Healthier Hair

Dr Jasmine Ruth from Nexus Clinic talks about the causes of hair loss, and how to care for your luscious locks.

- Amanda Soh

The hair on our head has a very specific function: to protect our scalp from the scorching sun and to act as thermal insulation; it helps keep your body heat in if you happen to be somewhere cold. Which is why our hair is as important as our thumbs – however small it may seem, it plays a role in our lives. But if we were to neglect our hair, we may end up experiencing hair loss.

NOTICING THE SIGNS

As you walk from your office desk to the car park after work, a strand or two of hair may come lose and fall off. Don’t panic: it’s natural for 50 to 100 hairs to fall off every day. Most of us won’t notice it as we shed a few strands at a time throughout the day, usually while combing or running our fingers through our hair. However, if you notice around 30 strands or more on your brush right after combing your hair, and you wake up to strands all over your pillow, or even see a lot of it on the floor after blow-drying – that’s something to worry about. “Generally, the hair follicles on our head stay active for about two years, so each strand of hair stays on our scalp for just as long. Once it falls off, a new strand will grow out from the follicle after about one month. So, if you were to lose more than 100 hairs a day, you may not notice any thinning initially. It could come to your attention only after a few months, because the hair fell off prematurely and a new strand takes more than a month to grow out.”

THE ROOT OF IT