Like the other various parts of the human body, our hair plays a central role in enhancing one’s features.
Hair fall has become a vital issue in both men and women and the reasons behind this could be many. It could be due to environmental conditions, genetic or hormonal imbalance in the body. Alopecia is a “major autoimmune disorder that often results in unpredictable hair loss” says James McIntosh a researcher at the School of Medicine, University of Illinois- Chicago.
Now how do we detect alopecia and Is there any cure to it? Alopecia can be detected when you spot coin-sized patches leading to loss of hair. The loss of hair can be sudden and there can be results of itching and burning in areas before hair loss. “ A person with Alopecia universally lose all their hair, including eyebrows and eyelashes, facial hair, body hair, and hair on the head”- says Jennifer Bery, Medical News Today. There isn’t any cure for this disorder yet but there are some forms of treatment available in the derma industry.
India’s beauty industry is mounting on profits by selling altered beauty to people and also by telling them the many possible ways they can better their external flaw. There are societal pressures on how women or men should look like and baldness isn’t the one in their good books. “The growing celebrity influence, increases awareness to take care of one’s appearance, societal pressure and higher awareness levels are all turning out to be potential drivers for the hair transplant market”- says The Hindu. Alongside the plastic surgery industry in India, the hair transplant industry is also running parallelly with profits as an objective in mind. “The size of the Indian hair transplant market was estimated at Rs 453 crore in FY 2012-13. International chains are seeing India as a potential market for hair restoration”- says Ankit Goyal, Programme Manager, healthcare practice, Frost and Sullivan to The Hindu
‘We need to embrace’ a video created by attn: on Alopecia in the U.S. is an inspiration to watch. The video goes on to say that 30 million women in the U.S suffer from this disorder and 40 percent of men will show signs of baldness before the age of 49. It also says that so many of the people are made to believe that it’s a condition that needs to be treated. One of them a hair model says- “ I went to a dermatologist and started doing the dinitrochlorobenzene (DNCB) treatment which is the burning of the scalp, which hurts like bejeezus”.
The treatment for Alopecia is yet to be found but before that, we need to stop the culture of considering too many hairs as beautiful. The culture of modifying beauty with transplantation leads many into the threshold of death and danger. Beauty industry has created an unreal world by defining their own dictionary meaning on what looks beautiful and what doesn’t. We must learn to step away from such illusion while considering us beautiful.