How to know if you have male pattern baldness?

Do you have a receding hairline and thinning hair at the crown of the head? Well, you may have male pattern baldness. Read on to know more about this hair condition.

Risk factors for male pattern baldness

• Age:

  The occurrence of male pattern baldness increases significantly with age. Your age is one of the main risk factors for this hair condition. Even though male pattern baldness can start in early adulthood, it becomes much more common with age. Male pattern baldness is the most common type of hair loss in men, for about 95% of it. (Source: WebMD)

   

• Family relatives:

  Look at your dad, granddads, uncles, and male cousins (any first and second-degree relatives) and see if they still have a full head of hair. If they don't, take a note of the degree of baldness and ask them when they first noticed losing their hair. The more relatives you have who are bald, the greater your risk of developing male pattern baldness. One study suggests that young men whose fathers have male pattern baldness are more than 5 times more likely to experience hair loss than men whose fathers do not have this condition. (Source: PubMed Central)

   

• Prostate growth:

  Benign prostate growth is very common with advancing age and also correlated to dihydrotestosterone (DHT) levels. Do you experience the signs and symptoms of prostate enlargement and suspect male pattern baldness? Well, both conditions are caused by high DHT levels.

   

Signs of male pattern baldness

• Thinning and receding hairline:

  Male pattern baldness typically starts at the front of your scalp, called your frontal hairline. The hairline slowly moves backward (recedes) and forms an "M" shape, with the hair at the temples receding back more than the hair at the middle section of the scalp. Some don't exhibit an "M" pattern, but more of a half-moon pattern, where the entire front hairline recedes back in unison. In due course, the hair becomes thinner and shorter and makes a horseshoe pattern around the sides of the head. The horseshoe pattern is a symptom of advanced male pattern baldness. But some can progress beyond this and become completely bald. You can monitor your hairline by looking in the mirror and comparing photographs of your younger self

   

• Hair on your pillow and comb:

  Aggressive male pattern balding leads to very noticeable amounts of permanent hair shedding. Keep your pillow cover clean and see how much hair you lose while sleeping. If it's much more than a dozen or so hair strands per night, it might be a cause for some concern. If you use a comb, make sure it's free of hair before you use it and then examine it after your normal combing routine. Combing triggers more hair loss naturally, but more than a few dozen hair strands are not normal and are a sign of male pattern balding.