If you think that hair loss is hair loss, whether you're a man or a woman, then one glance at the varying hair loss remedies aimed at either men or women will tell you otherwise.

The gender specific treatments for hair loss stem from the different causes of balding in men and women. While balding in men is often a hereditary trait, with few external influences, hair loss in women is often caused by stress or hormonal imbalances that occur when they have a baby or go through the menopause.

Hair loss expert, Iain Sallis - who works as a consultant trichologist at the Nuffield Hospitals in Leeds and York - said that certain drugs have been identified that work specifically against the effects of hereditary hair loss in men.

Popular remedy, Regaine For Men, contains one of these drugs - Minoxidil - and has had some of the most successful results in terms of halting and slowly reversing the effects of male pattern baldness. Mr Sallis said that around 80 per cent of his patients who used the treatment, together with a similar drug, finasteride, saw positive effects.

It is not, he warned, a suitable treatment to be used by women. For women, he said, more successful remedies would be the more natural ones, that sought to rebalance certain nutritional deficiencies.

NutriHair tablets can replete some crucial nutrients - such as iron, which can fall particularly low in menopausal women - although Dr Sallis said a nutritionally balanced diet was the first step in combating female hair loss.