Clare Johnston

SITTING in between a woman in her 60s and a young man barely into his 20s last week, I was struck by a conversation in which they shared their struggle over the same issue. Both were losing their hair. It almost goes without saying that, for women, discovering a balding patch at any stage in life is terrifying. We need only look at TV presenter Nadia Sawalha’s recent vlog in which she revealed her own battle with this condition to understand how soul-destroying it is.

Mostly, it is the unknown. Once it has begun, where will it end?

It’s a subject that has been on my mind a lot over the last few years as my mum grew more and more concerned over her own thinning hair.

We have spent hours discussing it and looking into products that might help.

But nothing really removes the fear – once it takes a grip – that the thinning may continue to the point where she ends up with noticable patches on her scalp.

For now, we have found a couple of high street hair-thickening sprays to be very effective in bulking out the hair she does have.

Changing medication she was taking for osteoporosis is also helping.

But the conversation I found myself in the middle of last week really opened my eyes to how upsetting hair loss can be for men, too. Particularly when, as in this case, it started when the person involved was just 19.

Now, at only 21, he is ever conscious of his receding hairline and anxious about where it will end up.

The one silver lining for this – and what we might describe as cosmetic conditions in general – is that the number of effective treatments

seems to be exploding right now. Whether it’s heat or light therapy, lotions, potions or lasers, by experimenting enough, the chances are you’ll find something that helps. The downside to all of this is that it can be very expensive. The lady I was talking to about her hair loss had been using a laser device. When I went home to look it up for my mum, I found it was a staggering £770. And that’s beyond my budget, I’m afraid. Yet, as the years pass, the costs of treatments will also come down and, soon, issues like balding will be a thing of the past. With so much recent tragedy making the world seem very dark, the progression we have made towards finding cures for all number of conditions in recent years is a real cause for optimism. From the cosmetic to the life-threatening, we are so close on so many fronts. And that’s the brightest hope for tomorrow.

Nothing really removes the fear that the thinning may continue