Hair Braiding – a Cause of Female Hair Loss

Have you ever toyed with the idea of braiding your hair in cornrows and tying little shells to the ends? Well, before you try something like that, you should probably look a little more closely at what tight weaving and braiding like that has been found to do to African-American women. Apparently, going by a new study, hair weaving in the African style is almost certainly a cause of female hair loss.

So does the study actually prove that hair weaving can be a cause of female hair loss? While the study doesn't actually prove it, it does line up quite a lot of evidence against styling one's hair in this way. The thing about hair weaving that most people find immediately impressive is that the stylist is able to take unruly hair and bring it under such tight control. Those tiny little braids are all usually so perfectly and neatly done that one just can't help but admire them.

Taming unruly hair and ordering it in this fashion though takes quite a bit of brute force. To weave hair so neatly and easily, the hairstylist usually uses a great deal of tight pulling. And they lock the tightness in with those tight braids. While your scalp and your hair follicles certainly can take quite a bit of pulling, they can usually only take it for a short time. When the tightness is locked in with the braiding and the tying up, your hair follicles remain in a permanent state of stress. Often, this can lead to scalp and follicle inflammation.

If follicle inflammation sounds dangerous, it really is. In many women, follicle inflammation of this kind can easily be shown to be the cause of female hair loss. It is a kind of balding that the technically-minded like to call scarring hair loss or central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia. That's when your scalp just gives up and begins to shed its hair, the source of all its pain. It does so in a very identifiable pattern – hair loss starts at the crown of your head and spreads everywhere else. So far, scientists have only found that this happens to African-American women; but that could be because braiding one's hair in this particular style is mostly only popular with the African-American community.

While they haven't studied this thoroughly enough that they might be able to conclusively prove these things, the study has indeed been called scientific. And until they find a better way to back their findings up, one would be wise to err on the side of caution and stay away from tight braiding.

Protein Deficiency Related Hair Loss

Protein is an essential macro nutrients that requires for more or less all functions of body beside besides proteins are known as building blocks of body. It requires for repair and growth body tissue. Simultaneously, proteins are essential component of nails and hair in the body.

Amino acids are building block of proteins and there are nine essential amino acids whose supply from outside is must for growth, maintenance and repair of physical body. A person must have regular intake of protein through balanced diet or supplement. One of a prime signal of protein deficiency is hair loss.

Protein Deficiency and Hair Loss

There are numerous factors that control hair loss. These factors can be divided as external and internal.  External factors comprises exposing hair to harsh chemicals, using of hair cosmetics regular etc: where as internal factors are macro (this includes protein deficiency) and micro nutrients deficiency, hormonal problems, disease, infection etc.

Now here we come why protein is essential for hair. Hair contains 90% of protein called Keratin besides growth and metabolism that leads to hair re-growth, length and thickening requires a good supply of proteins besides water, hormones and other essential elements. It should be remembered that among the different symptoms due to lack of protein hair loss may the very first one. Other few protein deficiency related hair problems are brittle hair, loose of shine, early baldness etc.

Prevention of Protein Deficiency and Hair Loss

If a person does not suffer from some long lasting health related problems, for instance, hormonal disturbance, infections follows hair care routine properly, use infrequent chemical substances but still loss hair then he should check for his protein intake. A balanced diet with sufficient micro nutrients and high protein certainly is the best hair loss prevention measurement.

In general, vegetarian food contains less amount of protein then non vegan food besides Vegan food does not always carry a complete protein that contains all nine essential amino acids. So a combination of different vegetarian food must the opted for. It is a fact that a person who does not take animal proteins is highly prone to unnatural hair loss.

Most enriched vegetarian protein sources are milk, cottage cheese, soybeans, tofu, beans etc. It is a wise decision to intake a wide combination of these foods in every day’s diet to get all essential amino acids in right and sufficient combination.

Sometime people who suffer from lactose intolerance can’t consume milk or milk products. Person suffers from this problem may take few servings of available of protein supplements after consulting a medical practitioner.  Similar way, vitamins like B-complex and trace elements like Zinc, Selenium are also essential for hair. It is advisable that if someone wants to take protein, vitamin and mineral supplement he should consult a doctor to avoid overdose and related toxicities. For long days over intake of proteins are harmful for kidney and liver.

This is a brief and easily understandable information regarding the relation between protein deficiency and hair loss. Never forget if you are taking a balance diet still suffer from excess hair loss then there may be some underlying health problem. In that case you must take advice from a competent authority.