I vaguely remember an anthropology class that I took in university in which I had to read about Darwin’s theories on evolution. The topic was absolutely fascinating. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much of a chance to delve into it further than I did in the class because my major was computing science. But the basic concepts were relatively simple. Organisms evolve over many years in several ways. Natural selection is involved in the process. Basically small random mutations in an organism’s DNA that help the organism survive get passed on to the next generation. Useless mutations are weeded out over time because they either don’t help the organism survive or they actually make the survival more difficult.
Then there is Sexual Selection. This is a form of selection within a species where one of the sexes chooses to mate with members of the opposite sex that they ‘perceive’ to be good for their survival. An example of sexual selection is the tail feathers of a male peacock. It serves no other purpose than to make female peacocks horny. And, maybe I am completely wrong, I am being presumptions, or just plain stupid, but I think hair loss is a factor of human sexual selection. I don’t think that androgenetic hair loss (MPB and FPB) is a ‘disease’ in the sense that cancer is a disease. The key letter in MPB and FPB is ‘P’ for PATTERN… male PATTERN hair loss or female PATTERN hair loss. I don’t think patterns occur by fluke in a complex and super-evolved organism like a human being. My hunch is that the pattern in hair loss is there for a reason. I will talk about this in a moment, but before I do, I want to stress that I am only talking about androgenetic alopecia here. I think some forms of hair loss, such as Alopecia Areata are actual diseases, processes that are not intended to occur by evolution.
Now, why do I think pattern hair loss is an intended factor involved in sexual selection? Well, because the process of pattern hair loss is well-defined. Hair in specific locations behave in specific ways depending on the presence or absence of various hormones. See Androgenetic Alopecia. It doesn’t matter than some men don’t lose their hair. In fact, I think that men who DON’T lose their hair have inherited a recent evolutionary trait. I will elaborate on this. I think pattern hair loss in men, back when the lifespan of a human was less than half of what it is now, was a sign of maturity, and perhaps an indication to a female that the man could provide for her and her offspring better. Initially, baldness was probably not something that early human males cared about. It probably helped them. Remember, pattern hair loss is an indication of high androgen levels! Therefore hair loss was probably also a sign to females that the male is ready to get it on in the cave. As humans evolved, hair loss stuck around for other reasons. I think that as the human lifespan increased, hair loss served a different purpose. As humans started to get fixated on beauty (as in the case of the peacock’s tail feathers) hair loss became a dual-edged sword. It still indicated maturity and preparedness to bonk, but at the same time the longer men lived it became an indication of old age. Men have always been attracted to women with beautiful hair (just look at how the Mullah’s in Iran force women to hide their hair for proof of this. They think the sexual potency of hair is too much for a man to handle). At some point in the evolutionary process women started to view men’s hair as an indication of their health and youth. They started to sexually select youthful looking men who didn’t lose their hair (what a bunch off mutant weirdos!) SO the problem for men began. Young men wanted to have plenty of sex, but they were stuck with old genes that would cause them to lose their hair too soon. Whereas men would die in their 20’s and 30’s in the early evolution of homo sapiens, they lived longer now, but their hair genes didn’t seem to get it and so they would cause hair loss too soon. Kind of like premature ejaculation…kind of….well maybe not….it’s 3:20 in the morning so forgive my drifting…
So NOW hair loss became a crutch for young men, but didn’t really matter as much for older men. That is, young men who lost their hair couldn’t get the women as easily as men that had a full head of hair, but as these men got older, the hair loss did not matter as much (sexually) for anyone but themselves! Trust me. I’m now 30 years old. I’m married to a beautiful woman. Hair loss didn’t matter to her at all. In fact, she thinks the higher hair line is sexy. So men, those of you who wail that it is impossible to get laid because of your hair loss, I will say what I have always said: Do what you can to fight it. Use the minimum number of products necessary, or shave your head, or whatever. They key is, do something to help you stop thinking about your hair loss! I know a lot of good looking (I’m talking model quality, intelligent ladies) that don’t care one bit about hair loss. They are interested in confident, healthy, witty, intelligent men. Don’t let your hair loss get you down my friends. Think Vin Diesel. The man is dating that extremely hot girl from Entertainment Tonight… Maria, I think her name is. Vin is bald as a baby’s tushie. Think of the friend of mine I talked about in the rant called A guy who just doesn’t care. Make this the year where instead of counting how many scrawny peach fuzz hairs you’ve grown, you work on making hair loss a non-issue for you. You do this by taking the least level action necessary to deal with it. This level will differ for each individual depending on how much hair loss matters to them. In my opinion these are the best options available to you, in order of usefulness:
Shave your head if you’ve got the guts.
If you don’t want to shave your head, keep you hair as short as possible. Trust me, a thinning head of hair looks thicker with a short hair cut, such as a caeser cut.
Use propecia
Use minoxidil
Take L-Arganine and L-Lysine
Use Nizoral shampoo
For all of the above, don’t overuse the stuff!
If you are still paranoid about your hair loss after trying all of the above, I would recommend you evaluate why you feel this way rationally. If you still need an added kick you can use a copper peptide product like Folligen or Tricomin.
You’ve got high potency solutions for Dr. Lee and Dr. Proctor.
Need more stuff? You’re probably crazy. Just stay on your regimen for 3 month, 6 month, a year, two years. Stop thinking about it.
As a final option, and only when you’ve done a TON of homework on the topic, you can consider transplants.
All of this is just to make YOU feel better about YOU. Because when YOU feel better, it will register with the opposite sex and translate into dividends. If you can convince yourself that your hair loss doesn’t matter, most people worth interacting with won’t care about it either.
Sexual selection. I’m convinced that this is the culprit behind our MPB or FPB hair loss. That’s why it’s so hard to beat. It’s like trying to tell millions of years of evolution to back the hell off.
Maybe everything I said above is BS, but I think there is at least some merit to it…
I need sleep now.
Goodnight.