Hair Loss? It May Be Iron Deficiency

1. Hair Loss? It May Be Iron Deficiency www.clinicspots.com

2. Hair loss • Hair loss, also known as alopecia or baldness, refers to a loss of hair from the head or body • Hair loss and hypotrichosis have many causes including androgenetic alopecia, fungal infection, trauma (e.g., due to (trichotillomania), radiotherapy, chemotherapy, nutritional deficiencies (e.g., iron deficiency), and autoimmune diseases (e.g., alopecia areata). • Hair loss severity occurs across a spectrum with extreme examples including alopecia totalis (total loss of hair on the head) and alopecia universalis (total loss of all hair on the head and body)

3. Figure: Baldness in 1000 men aged 18 and above

4. Signs and symptoms

5. Hair loss in patches • Dandruff Alopecia areata, also known as spot baldness is an autoimmune disease in which hair is lost from some or all areas of the body, usually from the scalp due to the body's failure to recognize its own body cells and subsequent destruction of its own tissue as if it were an invader.Itcauses bald spots on the scalp, especially in the first stages. Dandruff is the shedding of dead skin cells from the scalp. As skin cells die, a small amount of flaking is normal. Some people, however, experience an unusually large amount of flaking either chronically or as a result of certain triggers, which can also be accompanied by redness and irritation.

6. Cicatricial alopecia, also known as scarring alopecia, is a diverse group of rare disorders that destroy the hair follicle, replace it with scar tissue, and cause permanent hair loss. The inflammation that destroys the follicle is below the skin surface and there is usually no "scar" seen on the scalp. Affected areas of the scalp may show little signs of inflammation, or have redness, scaling, increased or decreased pigmentation, pustules, or draining sinuses. • Scarring • Skin conditions Few infectious agents can cause hair loss; like Ringworm, Folliculitis, Piedra; usually for a short span of time. Hair loss caused by an infectious scalp condition generally resolves when the reason of the infection is treated.

7. Sometimes, a significant psychological stress of some sort may spark a change in your body's routine physiological functions, and cause a disproportionate number of hairs to go into the resting phase at the same time. Then three to four months later, sometimes longer, all those resting hairs are shed. This effect can be alarming. • Psychological stress

8. Causes

9. Diagnosis

10. Managing Hair Loss

11. Who are at risk of having Iron deficiency? Almost anyone can have iron deficiency but it mostly women and adolescent girls of childbearing age who are prone to it. Women having a history of anemia, having heavy blood loss during menstruation, or women who are pregnant, are mostly susceptible to iron deficiency.

12. Medical Tests to Diagnose Iron Deficiency

13. Serum iron • Serum ferritin This test happens to measure the amount of iron in the blood. Blood iron level can at times be normal even if the total amount of iron in the body is low, thus doctors usually recommend this test along with other iron tests. This test measures a protein named ferritin, that helps the body in storing iron , the doctor is able to find out how much of the body’s stored iron has been used up. Low levels of serum ferritin impairs hair growth as the body then seeks to conserve iron for the other essential bodily functions.

14. This test measures Transferrin, which is a protein of the blood that carries iron. The total iron-binding capacity measures how much of the protein transferrin is not carrying iron. People having iron deficiency often tend to have high levels of transferrin where iron is absent in the transferrin. • Transferrin level

15. Major symptoms of Iron Deficiency

16. Solutions for Hair Loss due to Iron Deficiency

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