Thread: Hair Loss In African American Women

http://www.wfmynews2.com/2yh/article.aspx?storyid=52854


When we talk about hair loss, most of the time we're talking about men, but women can be affected too, particularly African American women.
Winston-Salem, NC -- Usually we think about hair loss, it's men who come to mind, but women, particularly African American women may also have to deal with it.

Dr. Amy McMichael, a dermatologist at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center says, "Because of the coarseness and because of the very curliness of the African American hair usually if you want to put your hair in a very straight style or a more smooth style you have to go through a lot of effort to do that, either with heat products or with chemical relaxers, and if you add to that coloring and the dry, coarse nature of the hair, you get a lot of patients who end up with broken hair, breakage that is very difficult to improve and you have patients that come in probably form overuse of heat and chemicals with thinning of the hair, so hair loss coming out at the roots."

As far as treatment, her first recommendation would be to minimize abuse to your hair. Stop using heat and chemicals on it. Then see a dermatologist.

"Some of the treatments might be to use an oral antibiotic. If you have a lot of inflammation in the scalp we treat it just as we treat acne, and that take inflammation down and causes a decrease in pain. sometimes we have people use a prescription shampoo."

Other options include a topical steroid, and sometimes an injected medication.

Dermatologists at Wake Forest Baptist hope to begin a study on hair loss in African American women in the near future.

Thank you for this information.