No hair, DON'T CARE
Is science about to make baldness a thing of the past?
With the greatest of deference to the new heir to the throne — and indeed his brother, and uncle, and father — there really is no excuse for simply giving in to male pattern baldness anymore. Unless they want to be bald — because hair loss is rapidly becoming a choice.
“... If people want to do something about their hair loss, there are proven treatments that can help. The problem with the general hair loss sufferer is they go into denial, and leave it too late to actually act on it,” says Spencer Stevenson, who runs the Spex Hair advice website.
Estimates are somewhere between two-thirds and four-fifths of all men will be affected by male pattern baldness. Stevenson is 47 and has spent thousands of dollars over the last 20 years attempting to tackle his own hair loss, including 13 transplants. He now has no visible sign of loss.
“People usually lose 50 per cent of their hair before they realize it, or before they realize it enough to do anything about it. Surgery is a last resort. But if you act fast, you can prevent, and in most cases regrow, a significant amount of hair,” he says.
Six thousand years ago, ancient Egyptians rubbed a concoction made from dates, dog paws and donkey hoofs, ground up and cooked in oil, into their shiny bald pates. Ancient Celts stuffed mice into a clay jar, sealed it, buried it beside a fire for a year, and then took out the contents with gloves, lest hair sprout from their fingers. The Romans used myrrh berries as a shampoo — or, as in Julius Caesar's case, wore laurel wreaths to disguise receding hairlines. And for just as long people have made fun. There is even a poor prophet in the Bible, Elisha, who in 2 Kings 2:3 “was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him and said unto him, `Go up, thou bald head! Go up, thou bald head!'”
In recent years, daily pills that inhibit DHT (dihydrotestosterone, the male sex hormone, which causes hair follicles to shrink and eventually fall out) such as finasteride, have gained in popularity despite concerns over potential side-effects, which include impotence.
Generally sold as Propecia, finasteride comes with Stevenson's approval — “I've been taking it for 20 years and I fathered twins at a first attempt” — and is a bargain next to a transplant.
“The bottom line is it's the best weapon we have against that process at the moment, building a defence against DHT, so the sooner you can get on that medication, the more hair you'll keep and be able to regrow further down the line,” says Stevenson.
Finasteride is really for maintenance and prevention, though, as are Dht-blocking topical shampoos like GROMD. If a man acts too late, something more significant is required.
Some options are still in development, such as using cloning technology to simply re-create working follicles, and stem cell treatments which “hack” the scalp by micro-injecting a protein to reset follicles and promote rapid growth. But even the less scientific methods have progressed.
One is a “hair system” — essentially a high-end toupee, grafted and plastered and cut and dyed to be perfectly disguised, which can look fantastic. You can easily take it off if you have regrets. But it costs about $1,500, needs to be replaced at least every few months, and has to be reglued even more often than that. So too “micropigmentation,” a method of finely tattooing the hairline, giving the illusion of a closely shaved head. It works brilliantly for filling in small gaps in thin hair, or on darker skin. Otherwise, it can look like what it is: loads of dots coloured in.
And there are transplants, which normally require the patient still has a decent amount of hair, since follicles are harvested from the back and side of the head (where, for most, at least some hair tends to grow no matter how much is lost on top), and implanted on the frontal line either in clumps (follicular unit transplantation), or, increasingly, single hair grafts (follicular unit extraction).
“Clinics pop up all the time, in Turkey or wherever. There's an International Alliance of Hair Restoration Surgeons, and you should look for that seal of approval. This is surgery, remember, it's not a new coat,” Stevenson says.
Instagram and its tendentious algorithms tend to direct people to those questionable overseas clinics, but even though hair transplants often require repeat visits for more top-up work, when done right, they are very effective.
“Once you're in the claws of hair loss, you get consumed by it, and then it gets worse because of stress. So from my point of view, it's about education, because you've got to truly understand that there are solutions, but not quick solutions. It's a cancer of the spirit,” Stevenson says.
Of course, the alternative is that we shed our self-consciousness about it. After all, what better role models could the bald community have than Jason Statham, Mark Strong and Stanley Tucci, three of the most lusted-after men on screen? It's something for the soothsayers to ponder, but there's a nice anecdote, which is still doing the rounds.
Patrick Stewart was once asked whether his appearance was an issue when he was cast as Jeanluc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
“At the very first press conference, a reporter asked Gene Roddenberry (the show's creator), `It doesn't make any sense, surely by the 24th century, people would have found a cure for baldness?'” Stewart recalled. “And Gene Roddenberry said, `No, by the 24th century, no one will care.'”