Hirsutism - Annoying condition with unwanted hair
Hirsutism is an annoying condition which leads to too much of unwanted hair growth on face, chest, abdomen and back and can occur both in men and women. This thick, dark hair is different from the fine hair that some women have on their upper lip, chin, breasts or stomach.
This condition occurs when the normally small, vellus body hair follicles of an individual respond to androgen hormones by increasing their size and shape and start to produce large, pigmented hair fibers. Again, hrisutism generally occurs in beard and moustache areas as the hair follicles that are androgen responsive are only present in a certain pattern over the skin.
Hirsutism is a common condition which often improves with medical management. However, prompt medical attention is important, because delaying treatment makes successful treatment more difficult.
The treatment of hirsutism can be medical therapy or the cosmetic therapy.
Major medical treatments include the following:
Birth control pills
Androgen receptor blockers
Spironolactone
Flutamide
Glucocorticoids (steroids)
Dexamethasone
Prednisone
Methylprednisolone
Enzyme inhibitors
Finasteride
GnRH analogs
Cosmetic Therapy is generally accompanied by medical therapy and includes:
Temporary Hair Removal which lasts for several hours to several days. This may be either through depilation or epilation. Where depilation has lasting effects for some hours, epilation has lasting effects for some days. Depilation includes chemical depilatories which are normally creams or “shaving powders” which chemically dissolve hair and abrasion using rough surfaces used to buff away hair. Epilation includes tweezing, waxing, sugaring, threading, and rotary electric epilators which rapidly grasp hairs and pull them out by the root
Permanent Hair Removal
There are two types of permanent hair removal: electrolysis and laser treatment. During electrolysis, the electricity directly damages the cells in the hair follicle, plus the electrical energy effectively “cooks” the hair follicle tissue to permanently destroy the hair follicle’s ability to produce hair. However, it is somewhat impractical to use electrolysis to treat very large areas of the body as only one hair is dealt at one time.
Laser treatments may be used on large areas of the body, during which a beam of light is passed through the skin to the hair follicle to destroy it. People with light skin and dark hair usually achieve the best results with laser hair removal.
Tags: Birth control pills, Flutamide, Glucocorticoids, Hirsutism
May 13th, 2009 at 11:42 am
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