D-D-Defence

Preventing further loss is vital to stabilising your hair look. If each time you shower and wash your hair, you find hairs in the palm of your hand, that is a problem. In many cases, starting a defensive hair regimen, that is performed daily, will reduce hair shedding and enable stabilisation. Preventing hair loss involves making some compromises to hair your styles, daily care and general health. Needless to say, for many people, the laziest lowest-effort change will involve popping a pill or buying a pair of hair clippers and calling it a day. However, for the hardy among you, the more determined, the high achievers and competitive types, this will not do.

Below is one example of how the pieces can fit together.

1. Applying your topical regimen

A daily topical regimen has worked for many people and the clinical study literature suggests that although the mechanism of action (MOA) is not fully understood yet, it is effective at arresting hair loss, and in some cases, enabling the enlargement of miniaturised follicles. If your hair is already at Norwood 4, it is very unlikely that a topical alone will do anything for the bald areas.

A topical regimen has been effective when:

Twice Daily
The effective regimen involves applying your topical twice daily to the scalp after showering. This enables the actives to be absorbed by the scalp and ensures that they are continually doing what they are supposed to be doing throughout the day and night.

Morning
Apply your topical as soon as you have rinsed and towel dried your hair.

Evening
Apply 15-20 mins before going to sleep as part of your evening routine.

Applying your topical once per day will have significantly reduced results, though not for the reason people often assume. Minoxidil is a vasodilator, not an anti-androgen: it does not block DHT or shield the follicle from it. It widens the blood vessels in the scalp to increase blood flow and the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the follicle, and it extends the anagen (growth) phase of the hair cycle while shortening the telogen (resting) phase, giving the follicle more time to produce thicker, longer hair. That effect is short lived rather than lasting all day, which is why twice daily application outperforms once daily. Keeping DHT itself down is a separate job, done by the anti-androgens covered elsewhere in this library.

Clinical Study

Clinical study data from our meta-analysis shows that a topical is significantly more effective when used both morning and night.

2. Diet

Improving your input chemistry will enable your body to rid itself of certain chemicals and yet produces more of others. Hence, eating a healthy diet with high vegetable content and reduced sugar intake will enable your body to improving its fight against androgen increasing substances. The easiest ways to do so are to add anti-androgen foods into your daily meal intake.

Improve your Diet
Add some of the foods listed in the Diet section of this website. Adding several tablespoons of Pumpkin Seeds, Saw Palmetto and Green Tea will have an impact. It has an impact because you are changing the chemical input substances for the biological processes taking place inside of your body.

3. Supplements

Adding Supplements to your diet such as high-antioxidant superfoods such as Spirulina, Resveratrol (studies have shown some impact on repair against damage inside the seminal vesicle) and Saw Palmetto. The regimen must be regular as you are attempting to permanently keep your androgen levels suppressed. Think of it a person who must exercise daily to burn off a 3000 calorie daily intake of food where the food intake cannot be adjusted, so you must use exercise to burn off the calories to prevent yourself getting fat. If you stop exercising, you will start gaining weight. In the same sense, if you stop keeping your DHT levels suppressed, you will start losing hair.

4. Daily cardio

This site goes through some of the benefits of a healthy cardio regimen. For the body builders out there who focus solely on muscle gain, the bad news is that resistance exercising does indeed increase androgen levels whereas cardio improves encourages androgen suppressing hormonal balance mechanisms. Studies have shown that performing cardio before resistance exercises can reduce the increased androgen created when doing a resistance workout. Strangely enough, cardio at the end of the resistance workout did not have the same impact on the FSH and luteinising hormone levels.