Q: Why do some people have a full head of hair into their seventies or eighties and others start to go bald in their late teens or early twenties?
A: The difference is genetic with the inheritance coming from either side of the family.
Although a person will have the genes his/her whole life, a gene’s expression (also called phenotype) can be quite variable. The factors that cause this variability is still unknown.
Q: I was reading the hair cloning area on your site and came across this passage:
“Donor cells can be transferred from one person to another without being rejected. Since repeat hair implantations did not provoke the typical rejection responses, even though the donor was of the opposite sex and had a significantly different genetic profile, this indicates that the dermal sheath cells have a special immune status and that the lower hair follicle is one of the body’s ‘immune privileged’ sites.”
Does this mean that I could get a hair transplant from someone else’s head of hair one day? Any type of hair?
A: Yes, in theory we will be able to use someone else’s donor tissue to clone hair – but the technology to actually do this is still years away.
Q: Can stress accelerate hair loss? I am 25 and there is balding on my dad’s side of the family. I never had any thinning or hair loss till this year. I guess you can say I’ve been under a lot of stress. When I did notice shortly after my 25th birthday I started stressing even more, which led to more hair loss. It is thinner up front and it is thin on top. I have heard of some hair docs mapping your head for miniaturization, do you do this too?
A: Yes. The presence of miniaturization (decreased hair diameter) in the areas of thinning allows us to distinguish between hair loss due to heredity (i.e. androgenetic alopecia) in which hair progressively decreases in diameter under the influence of DHT and other causes such as stress where there is no miniaturization. The degree of miniaturization can be assessed using a hand-held instrument called a densitometer.
The pattern of hair loss and the family history are also important in the diagnosis.
Stress more commonly produces telogen effluvium, a generalized shedding that is not associated with miniaturization and is often reversible without treatment.
Q: Why do some people have a full head of hair into their seventies or eighties and others start to go bald in their late teens or early twenties?
A: The cause is genetic and this poly-genetic trait can be inherited from the mother’s side, the father’s side, or both.
There is an old wives’ tale that it is inherited only from the mother’s parents. Although the inheritance can come from either side, it is actually greater from the mother’s side – but only slightly.
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Disclaimer: The purpose of the Hair Transplant Blog is to provide the public with general information on hair restoration. Information provided on this site should not be used for medical diagnosis and/or treatment.
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