Frank Discussion on Hair Loss

In the past I’ve joked around and been flippant about the week’s subject matter, whatever it was. Sometimes I’ve been guilty of being philosophical and vague in my blog. But this week I’m going to talk frankly about hair loss and my own experience.
Some men will never know the feeling of looking in the mirror and seeing their hair retreating from their face. They will not have to come to terms with seeing their profile take on a new shape or the careless derogatory remarks from others. It’s a painful experience and for some it is no exaggeration to say it is crippling.

I started to lose my hair at the age of 18. The average age for a man to start losing his hair is 30, but at the time I didn’t particularly mind. I thought I was simply getting a widow’s peak like my father and that this was part of the transition from boy to man. And a widow’s peak can also be sexy – look at celebs like John Travolta. It was at university the following year that I realised I wasn’t just dealing with a receding hairline but a more significant thinning of the hair. It started to become apparent when my hair got wet in the rain - or I put product in – suddenly my scalp was all too obviously glaring through the hair. After a year or so of this, trips to the hairdressers became increasingly depressing and there seemed little point in styling my hair or making the most of what I had. By the time I reached the age of 22, people I met assumed I was in my 30’s and I took the all-too-inevitable decision to shave my head, so the egg look was complete. For some men this is a great look, but to pull it off you need a strong jaw line and a stockiness, preferably with a tan or dark skin complexion to prevent you looking like a refugee survivor. Unfortunately I did not own these physical attributes and I felt ludicrous. I learned not to focus on my reflection when passing mirrors and I took to wearing caps. By this stage my sense of self worth was so low the mere suggestion of girlfriends seemed ridiculous to me. I was accepting the fact that my hair loss was not going to stop or even slow down and that by the age of 25 I was going to be bald.

It was a relative who saw how inhibiting my situation was and suggested I go and speak to my GP about my options. This proved to be a hideous mistake. I made an appointment and when discussing the problem with the doctor I was roundly told off for wasting his time and advised to accept my situation and not be so vain. Chronic shyness took a dangerous turn to self loathing. By now I would grimace if I caught my reflection in shop windows and started to take myself away from my friends and stay home when they went out clubbing.

When I was 26 it was suggested that I go to a hair clinic for a free consultation. Despite all the shyness and self loathing, I found the thought of cosmetic surgery even more embarrassing and extreme than going bald, but the suggestion had planted a seed in my mind and eventually I decided what was the harm in a free consultation? The clinic was predictably just off Harley Street, but what I hadn’t expected was the number of options they presented me with. There was the option of pills, hiding powders and of course surgery. At first I chose to go with the powder and pills. The powder has obvious limitations; it doesn’t stop further hair loss and can’t entirely replicate the look of natural hair, but it is, nonetheless, helpful and it gave me an idea of what my hair would look like if it was once again thick. The pills have been extremely impressive. They’re called Propecia and their purpose is to prevent any more hair falling out and to strengthen and thicken what hair you have left. What these little pink pills don’t do though is help grow new hair – there is nothing in existence that can do this. And the big downside to these pills was the price, though they can now be bought at Boots and this has thankfully driven the price down (12 weeks supply will put you back £90).

After a few months I decided to take the plunge and go for the surgery. I realised that if I never took this step I would always wonder what life would have been like. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what is involved in hair transplants, partly because there has been so much progress over the last 15 years. In the modern transplant, a long strip of scalp is cut from the back of the head and placed under a microscope so that the individual follicles can be separated out. These follicles are then placed into tiny incisions across the front of the scalp to create a new, stronger hairline. It is a long and labour intensive operation, which can often take seven or eight hours to complete. The success of the operation is limited by the quantity of hair that can be harvested from the back of the head, so doctors can give their patients strong definitive hairlines but they can’t give them the mop of hair they would have known as teenagers; well not yet. I read an article not too long ago which stated that within 10 years they will be able to take just one follicle away and mass produce replicas in a science lab. Then there will be no need for cutting out lumps of flesh from the back of the head.

I had the operation just before Easter and so a combination of annual leave and bank holidays meant I was away from the office for an adequate amount of time - not only for the op, but also for the scalp to heal, so that when I went back to the office it wouldn’t be obvious what I had done. If you’re wondering why my colleagues didn’t notice a ton of new hair on the front of my head it’s because once the hair is planted into the scalp it actually falls out within a week, leaving the follicle to grow new hair of its own accord.

Like the pills, the surgery took a long time to take effect, which I was actually pleased about as a sudden change would have been difficult and embarrassing to explain to people I didn’t feel I knew well enough to share my experience with. The results were life changing and I don’t say that lightly. I don’t have a dream head of hair, or even what I had when I was 16, so I won’t be appearing on any shampoo ads, but I can now walk down the road feeling good about myself and be sociable. I can also look at myself in the mirror and not cringe and if you see me wearing a hat it’s because I like the hat, not because I don’t like my head.

Surgery is certainly not for everyone, nor are the pills, powders, hats and lord knows what else I’ve tried. Some people might read this and think me a fool for spending so much money and time on something so trivial. But though hair loss might mean little to them, it does, for some reason, affect me and many other men greatly. What I would say to anyone who is struggling with hair loss is take positive action now. Whether you choose to use pills or hats or even surgery is totally up to you, but if I had started taking the pills 2 years before I did, I would not only have saved a lot more hair, but would also have spared myself a lot of emotional pain en route.

Lastly, I can’t speak for all barber shops, but one of the things which helped me was talking through my options with my barber at Pall Mall Barbers. Having an unbiased expert opinion helped me sift through the options.

If you have any questions about what I have written I’d be happy to answer them, or send you in the direction of somebody more qualified than me. Send your emails to pallmallbarberslondon@gmail.com

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