Why Is My Hair Coming Out?

My friends and me were sitting around talking about when we were children. Of all of the different stories we had the one thing we had in common was the Sunday hair ritual. You may know it, our mothers would sit us down and proceed to grease, hot comb and braid our hair.

As we become women a lot of us relax our hair, hot comb it, or choose to wear braids or extensions. Wearing these styles may allow you to wear you hair in that style you like or it is just makes it more easier to deal with (I know it does with my hair). The problem is that because of the constant pulling and chemical changing you may be going down a road that leads to hair loss.

As African Americans we make up the largest ethnic group suffering from hair loss (37 percent). According to an article in the October 2000 issue of Essence gives a list of some of the activities that can lead to hair loss as early as your twenties:

1- improper use of products and tools that alter our natural texture, including overlapping relaxers, too frequent touch-up, excessive hot-pressing, curling or blow-drying with a round brush

2- unwise choices when combing color and relaxers

3- persistent physical stress from tight styles, especially braids

4- misuse of bonding glue during weaving (http://www.findarticle.com/cf_0/m1264/6_...

If you partaking in some of these activities (I know I do) you could be setting yourself up for future hair loss.

Question 1- What are the different kinds of hair loss?

Traction Alocepia- this is primary caused by styles that pull your hair. According to the article “What are the other causes of hair loss,” tight braiding over a prolonged period of time can cause inflammation and eventual death of the hair follicle. It can also happen when you wear hair replacement or tufts of hair attached to our own hair for a long period of time. It can also happen when using bonding glue to attach hair to your own hair. (http://www.877hairusa.com/Other%20causes...

Follicular Degeneration Syndromes (or hot comb alopecia)- according to Marilyn Kondwani, “this kind of hair loss is caused by overly hot oil sliding down the hair shaft into the follicle. If the oil is hot enough it can kill the follicle causing irreversible hair loss.” (New Pittsburgh Courier, June 23, 1990)

Chemical Hair Loss- According to the article in the September 1999 issue in Dermatology Times “if used improperly, chemical relaxers can weaken the hair and cause the hair to fracture. Anything that adds trauma to the hair can further weaken it and cause hairs to break.”