It's Okay To Be Worried About Hair Loss, and What You Can Do About It

For any guy or girl that's dealing with hair loss. It can be a pretty stressful part of our life, as we get older most of us do lose our hair. Some guys get unlucky and start to recede in their teens. I figure losing your hair as a teenager must feel like someone has it out for you. Your teenage years are when you are building your ego, you are becoming a young man, and you are becoming an adult. Many of us start working, living independently, and seriously dating. The last thing any guy wants to happen at this time in his life is to start balding, and let's not lie to ourselves, going bald is one of most guys' worst nightmare. For most of my life growing up through my teens and early 20s, I had a thick set of hair on my head. I even believed I'd never have to worry about my hair because my dad in his 50's still had a good amount for his age. I did eventually find out that your male pattern baldness in fact comes from your mother, so you need to look at your grandad from your mothers' side (1). Do you know in a movie where the plot twist is revealed, and the character has a flashback? Yeah, I had that when I found out the truth about MPB. I instantly had the last image I saw of my grandfather pop up in my mind, and his shiny bald head was blinding.

In the last year or so, I went through a rapid period of hair loss, and I went from a slightly not perfect hairline to a noticeable horseshoe. This made me actually take my time and look into hair treatment. Though, thinking about it, up until this point I suddenly realised, no one talks about this? Hair loss drives men to have social anxiety, lose all their confidence, leading to them become depressed. All you are likely to hear is the odd self-deprecating joke, which may just be a defence mechanism in that they are trying to convince themselves that they are totally okay with this.

There are preventive measures to losing your hair but they won't work if it has already gone. Many people may know about Rogaine (Minoxidil), and be suspicious of if it works, but it can be talked about with your doctor and they will give you their advice on what it can do for you. To my knowledge, things such as finasteride and Minoxidil merely stop you from losing the hair you currently have, as opposed to actually fully growing it back. The only way to have your hair come back is a transplant. Finasteride apparently is better than Rogaine. Here is how Keeps explains what they both do.

"Finasteride helps stop hair loss and grows new hair by blocking DHT. Minoxidil doesn’t stop hair loss, but it does help grow new hair thicker and faster than before. Finasteride and minoxidil (the only two FDA-approved products to treat men’s hair loss) have been proven successful at treating hair loss in men, according to multiple studies.

A five-year study on the efficacy of finasteride in men with androgenetic alopecia showed improvement in 90% of participants. A 120-week study of male subjects with androgenetic alopecia showed that minoxidil was statistically significantly superior to the placebo in increasing hair count".

So if you are noticing a small recede on your hairline that isn't too bad but are worried about what might be coming, you can take these preventive measures. Though, of course with many things in life, there are side effects. Although, people who have taken these drugs seem to get different results, you can read this thread here, and here for information from people who have taken it themselves.

So, let's talk openly and honestly about hair transplants, and just anti-ageing surgeries in general. Not many people know how they work, I am guessing that's because a mixture of guys don't want to become "fake", or they simply never talk about their insecurities in regard to their hair, so they have no knowledge of what these surgeries can do. First off, do not for a second worry about it being "fake", your hair isn't going to be a wig, it isn't going to come off if someone tugs on it slightly. They are moving the hair that grows at the back of your head, to the front, and then it will grow there instead, it is still all your hair. Secondly, a tonne of celebrities get hair transplants, some more noticeable than others, but more than you would ever think end up getting them. Have you ever noticed how so many people in the public eye manage to stay looking good into their 40s and 50s? It isn't just all genetics, they are getting surgeries, as well as looking after themselves in other ways. I also think this can be pretty dangerous for the general public when they aren't being transparent about how they look the way that they do. Everyone looks up to and idolises these people, yet how can the average person keep up with them when they're surgically altering themselves and they aren't owning up to it? Any balding out of shape 30-40 year old probably feels like utter crap when he sees guys 10 years older than him looking 10 years younger. But when you consider that many celebs may have prescribed pills to kill their hunger, a personal trainer to show them through the exercise they need to be doing, and surgeries to give their hair and teeth longer life, of course these people will look a lot younger than they should.

