Losing temper can come from hormonal inbalance, stress, justified irritation (though irritation itself can have many different causes), too little sleep, but also neurological/cognitive dissonance caused by many different factors (from light/sound sources, to actual conflicting information).
In case you are under a large amount of work stress, of course this can cause 'a short fuse'. Your mind can not cope with the given signals and you respond with the irritation about other stressfactors, that is not connected with the situation at hand. Because it is an emotional reflex, it is difficult to do something about it at the moment. I suggest that after having had a stressful time/moment/period, you take a moment away from everyone and everything and blow off steam. This can be by 'silence', 'meditation', a punchbag, running or listening to music (preferably classical or ambient).
In other cases, I would suggest you consult a professional.
With hormonal inbalances, it might be due to gland over/under production of enzyms and hormones, but it can just as well be a insuline/glucose issue (meaning early diabetes).
Sometimes you really just are in 'the wrong crowd', people around you behave against your most basic values: Being on time/late, using foul language or not, respecting others or not, etc. This can cause a continuous build up of internal strife, which will (if continuously) result in fast bursts of reactions from you. This is basically a form of neural/cognitive dissonance.
In case you are not in any of the above, there can still be many different causes. One of the most 'devious' ones, is cognitive dissonance. Why? Because mostly people don't recognize it. Heck, even professionals often miss signals. What does it mean? Your brain is basically a network of neural paths, which allows electrical currents of different strengths to influence parts of the brain depending on combinations and strength. We are born with a blueprint given by our parents, but are building our own actual network from the moment the brain is started up in the womb. What this means is the neural network will be 'etched' according to the decision tree you build from everything you learn. If something fits the patterns you create nicely, it causes a 'ressonance', like when listening to sad music, you feel sad, and doing something where someone reacts happy can cause your nervous system to cause 'happy hormones' to be emitted into your bloodstream. Dissonance is the oposite and causes your brain and nervous system irritation. Sounds, ideas, feelings, sights can all cause ressonance or dissonance.
In any of the the above cases, I suggest you do one thing first (you already started with this question): Write it down.
I use the method I created, called: 'Affairs of the state'. This means you write down the subject you are unaware of why you act in such way and then start to go by 5 basic sections that go for everything. The first is: What happens right before you get angry. Then you see what other elements you can find in your life that are connected to the same feelings. Historically.