Dr. Doris Day, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, adds, "The reality is that hair loss is incredibly common among men and women. Fifty percent of both genders will have hair loss by the age of 50. That's a big number.
"It affects how you're perceived, your ability to date, and climb that corporate ladder," she adds.
Both the media and dermatology experts are fond of proclaiming that shedding 100 hairs a day is normal.
That is probably too high, Dr. Miller says. But there is little scientific evidence for that number, which is based on the assumption that the average scalp holds 100,000 hairs, 10 percent of which are at any one time in the telogen, or resting, phase.
Not only do experts not know how much hair loss is normal, they also do not have any standardized way of assessing the amount of hair lost on an average day.
"We keep saying the same things over and over, that it's normal to lose 100 hairs a day," says Dr. Day. "The question is, how normal is it and what is normal in terms of hair loss."
The "wash test" involves washing one's hair over a sink five days after the last shampoo, a waiting period some might find objectionable.
A more up-to-date method is the 60-second hair count, used in this study.
Sixty healthy men ages 20 to 60 without evidence of baldness participated. All were Caucasian and all but one had straight hair.
The authors excluded, for the most part, men with curly hair and long hair "because of the difficulty of running a comb through the hair, which would lead to increased numbers of broken" hairs, which were not counted.
The men washed their hair three mornings in a row with Neutrogena T/Sal® shampoo. On the fourth day, they were issued identical combs and instructed to comb their hair forward over a towel or pillowcase of contrasting color.
They were then asked to count the hairs that had dropped out. This comb-and-count procedure was repeated on the next two days and the number of hairs was validated under a microscope.
After six months, the participants repeated the full procedure.
Based on these results, the authors concluded that losing 10 hairs is "normal."
In younger men (aged 20 to 40), the shedding range was zero to 78 hairs with an average of 10.2 hairs. In the older men, the range was zero to 43 hairs with an average of 10.3 hairs.
http://www.piedmonthospital.org
"It affects how you're perceived, your ability to date, and climb that corporate ladder," she adds.
Both the media and dermatology experts are fond of proclaiming that shedding 100 hairs a day is normal.
That is probably too high, Dr. Miller says. But there is little scientific evidence for that number, which is based on the assumption that the average scalp holds 100,000 hairs, 10 percent of which are at any one time in the telogen, or resting, phase.
Not only do experts not know how much hair loss is normal, they also do not have any standardized way of assessing the amount of hair lost on an average day.
"We keep saying the same things over and over, that it's normal to lose 100 hairs a day," says Dr. Day. "The question is, how normal is it and what is normal in terms of hair loss."
The "wash test" involves washing one's hair over a sink five days after the last shampoo, a waiting period some might find objectionable.
A more up-to-date method is the 60-second hair count, used in this study.
Sixty healthy men ages 20 to 60 without evidence of baldness participated. All were Caucasian and all but one had straight hair.
The authors excluded, for the most part, men with curly hair and long hair "because of the difficulty of running a comb through the hair, which would lead to increased numbers of broken" hairs, which were not counted.
The men washed their hair three mornings in a row with Neutrogena T/Sal® shampoo. On the fourth day, they were issued identical combs and instructed to comb their hair forward over a towel or pillowcase of contrasting color.
They were then asked to count the hairs that had dropped out. This comb-and-count procedure was repeated on the next two days and the number of hairs was validated under a microscope.
After six months, the participants repeated the full procedure.
Based on these results, the authors concluded that losing 10 hairs is "normal."
In younger men (aged 20 to 40), the shedding range was zero to 78 hairs with an average of 10.2 hairs. In the older men, the range was zero to 43 hairs with an average of 10.3 hairs.
http://www.piedmonthospital.org
