Hi Doctor. I asked a silly question once before about genetics that you wisely didn’t answer (because it was stupid). My question today, however, is hopefully less dumb. I am 20 years old with thick brown hair. I have no history of baldness in my family minus a couple of great uncles on both sides of my family. The problem, however, is that I seem to be shedding a lot of hair in the front of my head. After shampooing my head or brushing my hair I seem to lose about 5-10 hairs just from the front of my hairline. What’s also weird is that the hairs only seem to fall out from the middle of my hairline (at the widow’s peak), and not at the temples, which is where baldness or thinning should be occurring (at least in my family history). The hair shafts seem to be just as thick as the rest of my head, and when I part my hair to check for thinning, the hair density in front actually seems thicker. I know that it is normal to lose about 100 hairs a day, but this type of shedding doesn’t seem to be occurring anywhere else on my head. Any advise? Thank you for your time.
Hair shedding is not always an indication of permanent hair loss or future balding, as most people lose 100 to 150 hairs every day. I would say that microscopic evaluation of the scalp and hair (a miniaturization study) is probably the most accurate method of predicting the future hair loss in male pattern baldness. Having increased miniaturization (over 20%) in any area of the scalp should be considered as a sign of future hair loss in that particular area.
Some people lose their widow’s peak and very frontal 1-3 cm of their hairline due to maturation of the hairline, which is not necessarily balding (see Maturation of a Hairline — Moving From Juvenile to Mature). So if you are only thinning in the frontal 1-3 cm with no evidence of hair loss or miniaturization elsewhere, it may just be hairline maturation and that will stop when your new hairline is reached.
I didn’t realize break dancing could be hazardous to your hair.
Riding a bike or driving a car may get you to where you want to go, yet they work very differently… just as Propecia (finasteride) and Rogaine (minoxidil) work differently to treat hair loss. Propecia blocks DHT production and by creating this block, the genetic element for hair loss is ‘subdued’. Minoxidil may work by extending hair cycles and/or moving hair into the anagen cycle. DHT can still do its dirty work.
Maybe! It is difficult to say. A significant wound may have damaged the hair follicles and your son may have a bald spot on the area of trauma, but usually such trauma will produce only temporary hair loss. I would wait 8 months to see if hair will grow. If hair does not grow, he may be a candidate for a small hair transplant procedure.
First, I commend you in having the skill to break such a small pill into 8 equal pieces.
I did a Google search for the phrase “put hair on your chest” and found that this idiom is use in many situations and many cultures. I really do not know the answer about where the phrase came from, but I did enjoy the threads as I searched for an answer. I hope you know that if anything really put hair on the chest, then it would be marketed as a cure for hair loss in some circles.