What can cause very rapid thinning and receding hair other than genetics? Is this unusual for my age?

September 8, 2008 7:50 AM

Did your balding/receding kick into high gear at some point after a lifetime of very very slow loss? Is this unusual? Is something other than genetics causing this rapid loss?

I'm trying to figure out whether my particular balding/receding/thinning scenario is unusual or cause for concern because it has kicked into high gear this year and is going scary fast. The line has receded quickly, and more alarmingly has gotten so thin on the whole top so quickly.

I'm blond and look exactly like my dad and granddad, both of whom receded most of the way back but never went the male pattern baldness route (that stuff about maternal grandfathers is a myth, given my maternal grandfather's glorious head of hair in his 70s). So I've always known I wouldn't keep all of my hair. It's been receding at a glacial pace since high school, but so slowly that nobody would ever have noticed. Until February you'd have said I had a normal full head of hair.

Now I'm 35 suddenly it has gone turbo. Did you ever reach such a tipping point?

I moved to a new town this year for a new career. So there was stress involved in that and in getting up to speed. There was definitely some anxiety there. But I live at the beach now in a sleepy little town and work is great. So I'm actually less stressed now, so that wouldn't seem to be a cause for ongoing hair loss if indeed stress really has anything to do with it. When I got my first haircut here, the lady said something about "...because it's so much thinner up here than everywhere else." And I was like, "What?" Sure enough, she was right. That was definitely a new development. I could see my scalp! (when wet). And putting hand to head felt different, no padding.

My doctor was like a parrot, just saying brrrrock, genetics, brrrrrock, genetics. Yeah I get it, but this fast, this sudden? He did a blood test for thyroid function and that came out fine. He said that aside from thyroid, it really is genetics and very little else aside from some medications (I'm not on any). I've just never been aware that it could happen this fast and wonder if something might be exacerbating it. Are the Russians poisoning me? The Ukranians?

I made sure to exercise regularly to clear out any stress, got a filter for my shower because the water is hard here (just in case, who knows?), and am taking a multivitamin. And still it goes. I'm eating a mostly vegan diet 5 days per week now, backsliding to omnivore on the weekends, but I wasn't when this all started, so it wouldn't seem to be diet-related. Back then I was eating a pretty balanced omnivorous diet. Now I'm eating lots of healthy stuff including plenty of beans and soy for protein.

Ideas? Concerns? Your experience? I know it'll go eventually but I want to eliminate anything other than genetics that may be making it go faster.

posted by Askr to health & fitness (8 comments total)

My pop had an incredible pompadour in high school. He went off to college, and BAM! it started coming out in handfuls. He attributes it to 1) genetics 2) change of climate (St. Louis vs San Antonio) 3) stress/shock of going away to school.
posted by notsnot at 8:22 AM on September 8, 2008

Yes, hair loss ebbs and flows at different rates. I experienced my main hair-loss in my late 30s. Then, through my 40s, it seemed to plateau. Now that I'm 50, I'm noticing a new spurt of thinning.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:32 AM on September 8, 2008

Anecdotal data point: in my 20s i had a slightly receding hairline, nothing dramatic, when I was 32 all of a sudden the top started thinning dramatically. No stress to account for it.
posted by Null Pointer and the Exceptions at 8:37 AM on September 8, 2008

Welcome to the Chrome Dome club. I lost most of my hair in my 20s. I'm 35 now, also blonde, and for the past 10 years it's been pretty stable but the receding hairline has crept back slowly.

The nice thing about being blonde is you can shave your head every 3-5 days or so and no one will even see where your hair is growing back in, so you don't get that dark-haired neo-Nazi thug look that a lot of dark-haired guys get after they shave their heads -- and then have to shave every day to keep it shiny and Mr. Clean-like.
posted by camworld at 8:39 AM on September 8, 2008

Yes, balding can go faster or slower, quite suddenly. But what you might actually be encountering here is a sort of balding tipping point, where you can go for many years as the guy whose hair is thinning a bit... and then all of a sudden you lose the one last hair which tips you over into becoming the guy who is balding (or more traumatically, the guy who is bald).

The real goal at this point is maintaining one's dignity, which means no combovers. Let me repeat just to be totally clear: no combovers, please. And those haircuts that purport to hide the balding? They don't really work. You may not need to use the clippers or shave yet, but start getting used to the idea that you will at some point need to accept your new identity as a bald guy, and find a dignified haircutting solution.
posted by Forktine at 8:58 AM on September 8, 2008

You can slow it down. I started Propecia in my early twenties and I've kept basically the same hairline since (I'm 30 now). My brothers, however, didn't, and the difference is definitely noticeable.
posted by allkindsoftime at 9:14 AM on September 8, 2008

I had a friend that claimed his hair loss was partly from Accutane (acne medication). Not really sure if that's the case or not, but he used rogaine and propecia and has a pretty full head of hair these days.

My hairline receded at the beginning of college, then stopped when I was 22 or 23. Hasn't really done much since then.

Are you getting enough protein?
posted by electroboy at 10:53 AM on September 8, 2008

My doctor was like a parrot, just saying brrrrock, genetics, brrrrrock, genetics. Yeah I get it, but this fast, this sudden?

Hair loss seems to be like so many medical conditions, where we know some - or even many - of the causes and contributing factors, but we still don't know them all, or how they work together. So yeah, your doctor is probably right in saying "genetics", even though it may not be the complete answer, or an actionable answer like you seem to have wanted.

I first noticed my hair thinning when I was 19. By the time I was 23 or so, my head looked like Step 12 on the Norwood Hair Loss Chart.

This probably isn't what you're wanting to hear, but your best bet is to just accept it and start planning what new hair style you'll want with your reduced coif.
posted by dammitjim at 11:51 AM on September 8, 2008