Facing up to the bald truth of losing your hair in your 20s
As ‘The Archers’ tackles premature baldness, Dominic Penna asks how it affects young men
Fans of Radio 4 soap opera The Archers could be forgiven for thinking they were about to be confronted with a new storyline about steroid abuse. Last week, Ambridge’s agricultural apprentice and resident gym bunny Johnny Phillips was warned about the perils of taking drugs to bulk up his frame.
But, despite his telltale mood swings, Johnny had not been pill-popping for that reason at all – rather, he is going prematurely bald and was taking supplements.
“I’m 21 going on 45,” listeners heard him say. “It’s only going to get worse, and before long everyone will know.” Struggling to look at himself in the mirror, Johnny has convinced himself baldness was the cause of the recent breakdown of his relationship, and is currently wearing a hat in order to conceal his hair loss.
While one in three white men under 30 start losing their hair at that tender age, there is no official guidance from the NHS for them, save for blandly acknowledging that going bald “can be upsetting” for men of all ages: “For many people, hair is an important part of who they are.”
Rob Hooper knows the pain of premature baldness. When the 25-year-old pub worker from Surrey found himself in a similar situation as the fictional Archers character, he too tried to hide it. His hairline began receding at the age of 16. By the time he took his A-levels, the bald patch had become all too noticeable.
“Initially, I was reluctant and tried to hide it,” he says. “I tried cutting it short all over so that you couldn’t much see the difference in length,” he says. “But from the age of 20, I had a very big bald patch. It became a bit of a joke with all my friends at uni, so I kept it cropped as low as possible.
“I have quite pale hair, so I can get away with a short style, but as the years have progressed it’s got shorter and shorter.” Now in his mid-20s, he has embraced his “inner skinhead” and is shaving his head all over.
He says there’s a small upside in having started losing his hair in his teens: “I’m now completely fine with it. At first, it was hard at university to have everyone think you’re 20 years older than them. But I was most self-conscious when I tried to cover it up. I really wasn’t fooling anyone.”
Spencer Stevenson, 44, a hair-loss consultant who runs his own specialist website, came into the industry after receiving several procedures himself. His own experience of starting to lose his hair in his 20s led him to “shutting people out and even suicidal thoughts”. But Stevenson insists that help is now out there, when it wasn’t when he was younger.
‘Your hair is part of your identity. Losing it creates a cocktail of emotional trauma’
“For anyone losing their hair, the emotional aspects are devastating, but for young guys, especially,” he says, “your hairstyle is a part of your identity. There’s a cocktail of emotional trauma going on because people feel it’s out of their control. But when you realise that it’s not just you, that you are not as isolated as you think you are, that it’s a normal process, and that there are viable treatments available – that can help.”
Stevenson says the taboo around hair loss in younger men has subsided thanks mostly to one man, footballer Wayne Rooney, who in 2011 confirmed that he had undergone a hair transplant at the Harley Street Hair Clinic. “Just to confirm to all my followers I have had a hair transplant,” he wrote on Twitter. “I was going bald at 25 – why not?”
Rooney’s admission brought the issue of hair loss among young men into the mainstream for the first time, and “broke down so many stigmas”. But it also had another effect, suggesting that those experiencing hair loss ought to do something about it – something drastic, expensive and possibly dangerous.
“Men will do next to anything to get their hair back,” says Stevenson. “People are jumping on a flight to Turkey to untrained, unlicensed clinics because they’ve seen an Instagram or Facebook advert with 100,000 followers – all of which are fake – claiming to be ‘the best in the world’. A better course of action is to stop the progression of hair loss, before rushing into any form of hair transplant.”
Stevenson recommends asking at a pharmacy for a scalp foam with a minoxidil formula (such as Regaine, £65.99 for 3 x 60g) or for finasteride supplement (28 tablets for £37), which can prevent further loss. Caffeine, as a shampoo ingredient, has also been shown to improve hair growth.
Others swear by microneedling, whereby the scalp is gently perforated to stimulate collagen and the growth of new hair. Trichologists such as Dr Mark Buddha at the Can Group also offer PRP treatment, in which the patient’s own platelet-rich blood plasma is injected back into the scalp.
So while Johnny in The Archers is far from alone in feeling downcast about losing his hair at a relatively young age, the vast range of treatments available – on top of growing social acceptance – shows there are reasons for him to keep his head held high.