Is your hair falling out? Beware of hair-loss charlatanism
Video in Spanish · subtitles available
More and more patients come to see me after visiting a hair salon, a pharmacy, or a hair care center where a small camera 'diagnoses' their hair loss… and conveniently reveals the product they need to buy. Let me explain why that is hair-loss quackery — and what a real diagnosis actually looks like.
Seeing a single strand of hair on a screen is not a diagnosis. In this video, I explain why "hair quackery" — using a camera to simulate a medical diagnosis without a genuine clinical evaluation — is an increasingly common problem.
Hair loss is a symptom with many different underlying causes (androgenetic alopecia, telogen effluvium, iron deficiency, thyroid dysfunction, alopecia areata, or scarring alopecias), and each one is treated differently. Trichoscopy is a real and highly useful medical tool, but it does not diagnose on its own: it must be interpreted alongside the clinical history, scalp examination, and, when appropriate, blood tests or a biopsy.
Beware also of shampoos, vitamins, and supplements sold systematically without ever identifying the underlying cause. The rule is simple: diagnosis first, then treatment — and never the other way around.
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Doctor Florian A. Vallecillo Cabrera
The doctor on video
Informational content by Doctor Florian A. Vallecillo Cabrera. It does not replace an in-person consultation or an individual diagnosis.
