Androgenic alopecia (AA), often simply referred to as male pattern baldness, is the most widely known type of hair loss in men. More than 50% of men over the age of 50 are affected by this to some extent according the to U.S. National Library of Medicine
Assuming you’re a man reading this, every hair on your dome has a cycle of growth. It’s why we go to see our barber on a regular basis and get them trimmed up. It’s why we shave. With balding patterns that develop in men, this growth cycle begins to weaken hair at the top of the temple and/or on the crown of our head.
This is where the hair follicles get smaller over time due to being exposed to too much dihydrotestosterone (DHT) resulting in shorter and finer strands of hair produced in these areas of the head.
The result leaves not only a balding head, but for many, a very self-conscious mind feeling they aren’t attractive, coupled with the feeling of losing their youth. As many men (and even women) could admit, this can be psychologically damaging to suffer from hair loss.
Although reasons can vary, the most common cause of male pattern balding is due to genetics, often having a family history of baldness.
Research has concluded that male pattern balding has ties with androgens as well, which are male sex hormones. These hormones play many roles within the body, including the regulation of hair growth. As contradictory as it sounds, these androgen hormones can both help and hurt. -
Anyone who has struggled with alopecia has probably done some research in hopes to stop or slow the process down. And, after doing a bit of digging has most likely concluded the correlation of higher dihydrotestosterone (DHT), an androgen hormone, with thinning hair and reseeding hair lines.
DHT is a byproduct of testosterone. Many men often think what seems logically simple to assume that “If DHT comes from testosterone, then I must be ultra-manly and am making too much testosterone that is killing my handsome head of hair!”
This is a very rational thought to have and even some researchers have thought the same. Seems like a logical reason, but is it the answer? Even with men who are much older?
The thought that all men with male pattern baldness have too high of a testosterone level rarely holds any validity. If we sit back and think logically about this as well with regards to men prone to male pattern balding, we can surely conclude that most of these younger guys in their late teens and twenties with full heads of thick and healthy hair have much higher testosterone levels than older guys in their 30s, 40s and 50s that happen to have much less hair.
A few things to acknowledge:
We must admit that there is something obviously more complicated going on here and can’t just simply point the finger at testosterone.
Although we know there is in fact a correlation of DHT with receding hair lines, experts have still struggled to figure out exactly why and therefor nothing has been discovered to prevent it from happening.
And as mentioned, DHT is also known to be supportive of our hair. And, on many heads the hair and DHT co-exist in harmony with one another with no problems at all. Some simply have a genetic sensitivity to this multi-faceted sex steroid, DHT.
This study from the University of Edinburgh last year in 2017 was released that contributed to understanding male pattern balding. It was the largest genetic analysis of bald men to date and with promises to provide targets for future treatments. But, there is still a lot more work to be done to link which genes are interacting with DHT and, how.
DHT can be separated into two categories however. The first is serum DHT that circulates around in the blood. The second is tissue DHT which is what binds to receptors in your scalp, skin and other places in or on the body that attract DHT.
Of these two categories, tissue DHT found within the scalp is linked to male pattern hair loss. Much of this has been thought to occur due to more receptors in tissue (like skin & scalp) attracting more DHT like a magnet, netting an overwhelming amount which can wreak havoc on the hair follicles over time.
Serum (blood) DHT on the other hand, has been found to be higher in young men that do not suffer from any hair loss in this study! - This should not come as a surprise when knowing that young men have much higher levels of testosterone.
In short and keeping things simple, testosterone converts into many other things within the body such as estrogen and more, aside from just DHT. Within an aging man’s body whose testosterone levels are declining, the rate of conversion into more DHT and less of the other byproducts of testosterone, tends to increase (ouch!!).
This is what’s thought to explain how DHT levels can tend to remain constant (or elevated), even when T levels are dropping lower.
So, in summary here to wrap up the DHT talk and its contribution to hair loss; it largely boils down to some little evil devil in the genetic code that interferes with how DHT can work within. Unfortunately, it sounds like it messes with DHT’s ability to do good work and encourages it to screw things up on our dome that keep us feeling young and handsome!
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