Now, I am not in any way saying that you can only be happy by getting surgeries and fitting into these boxes of what society deems to be "attractive". There are many people who don't care about ageing and don't have their happiness impacted by it. But we would have to be bullshitting ourselves to not admit that almost all guys who go bald, look worse than when they had hair. Why do you think there are so many balding guys at the gym? Because they realise that they are going to need a great-looking body to make up for their lack of hair, and even then, the lack of hair can almost be an instant no from some women. I have seen videos in the past where women will be asked "do you find bald men attractive", most will say yes, and they are being honest for the most part. But the real question here should be "which of these guys do you want to take on a date, to get to know better". In a line-up with average-looking men of the same skin colour all dressed in the same outfit, some bald and some with hair, who do you think is honestly being picked there? If you are wondering why I mentioned skin colour, I'm gonna level with you. White men look by far the worst when bald. Black men actually can rock being bald, and won't look much worse without hair. Here's a small study with only 120 people, so the external validity of it is quite low, but yeah, it does reflect the truth about being bald, imo (2). Also, do you notice how every time someone tries to tell you that bald men can be sexy, they only talk about the same 5-10 men on the planet? Jason Statham, The Rock, Vin Diesel, Bruce Willis, Stone Cold Steve Austin. Do I even need to point out why these men might still be seen as extremely attractive whilst being bald?

So, I'm gonna share some of the people that I believe have had hair transplants, and we'll compare their attractiveness, and the age they look, pre and post-op.

So here's a man I have a lot of love for, for footballing reasons of course, but it seems like he's been balding for a while, and these pictures are from 1-2 years ago. How old would you say Holdini is? 30? 31?

Well, you might be shocked to know that he was 23/24 here. Now, here's a picture of him one year later.

Now, how old do you think he looks? Around his age, right? Now ask yourself, did he look better before, or after.

Next, we've got a young Elon Musk, with a much older version of himself, not that it's super easy to even tell which one is the older picture. On the left he is 27/28, on the right he is 46/47. Again, decide for yourself, because your opinion is what matters here, so which one do you think looks better? I'll show a couple of different comparisons for you.

We know that the majority of celebrities get their teeth done. We know that they get Botox, lip fillers, breast implants, bum implants, and liposuction. What makes you think there aren't thousands of them getting their hair done? Just to try and show you that there are many guys we all know and love getting this done, I'll list here a bunch of people who are highly suspected of getting a transplant. Though, as a disclaimer, this does not mean I am saying that all 100% of them got a transplant. Some people may have had other reasons for going bald, and they did get lucky and it grew back, and some may be a case of people looking for it, rather than finding it.

So, to finish off with me giving you the information that you may need, to decide for yourself if this is something that you feel you want to check out. The first person I would recommend to you is a Youtuber called Theo Baker. This is someone who I randomly spotted in my recommended a few months ago, and he explains what he goes through, the process, the price, and where. I'm not going to bullshit you and say I know everything about the procedure, but from what I've researched, it does work for many men. Some it works for a bit better than others, but as you can see with some of the pictures I've shown you, it can work really well, and give you a whole head of great-looking hair. It is a bit of a gamble, as it won't work for everyone, but I personally feel like it is worth taking the risk. Here's another Youtuber that has admitted to getting it done, and although his is more recent, you can watch a video every now and then to see how it's going.

1 - Just scroll down to the "Male Pattern Baldness" subsection. https://www.healthline.com/health/baldness-gene#genetics-of-balding

2 - https://metro.co.uk/2021/10/25/white-bald-men-are-judged-less-successful-and-attractive-by-women-15480271/

Theo Baker - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5iGUM6LMpU&ab_channel=TheoBaker

Stevie on the Happy Hour Podcast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jySrtiONvuw&ab_channel=HappyHourPodcast

Finasteride vs Minoxidil (Rogaine) - https://www.webmd.com/connect-to-care/hair-loss/choosing-between-finasteride-and-minoxidil