligram per day, so what Propecia 1 pill is taken per day. With Proscar 1 pill is cut into four and 1/4 is taken each day. So what Finasteride does is it helps to decrease DHT. It’s known a DHT inhibitor. DHT is Dihydrotestosterone , which is what the main cause of hair loss is. So DHT is inherited from your genetics and unfortunately it is the reason that we lose our hair.

With that, another site that you can visit to learn more about Propecia is www.propecia.com. So Propecia is spelled P-R-O-P-E-C-I-A.

Another way to help prevent hair loss down would be just more-so to live a healthy lifestyle. Diet is very, very important. Certain things that you can try, eating foods that are rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. Foods like salmon, walnuts, lentils, also foods that are high in iron and Vitamin B. Sometimes a deficiency in iron and Vitamin B can cause excessive hair loss so foods that can be very valuable with iron and Vitamin D would be clams, muscles, oysters, roasted pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sun dried tomatoes and Lima beans.

So all those can be very helpful and obviously when it comes to a diet, just eating a very healthy and balanced, well balanced diet can obviously help with all areas of your life. But, yes, when it comes to hair loss, a lot of the foods mentioned can help a great deal.

One other thing. If somebody is taking prescription medications, certain blood thinners, psychiatric drugs, even medications for acne, one that is known is Accutane, a lot of those medications can increase hair loss; so it is something that you could discuss with your doctor. If you are taking any medications like that. Ask them more about the side effects and if hair loss can be a side effect because a lot of the time that can cause excessive hair loss.

Other things to discuss would be managing stress levels. Stress, if you’re stress is very high, going through stressful periods in life, it can definitely damage hair follicles, it can cause hair follicles to die. Managing stress levels is very important for all aspects of your life, just like your diet. It can add a lot of positive effects in all areas.

But things to do to help with stress levels that can also help with your hair would be exercise, lot of cardio, lot of weight lifting, help to increase blood flow and blood circulation, which can definitely be good for your hair. So things like yoga, meditation, they can also help obviously manage your stress levels. But exercise is very good and can definitely help with hair loss.

So after discussing all of that, I would say the only other thing that you can look into would be vitamins. Some vitamins that help at least improve the quality of your hair or sometimes even to maintain, again, a lot of them can just help prevent hair loss down, first one to discuss would be Saw Palmetto, which is a natural DHT inhibitor. So it’s like what Finestra does, not as effective usually but it can help to maintain and inhibit DHT from attacking the hair follicle.

Another vitamin that is good is Green Tea extract. Green tea is an antioxidant, it also has been know to help DHT levels, as well. Third would be Biotin. That can be found in Vitamin B complex; but Biotion just helps the overall quality of your hair. By taking it you might notice the hair follicles are stronger, a little bit shinier, a little bit healthier.

Another vitamin would be MSM. MSM helps to lengthen the growth phase and it helps to keep the hair follicle in the Anagen phase. It also helps with joint relief and it can help the hair follicle to actually grow a little bit faster. So the recommended dosage to help with hair loss for each Saw Palmetto would be 160mgs twice daily, Green Tea extract would be 750 milligrams once a day, Biotion would be 5,000 mcgs once a day and MSM would be 3,000 milligrams once a day.

So that’s really all that you can do in terms of vitamins. Obviously a multivitamin can help. There’s certain things like Vitamin D and Zinc that can be helpful as well for your hair but those four would be the major ones. So that’s all for how to prevent hair loss. I hope it was helpful. We’ll be back soon with another topic on how to beat hair loss. Once again, my name is Chad Cooper, and I want to thank you all for listening.