Looking After Your Hair: What Actually Matters
Most men give their hair a great deal of attention and almost no thought. We spend on the cut, have opinions about the product, and happily debate pomade against clay. What happens between the barber visits tends to be improvised. Which is unfortunate, because hair responds to how you treat it far more than it responds to what you put on it. Here is what actually makes a difference, and what does not – continue reading to find out more.
Start By Knowing What Normal Looks Like
Everyone sheds hair – the usual figure is 50 to 100 hairs a day, and that is entirely ordinary. Finding hair on your pillow or in the shower is not evidence of anything on its own. What matters is whether the density is changing. Shedding is hair leaving. Thinning is hair not being replaced. The two feel identical in the moment and are completely different problems.
The reliable test isn’t the drain; it is a photograph. Take one in consistent light every couple of months, front and crown, and compare. Your memory of your own hairline is unreliable in both directions, and most men either panic six months early or notice two years late.
The Scalp Is The Part You Are Ignoring
Hair is dead protein. The only living part of the system is the follicle, and the follicle sits in your scalp. Almost everything worth doing is scalp maintenance, not hair maintenance.
Persistent flaking, itching, or redness is usually seborrhoeic dermatitis, driven by a yeast that lives on everyone’s skin and simply behaves badly on some people. It is not poor hygiene, and washing more aggressively often makes it worse. An antifungal shampoo used two or three times a week for a few weeks generally settles it. If it does not, that is worth a conversation rather than a stronger shampoo.
Washing Daily Does Not Cause Hair Loss
This one refuses to die. Washing your hair does not make it fall out. The hairs you see are ones that had already detached and were waiting for something to dislodge them.
What you wash with matters more than how often. Harsh detergents strip the scalp and leave it irritated, which is uncomfortable and unhelpful. If your scalp feels tight after washing, it’s time to change. If it feels fine, your routine is fine.
Where The Actual Damage Comes From
Hair is at its most fragile when wet. It stretches, and stretched hair breaks. So the two habits worth changing are both about wet hair. Stop towelling it dry with any vigour, and blot or press instead. Additionally, stop combing it wet with a fine comb, which is the single most efficient way to snap hair mid-shaft. Use a wide-tooth comb gently, or wait.
Heat is the other concern. Regular high-heat drying and any use of straighteners cause cumulative structural damage that no product reverses. If you use a dryer, use it on a lower setting and
keep it moving.
And if you wear your hair pulled back or under a tight cap for long stretches, the sustained tension can cause traction alopecia, which starts at the hairline and is one of the few forms of hair loss that is genuinely reversible if you catch it early.
Diet Is Useful, But Not In The Way It Is Sold
Hair is protein, and severe protein restriction shows up in hair quality. Iron deficiency is genuinely associated with hair shedding, particularly worth checking if you are also tired or unusually short of breath. Vitamin D, zinc and biotin all have a role.
Here is the honest part. Correcting a deficiency helps. Supplementing when you are not deficient does almost nothing, and the hair supplement market depends heavily on people not knowing which situation they are in. A blood test costs less than a year of tablets.
Sudden heavy shedding two or three months after a stressful period, an illness or a crash diet is usually telogen effluvium, where a shock pushes a large number of follicles into resting at once. It looks alarming, and it typically recovers on its own.
The Point Where Grooming Stops Being The Answer
Everything above is maintenance. None of it addresses male pattern baldness, which is a hormonal process rather than a care problem, and which affects roughly half of men by the age of fifty.
The mechanism is dihydrotestosterone, a byproduct of testosterone, which gradually shrinks follicles in genetically susceptible areas until they stop producing visible hair. No shampoo, diet or styling change alters that.
Two treatments have real evidence behind them. Minoxidil is applied topically and is available over the counter. Finasteride is a daily tablet that reduces DHT production, and it is prescription-only in the UK, so it requires a consultation before supply.
Understanding What Both Treatments Are For
“The important thing about finasteride is that it is much better at holding onto the hair you still have than at bringing back hair you have already lost. So the men who get the most from it are the ones who start when they have noticed a change,” says Ana Carolina Goncalves, Superintendent Pharmacist at Pharmica. “It also needs three to six months before you can judge whether it is working, and it only keeps working while you keep taking it. Neither of those is a reason not to start, but they are worth knowing before you do.”
Both treatments have possible side effects, and both are worth discussing properly rather than ordering on a whim.
Thanks for reading my latest lifestyle and grooming article. Please share what you think in the comments section below.
