Genetic vs Lifestyle Hair Loss: How to Tell the Difference

Have you ever looked at your hairbrush, seen a giant clump of strands, and got immediately panicked?

You're definitely not alone. The hairs on your bed sheets, bathroom floors, and clothing are very upsettling. However, don't worry there are many types of hair loss and this information will help you understand them better.

About 50-100 strands of hair fall off every day naturally by everyone. However, when shedding speed increases, your body is telling you something about its health status.

This is an important issue and requires you to understand the reason behind this understand which could be a temporary phase due to overworking and poor diet rather than genetics of our ancestors.

The root cause of understanding is very much essential. Genetic thinning can be treated by changing your diet alone and this will not help. Simple stress shedding through costly treatments isn't worth it because they're just a waste of cash.

To help you understand what causes genetically inherited hair loss versus lifestyle-related hair loss, this blog will help you better understand about taking care of our scalps nowadays.

What is Genetic Hair Loss?

Genetic hair loss is a kind of hair thinning that you can trace through your family tree. It can be inherited from your maternal family side, paternal family side, or from both.

It is popularly known as pattern baldness or androgenetic alopecia.

Our body naturally creates a hormone known as DHT (Dihydrotestosterone). If you are having the baldness gene, the sensitivity of your hair roots to this hormone increases. This is termed as miniaturization.

As a result, due to shrinking hair roots, thinner and smaller hair are produced. Ultimately, due to shrinking to such an extent, hair roots stop growing hair.

It is a kind of hair loss that focuses on particular areas of your scalp including top, front, and crown parts. Sides and back parts are mostly left untouched by this hair loss.

Hair loss due to genes is a continuous process of life unless any treatment blocks the hormones affecting your hair growth.

What is Lifestyle Hair Loss?

Lifestyle Hair Loss occurs when there is a temporary effect on my healthy hair growth due to my lifestyle and my diet choices.

It can also be termed as a sudden hair loss due to environmental and lifestyle conditions.

The whole body system gets shocked due to increased stress and lack of nutrition. Due to the fact that hair is not essential for life, our body stops delivering nutrients to the scalp.

This will lead to the occurrence of thousands of new hairs going into Mass Resting Phase  at once for some time.

Some triggers in this situation are high stress levels, sleep deprivation, exhaustion and disease conditions such as fever or cancer.

Diet triggers are extreme crash diets, extreme body fat loss, low iron level, and protein inadequacy.

Reversibility, it's wonderful since hair follicles have not been destroyed, only rested. If the cause is addressed, the hair will start growing normally again.

Genetic vs. Lifestyle Hair Loss Comparison

To help you understand the two types at a single glance, here is a simple comparison table: 

How to Check the Shape of Hair Loss?

To be able to tell which type is what, you may use a mirror to observe the patterns on your head.

1. Pattern "M" for Male Hair Loss:--In the case of male hair loss, it has a distinctive receding hairline that forms an "M" pattern on their temples.
2. Crown Patch:--Male can see a round patch at the crown of their head.
3. Christmas Tree Shape Genetics:--As for females, the presence of this type of hair loss manifests itself through wider mid-lines of the tree. Thus, the parting line is widened to look like a Christmas tree while the forehead stays as is.
4. Rain Effect:--Lifestyle Hair Loss This type of hair loss doesn't care about shapes and lines, as it causes thinning. Consequently, hair is lost evenly all around your scalp on both sides of your head.
5. Ponytail Thickness:--Women experiencing this condition will notice their hair becoming thinner and lighter without being able to spot any hair loss patches.
6. Visible Scalp:--If a person has bald spots and visible scalp due to aging and baldness, it means that they have shiny scalps.

How to Check the Speed of Hair Loss?

Understanding how fast we can lose our hairs helps more about this as:

1. Multi Year Genetics journey:

Hair Loss in Men is a very slow and mysterious process. It is not that you wake up one day to find your bald spots. Five to ten years are required for any changes.

2. Illusion Of No Fall Hypothesis: 

Many people suffering from genetic alopecia fail to see hundreds of hair follicles on their pillow tops. Hair simply continues to get thinner every year until they disappear.

3. Sudden clumps:

They occur rapidly like thunderstorms. And there are also large amounts of hair coming out of the drain whenever we are taking a shower, and falling on my towels as well as my pockets after using some oils.

4. Delayed Trigger:

Lifestyle induced hair loss occurs after two to three months of the incident or diet change. Also, this delay makes it confusing for people who do not recall the stress factors.

5. Rapid Changes:

Complete baldness and then hair loss after a few days.

How Your Daily Habits Trigger Hair Fall?

The daily practices dictate the condition of my head hair. The negative practices are usually small, but they may bring big trouble later.

