Many people suffering from hair loss prefer not to use the strong drugs and medications that currently form the best available treatment options.

They may have tried a range of treatments but found they did not work or perhaps suffered unpleasant side effects.

Hair loss usually develops gradually and may be patchy or diffuse (all over). Roughly 100 hairs are lost from your head every day. The average scalp contains about 100,000 hairs.

Each individual hair survives for an average of 4-1/2 years, during which time it grows about half an inch a month. Usually in its 5th year, the hair falls out and is replaced within 6 months by a new one.

Genetic baldness is caused by the body's failure to produce new hairs and not by excessive hair loss.

Both men and women tend to lose hair thickness and amount as they age. Inherited or "pattern baldness" affects many more men than women. About 25% of men begin to bald by the time they are 30 years old, and about two-thirds are either bald or have a balding pattern by age 60.

Typical male pattern baldness involves a receding hairline and thinning around the crown with eventual bald spots.

Ultimately, you may have only a horseshoe ring of hair around the sides. In addition to genes, male-pattern baldness seems to require the presence of the male hormone testosterone.

Men who do not produce testosterone (because of genetic abnormalities or castration) do not develop this pattern of baldness.