Hirsute Men and Head Hair Loss

As a writer focusing on men’s health issues I would be interested in your comments on two areas of my research.

1. I have read a number of reports that suggest that hirsute men (those with a lot of body hair on chest, shoulders etc) are more prone to lose hair from their heads.
2. I have also seen reports that the American Red Indian does not suffer from hair loss.

I do not believe these issues have been dealt with by you before.

I too have seen claims that men with heavy populations of body hair have more balding than their hairless or less hairy counterparts. I can say that in my medical practice, the balding men routinely say: “I wish you can take it from my chest or back”. But then again, I do not have the type of interchange with non-balding men to probe the same issue. There is generally a belief that DHT (the evil hormone that ‘causes’ hair loss), also brings on the body hair, the nose hair and the ear hair along with the balding on those genetically inclined balding men. I believe that in the discovery of Finasteride, the people who ingested large amounts of this drug through their dietary intake of a food stock from the rain forest, did not bald, nor do the men born with a genetic defect where they can not make the enzyme that produces DHT. I recently probed a large number of doctors asking if anyone has found evidence of a reduction of body hair, nose or ear hair with Propecia. Everyone liked the question and told me that although they believed it might just do that, there is no evidence that Propecia or Proscar actually blocks or reverses these less than ideal hair locations.

With regard to the American Red Indian, I am fully aware of this observation. His ancestors came from the Alaskan bridge and they had the balding trait, so it is strange that this particular ‘race’ (the great grandchildren of the migrating Alaskan ancestors) is unique amongst all humans as they do not have balding. Of interest, I am not aware that these people are missing any enzymes for making DHT. Could it be that a primitive people actually wiped out balding genes in their brothers in a relatively short time frame of less than a couple of thousand years?