1. If we lack sufficient iron and zinc intake necessary for hair growth, then it will be directed towards the stomach, and not to the hair itself.
2. Insufficient sleep which is less than 6-7 hours at night interferes with cell repair. The scalp requires time to regenerate hair follicles.
3. When we experience a lot of stress in life, high cortisol hormone production results from constant anxiety. Cortisol causes our hair follicles to fall out in the active phase of hair growth.
4. Aggressive styling practices such as pulling our hair roots by styling, hot drying, and chemical exposure cause hair damage.

How Water and Weather Affect Your Hair?

The external factor such as your environment could become a stimulant of hair loss and make it worse.

1. Washing your hair in the mineral-rich hard water leaves a scaly deposit of hard water on your head. Then what would be the solution to this issue. It makes your pores close and makes it easy to break fragile, thin hair strands genetically.
2. When it is hot and humid, your skin sweats and it gives rise to dandruffs. This leads to infection and fungus that causes inflammation and shedding of hair.
3. Due to changes of seasonality, our body sheds hair during fall/winter and monsoon seasons. Don’t confuse seasonality with permanent genetic hair loss.
4. High amounts of dust, smoke, and pollution lead to free radicals that damage the hair roots.

How to Pick the Right Shampoos?

Genetics modifications are impossible, but still there are many ways to help you change your daily scalp hygiene routine by frequent hair washing and conditioning.

1. Do not use a strong cleanser

Try not to purchase products that have sulfates, parabens and silicone compounds in them. Cleansing of the scalp will take away all the natural oil that makes your hair strong, which will result in breaking hair on half of the strand.

2. Use Anti Hair Fall Shampoo

This will help you to recover your weak and damaged hair strands. This product will cleanse the dirt and extra oil from your hair without making it dry.

3. Wake Up Lazy Roots

If your hair loss occurs due to your personal lifestyle issues, then you should make your hair active and stimulated. In order to achieve good results in hair growth, select such a shampoo that will provide good scalp blood circulation to the hair roots.

4. Genetics

In case of hair damage because of hormones due to genetics, there must be a strong blockade. Anti Hair Fall Shampoo is able to provide you with natural DHT blockers, which will save your root hairs from hormonal shrinkage.

5. Scalp Health 

Hence, you should ensure that your hair grows properly through maintaining cleanliness and dryness of your head. Choose the best hair loss shampoo that offers you proper moisture and nutrition to your hair.

When to See a Doctor?

In case you are experiencing difficulty in maintaining healthy hair through changes in your lifestyle, you need to consult a professional immediately.

1. No Progress In Six Months

Although you have made changes to my diet, reduced my stress levels and applied good quality anti-hair fall shampoo for six months, still there is no improvement.

2. Painful, Burns and Itchy

If you experience pain when losing your hair due to redness, severe burns in your scalp, painful bumps and weepy lesions.

3. Round Bald Patch 

If this type of patch appears on your head or face overnight, it is a sign of having an autoimmune disease called alopecia areata.

4. Rapid Hair Thinning in Teenagers

If you are losing eyebrow and body hair along with hair loss in other areas of your body such as arms.

Conclusion

In order to understand whether the problem of hair loss is genetic and not environmental, one needs to understand this matter first of all before going on to treatment methods aimed at re-growing one’s hair.

Nevertheless, if the person experiences baldness because of environmental reasons, namely improper diet, absence of enough sleep, too much stress and an unsanitary scalp, then there are ways to help them recover. If the problem lies in genetics, then one should develop a personal and long-term hair care regime with certain nutritional products.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. Are there any shampoos that could cure genetic hair loss?

No. Shampoo remains on your scalp for a maximum of 2-3 minutes at a time. But while an anti-hair fall shampoo like Tinfal does help maintain my scalp by preventing breakage and restricting certain hormones from affecting my scalp externally, genetic hair loss is something which you cannot regulate through skincare products alone. You will have to use these products over many years before you go to see your doctor for a prescription.

Q2. Why do I lose my hair due to stress?

If you have had a traumatic experience in terms of suffering from a disease or diet restrictions, or any other stressful situation in your life and find yourself losing large amounts of hair from your scalp after 2-3 months from that situation, you are suffering from stress-related hair loss.

Q3. Does frequent washing lead to more hair loss?

No. Regular hair washing 2-3 times per week is extremely essential for having healthy hair. These hairs fall out simply because they are loose and have already fallen off from their roots in the follicles regardless of the fact. Dirty and oily scalp can block your pores and may also lead to hair loss.

Q4. What ingredients are good to look for while choosing effective shampoo for hair growth?

In order to find an effective shampoo for hair growth, one needs to concentrate on those products which include scalp stimulants and nutritional elements for nourishment of the roots of the hair. Good ingredients are biotin, caffeine and rosemary oil as they are useful in strengthening keratin; red onion extract contains sulfur which contributes to hair growth.

Q5. How many months will it take for hair regrowth due to lifestyle issues?

After identifying and correcting the issues such as poor protein intake, poor nutritional intake, and stress. You will not see excessive hair fall after three months. Your hair follicles have resumed their growth process and hence, you will see some hair growth within the next three to six months.