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Permalink Reply by karma on April 7, 2012 at 3:13pm

Sure thing! ....so alopeica areata (aa) is considered an autoimmune condition inwhich your body mistakes your hair for a foreighn obkect and begins attacking the follicles.. I don't think anyone really knows what triggers is, but as I'm sure you are aware, its usually classified by having patches of hair loss with the effected hairs being thinner at the root end (closest toward your scalp) and it can go into remission (inwhich the hair grows back), it can return, and it can progress into full head and body hair loss. This type of alopecia is often treated with steroid injections or topicals. AGA, which as you stated has an adrogenetic component, what that means really, is that both men and women produce testosterone (to vary degress of course, but we women need testosterone inorder to make estrogen), but one of the by products of testosterone is a substance called DHT and this is what is thought to cause the hair loss. DHT binds with our 5alpha-reductase inhibitors and this binding closes the follicles until the grow thinner and thiner hair and eventually no hair. In men, the classic horseshoe appearance is typical, this can also occur in true aga with women, however more often women experience and over all thinning , and reatin the hair line (the reason for this is that females carry more aromatase in the hair line which inhibits the binding of dht and 5ar)...when classifying aga, some thing to look for are 1st get your hormones tested, and ask specifically for you FREE T, as this is the from of T that causes extra androgen production, total t is not as important. Also get you serum ferritin levels checked (not ur total blood count or total iron), it takes an serum ferritin of over 40 to keep hair and over 70 to grow it and quite often with hair loss in younger females there are multiple reasons, yet doctors only focus on and treat one which wastes time with the types od hair loss that are irreversable like AGA. With AGA you may noticesthat ur hair is unmanagable, loses its luster, each strand is dull and lifeless and thinner than before.

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