Hello Dr. Im a 20 yr old, white male. Over the past few months my hairline has begun to recede. I’ve also noticed large amounts of hairloss in the shower(150 hairs everytime i wash it). The hairloss began in June and has continued without showing any signs of stopping. I still have a full head of hair and it’s still growing at the same rate, but it’s become thinner, especially on the sides. I’ve also observed that i can pull out some hair easily from any part of my scalp. It doesn’t come out in clumps ,just individual hairs. My scalp has also become alot more itchy and scratching it just causes more hair to fall out. My worry is I had an MRI scan a few years ago – could radiation from that cause my hairloss now or does this sound like male pattern baldness to you? Thank you for help.

The MRI does not use radiation, it uses magnetic fields. There is no connection between magnetic fields and hair loss. You are at the right age for the appearance of genetic hair loss. If you are losing 150 hairs/day, it does sound like you need to have your hair mapped out for miniaturization to get a diagnosis firmly in hand. If you are genetically balding, then drugs like Propecia work to slow, stop, or reverse hair loss. Now is the time in your life that if you take charge, you are best able to manage it. The more hair you lose, the further down the ‘one way street’ you will go to becoming bald.

Can a person who’s not balding have a certain degree of hair thinning? or is it that hair thinning has to be associated with hair loss?

I think I used this analogy before, but just because it is cloudy outside does not mean it will rain. Yet when it is raining, it is cloudy. In other words, hair thinning is just a state of the health of your hair and one part may thin while other parts may not — or all of it may thin. The cause is multifactorial, from nutritional status to drug exposure to aging to genetic balding. Thinning in a certain male pattern hair loss may potentially be an early sign of the genetic type. When a series of hair shafts are thinner than others (miniaturized), then this usually indicates something is wrong. There is no way to make this simple, so that is why people like us exist. We try to analyze what is happening to each patient, establish baselines for future hair loss, sort through the possibilities of causes, some of which may be correctable, and then suggest actions (medications to hair transplants) as they are appropriate to each of our patients.