Essi­ba Small

If you're hav­ing a con­sul­ta­tion at Jen­nifer May­nard Jaimun­gal's clin­ic, chances are your hair is al­ready too far gone for a hair­dress­er to do any­thing about it. From bald spots to hair loss and scalp prob­lems, Ma­yard Jaimun­gal has seen it all. She is not a doc­tor but as a tri­chol­o­gist. She's qual­i­fied to deal with prob­lems of the hair and scalp be­fore treat­ing it or re­fer­ring her pa­tients to an­oth­er pro­fes­sion­al (MD, der­ma­tol­o­gist, nu­tri­tion­ist, psy­chol­o­gist) de­pend­ing on the re­sults of her con­sul­tan­cy. The re­cent­ly in­stalled pres­i­dent of the T&T Cos­me­tol­ogy As­so­ci­a­tion, May­nard Jaimun­gal was in­volved in hair and beau­ty for years while work­ing at a sci­ence lab of a school. She was in­trigued by sci­ence and, al­ready with pas­sion for cos­me­tol­ogy-which she still did on a part time ba­sis-she found her­self want­i­ng to know more about the sci­en­tif­ic study of hair and its dis­eases "I want­ed to know why cer­tain things were hap­pen­ing to the hair and what can be done about it. I want­ed to gain fur­ther knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing of hair care and hair prod­ucts so I be­gan search­ing for an­swers. Tri­chol­o­gy pro­vid­ed these an­swers."

Sev­en years ago, af­ter she com­plet­ed the In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Tri­chol­o­gy pro­gramme, May­nard Jaimun­gal opened her Hair and Scalp Clin­ic. Of her clients, women make up the most. The con­stant use of harsh chem­i­cals, pulling hair too tight and braid­ing hair are among the hair sins women com­mit dai­ly that of­ten re­sult in pre­ma­ture hair loss. Oth­er caus­es are more sci­en­tif­ic like ge­net­ic dis­po­si­tion of the pa­tient, hor­mon­al changes, an in­ac­tive or ac­tive thy­roid, stress or the use of cer­tain med­ica­tion.

"I tell peo­ple that their hair gives the first sign that some­thing is go­ing wrong in the body. Hair is the best mea­sure of your gen­er­al health. "It is nor­mal to lose about 50 to 100 hairs a day, how­ev­er, hair is sen­si­tive to any body im­bal­ance due to its fast rate of growth. What caus­es hair loss in one per­son may not cause it in an­oth­er per­son."

May­nard Jaimun­gal al­so tells her pa­tients that hair loss does not oc­cur overnight and ad­vis­es moth­ers to teach their daugh­ters prop­er hair care when they are young rather than wait un­til they are adults.

"When the child is grow­ing up is the best time to start and a moth­er should be work­ing with the child's hair­dress­er to en­sure that she is get­ting prop­er hair care. Tran­si­tion­ing from pri­ma­ry school to sec­ondary school and even the on­set of men­stru­a­tion, for in­stance, are two life-chang­ing sit­u­a­tions that can con­tribute to poor hair health in a young girl be­cause of the stress and hor­mon­al changes as­so­ci­at­ed with these con­di­tions. "The ear­li­er par­ents iden­ti­fy the prob­lem, the soon­er they can ad­dress them. Half of the prob­lem is that when women start to no­tice their hair thin­ning or falling out it's too late and by then, in­stead of seek­ing ex­pert help to find out what is go­ing on, they try to cov­er it up by do­ing dif­fer­ent things to their hair."

For chil­dren younger than 11, May­nard Jaimun­gal's pet peeve con­tin­ues to be the tight corn­rows that some moth­ers put in their daugh­ter's hair. While it may be a con­ve­nient for a busy moth­er, since the style can be worn for a week be­fore it looks un­tidy, the San Fer­nan­do born tri­chol­o­gist said corn rows do more dam­age to the hair than good. She is con­cerned, she said, about the num­ber of lit­tle girls who are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing trac­tion alope­cia (dam­age to the hair fol­li­cles from pulling hair too tight). "A lot of moth­ers think that when they plait a child's hair for school they are do­ing some­thing pos­i­tive to en­sure hair growth when they are ac­tu­al­ly not. "Once a child gets good nu­tri­tion and reg­u­lar sham­poos, he/she will have healthy grow­ing hair." Ma­yard Jaimun­gal's faith­ful clients who still go to her for cos­me­tol­ogy ser­vices at her sa­lon, al­so ben­e­fit from her knowl­edge of tri­chol­o­gy when they go to get their hair done. May­nard Jaimun­gal al­so does cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of stu­dents for na­tion­al ex­ams at the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency and of­ten she is called up­on as a con­sul­tant for her tri­chol­o­gy ex­per­tise. "I am com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing the hair and scalp con­di­tion of my pa­tients who are faced with sev­er­al chal­lenges in this area."

More In­fo

Caus­es of tem­po­rary hair loss

Tem­po­rary hair loss can be caused by high fever, op­er­a­tions, di­et­ing or change in di­et, and the tak­ing of some med­ica­tions (such as those used for the treat­ment of can­cer). In most cas­es the body ad­justs to the drug and the hair re­cov­ers. Hair loss can al­so oc­cur up­on ter­mi­na­tion of preg­nan­cy al­though not every­one who has a ba­by will lose hair. Tem­po­rary hair loss will ei­ther cor­rect it­self or will slow to nor­mal once the un­der­lin­ing cause has been pin­point­ed or cor­rect­ed.

Caus­es of per­ma­nent hair loss

Per­ma­nent, dif­fuse hair loss oc­curs un­til the causative prob­lem is cor­rect­ed.

The most com­mon caus­es of per­ma­nent dif­fuse hair loss are:

• De­fi­cien­cies in min­er­als such as iron, zinc, cal­ci­um, mag­ne­sium and chromi­um;

• Too much cop­per in the di­et, be­cause as cop­per in­creas­es zinc de­creas­es;

• Poor pro­tein in­take, es­sen­tial fat­ty acid de­fi­cien­cy and mal­ab­sorp­tion;

• Anaemia, a con­di­tion where there are too few red blood cells or less than the nor­mal amount of haemo­glo­bin in the blood stream.

• Hor­mon­al im­bal­ance as a re­sult of the thy­roid gland be­ing over­ac­tive or un­der­ac­tive, di­a­betes or menopause.