About     Contact     Archives     Videos     Events     Hair Transplant

What are we coming to? Today’s Olympic athlete now must give up Propecia if they want to compete. According to today’s New York Times (1/19/06), Zach Lund is an Olympic athlete who is prematurely balding and he wanted hair. “So in 1999, when he was 20, he began taking Propecia. Then in 2004 he switched to Proscar. And it looks as if he grew hair, or at least stopped losing it….”

He is now faced with a choice, should he become a balding gold medal winner or a person who was eliminated from competition because he wanted a full head of hair. That is the stupid quandary that today’s potential Olympic champion must face. To be a bald champion or not an athlete at all.

The New York Times states: “At the end of 2004 the World Anti-Doping Agency added finasteride to its list of banned drugs in international sports. The agency calls finasteride a masking agent that hides the use of more nefarious drugs like the steroid nandrolone. So, one imagines, every Olympian with a spasm of hair growth must fear surprise follicle checks…. Better he should have had erectile dysfunction. The trinity of impotence relievers - Viagra, Levitra and Cialis - is not prohibited, though these drugs are performance enhancers in a certain athletic way.” Sooner or later, these three medications are bound to be added to the list of banned drugs.

What a world we live in! We may ask our athletes to give up sex to become a star. Maybe without hair, they won’t feel sexual anyway, or am I too shallow in my assessment? To see the entire article, go to: Fighting Baldness, and Now an Olympic Ban (registration required).

A few times each month, I will post some random hair-related information, which I’m calling “tidbits”. I spend hours each day writing responses to questions I receive on this blog, so it is a nice change of pace. For example…

The American Indian (or Native American, if you prefer) has no genetic balding if their ancestry is from the Alaskan Bridge. American Indians that came to North America from Central America can have genetic balding. There has been no explanation why the American Indian does not have genetic balding, making him unique amongst all men (except those born with genetic defects in the DHT making enzyme or those who eat large amounts of DHT blockers in their diets, a group of primative people from the Central American rain forest).

The observation that men from Asia, India, or China have less balding is certainly not a reality today where the wig business is thriving. A theory put forward by Dr. Masumi Inaba in his 1996 book “Androgenetic Alopecia” claimed that there was more baldness in the post WWII Japanese men than in the earlier generation to which he belonged. I think that he attributed this to dietary change and in particular, to more saturated fat in the Japanese diet. The same theory, if true, could apply to Indians, who have only a small meat intake back in India (strict Hindus eat no meat at all). Dr. Inaba’s theory never gained any credence then or since, but history shows that if his theories are proven correct, he would not be the first scientist to be proven right a decade or more after his death.

History points to insights as we get further away from the facts as we see them. Dr John Snow back in the mid 19th century proclaimed that Cholera came from contaminated water while most other “experts ” believe it was transmitted by bad smell (the “miasma”). The entire London sewerage system was designed to get rid of the stench that permeated the city every summer (and coincided with cholera outbreaks) . The sewerage system was an engineering marvel with the worlds largest pumps and miles of brick lined tunnels. It got rid of the smell and coincidentally got rid of the source of water contamination and cholera became very rare. The cholera organism and its lethal effects were not discoved until many years after Snow was dead and buried. (This last paragraph was written by Dr. Richard Shiell of Sydney Australia)

A few times each month, I will post some random hair-related information, which I’m calling “tidbits”. I spend hours each day writing responses to questions I receive on this blog, so it is a nice change of pace. For example…

I am often asked about what happens to testosterone when one takes Propecia. Testosterone levels do climb by 10% on average when men take DHT blockers like Propecia. Some men work out heavily, adding steroids, growth hormones, and DHEA, while others take even more testosterone. I am often asked about the effects of these medications on hair loss. Each contribute to hair loss caused through genetic causes when men have the gene for hair loss, but some of these medications may have a direct effect on the actual hair loss, independent of genetic factors.

Dr. William Reed, made the following comments: “If one had to guess, I would say that the gym rats are correct. I gather that about 8% of testosterone is metabolized via 5 alpha reductase. The 10% rise in testosterone does not offset the increased androgenic power of this loss of DHT (62% of serum levels … I don’t know the intracellular change in the muscle cell, i.e. if there is any type 2 5 alpha reductase in the muscle cell. If there is, then the intracellular impact within the muscle is even more marked). I don’t think Big Pharma will address this issue or bone density loss (that could also be unfavorably impacted) unless other investigators come up with the data and there seems no profit in that appening. Having said that, I think gym rats are striving for a supraphysiologic state that brings out these limitations of finasteride. Ignored are the benefits to the prostate… and to hair. It’s annoying how Life is seldom black and white.”

The question is also frequently asked about the impact of DHT blockers on those people who build muscle mass and use steroids. There are theoritical issues with regard to this area, where blocking any male hormone may reduce muscle mass, but the official information out there indicates that there are no such side effects. Frankly, I do not have an opinion regarding this, so I am passing this to my readership to make their own assessment.

A few times each month, I will post some random hair-related information, which I’m calling “tidbits”. I spend hours each day writing responses to questions I receive on this blog, so it is a nice change of pace. For example…

Some mammals require thick fur to keep themselves water proof and they have much higher fur density than humans have with hairs on their heads. For example, the Australian platypus has an incredible 700+ hairs per square mm which is 350 times as dense as the average human hair (2 hairs per square mm). The Merino sheep with its 5 micron thick wool is amazingly dense as well but not in the same league as those aquatic mammals who require waterproofing.

Some of the animals have two types of fur; the guard hairs are the long glossy hairs that overlay the shorter, denser under-fur. The guard hairs help to repel moisture in addition to protecting the under fur from damage which keep the animal warm in cold frigid waters.

Occasionally, a person comes into my office with their pet poodle, for example, and I joke with them about volunteering the dog’s fur for the transplant. This does not always go over well. Perhaps we can do some strip harvesting from the Australian platypus and get enough fur to cover a half dozen bald men.

A few times each month, I will post some random hair-related information, which I’m calling “tidbits”. I spend hours each day writing responses to questions I receive on this blog, so it is a nice change of pace. For example…

In an doctors email group that I subscribe to, some comments were made which I would like to share, as they will have value in understanding the hair loss process from an evolutionary point of view. I want you to know that the comments made by this group of doctors are not intended to start a debate on evolution - we will not relive the famous Scopes/Monkey trial on this blog. It was stimulated by the question: “How long have humans experienced hair loss?”

One doctor suggested that genetic hair loss must go back millions of years. Neanderthal men had hair loss with varying degrees of balding. Humans (in the evolutionary tree) developed in a different line from chimpanzees about 5-6 million years ago. Chimps have crown loss, which progresses over time as the male chimps get older. The hair loss in macaques, also with a similar mechanism, suggests the process was present in our cousins at least 15 million years ago.

We know that monkeys have been around for millions of years longer than homo sapiens. Was the stump-tail macaque always bald? My memory does not work that far back, but one of the doctors believed that the bald characteristic of the stump-tail macaque may have been more recent (I guess he has a better memory than I do). No one today knows what Neanderthal man looked like, although on the time scale discussed above, he was alive just 30,000 years ago. He left a lot of cave paintings of animals but no detailed self-portraits of his manly appearance, certainly not one of a balding cave man.

The group of doctors who share this information do so to disseminate more knowledge to each other. We try to become not only better doctors by helping each other, but also more knowledgeable ones, trying to help our patients who suffer from the pain of hair loss.