The Vikings applied goose-poop lotion. Hippocrates was a doctor in ancient Greece. According to him, to treat baldness, use mixed pigeon droppings with horseradish, cumin, and nettles.
A 5,000-year-old Egyptian recipe said that a wound could be healed by covering it with a mixture of honey, alabaster, red ochre, fingernail scrapings, and the burned, oil-soaked prickles of a hedgehog.
As long as the man has had access to mirrors, he worries that his scalp might get lonely. Julius Caesar was especially obsessed with it and did all he could to get his hair back. The wreath of laurels he wore wasn’t a part of Roman tradition but rather an attempt to hide his bald head.
He was almost entirely bald when he first encountered Cleopatra. She tenderly offered the home treatment of ground-up mice, horse teeth, and bear grease in a last-ditch effort to save his mop. Sadly, it didn’t work. He lost all his hair like many great men did, such as Socrates, Napoleon, Aristotle, Gandhi, Darwin, Churchill, and Hippocrates, who was so bald that a specific baldness is called in his honor.
Later, Caesar started growing the back of his hair longer and combing these strands across his head. This style was jokingly referred to as “illusion styling.” It is now referred to as the comb-over.
After thousands of years, we’ve advanced from garlands and repulsive mixtures to pricey lotions, tonics, and shampoos, as well as last-ditch measures like men’s hair pieces, medications, and surgery. Nowadays, you can visit a hair loss clinic, sign up for counseling, and frequently see advertisements advising balding men to “consult their doctor.”
Papers describe balding as an epidemic. The condition even has a new name with a scientific ring: “androgenic alopecia.” It may pass for a medical ailment if you don’t know better.
As a result, annually, $3.5 billion (£2.7 billion) is spent annually on baldness treatments. That amounts to more than Macedonia’s whole national budget or, as Bill Gates noted last year, a significant amount more than the $200 million (£154 million) a year we spend on malaria management.
And terrible side effects make up for any elements that modern medicines lack. The anti-hair-loss medication Propecia, which has been connected to impotence, saw a record-breaking $264 million (£204 million) in sales in 2014.
Meanwhile, hair transplants are infamously bloody and have been known to cause men of adult age to cry. A full head of hair is preferred by nearly 60% of men over money or friends, according to a 2009 study by the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery.
Have we all been misinformed? The case for bare heads not being a stunning evolutionary accident is growing. Bald guys are perceived as having higher status, more educated, and more authoritative. Their shining scalps may also help them attract women or possibly save lives.
We must clear up certain misconceptions about baldness before understanding what makes it so fantastic. Contrary to popular belief, having a tendency to lose your hair never makes you any more of a man—despite the existence of super-macho baldies like Bruce Willis.
Although bald men typically have hairier arms, legs, and chests, they are not more virile or have greater testosterone levels. The fact that bald men don’t have less hair on their heads may surprise you.
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In 1897, an Enormous Panic Shook the Earth after a French Dermatologist Announced His Discovery of the True Culprit: a Microbe
Despite all the anxiety about baldness, humans have a history of making mistakes. According to Aristotle, sex was to blame. The military’s pandemic of smooth scalps in ancient Rome was attributed to the troops’ bulky metal helmets.
Later explanations included “dryness of the brain” (which was thought to cause the brain to contract, pulling the head away from the hair), air pollution, or, ironically, the incorrect haircut.
An international panic erupted in 1897 after a French dermatologist declared he had found the real cause: a bacterium. Barbers and medical journals say that combs should be boiled every so often and that people in bald families should only use their own brushes and combs.
We now understand that dihydrotestosterone, a potent testosterone breakdown product, is what causes baldness (DHT). The hormone is crucial for the development of male genitalia in the womb. It causes hair follicles in vulnerable adults to shrink. The long, so-called “terminal” hair on a man’s head is changed into short, soft “value” hairs, similar to those on a baby’s head, while DHT works its magic.
What Sets the Bare Heads apart Is the Sensitivity of Their Follicles Inherited from Their Mothers.
You might also assume that more DHT and withering hair would result from increased testosterone, as DHT is a byproduct of testosterone.
In actuality, baldness can start with very little. The sensitivity of mother-inherited hair follicles is what distinguishes people who have their heads bare.
It must have been inherited. 25-30% of men experience hair loss by age 30 – many years before the end of their reproductive years. Additionally, it affects every single ethnic group on the planet. If having a beard was so horrible, everyone would already be bald. Its prevalence might imply that it is valuable, but how? If so, why does it exclusively affect men, and if not?
According to Frank Muscarella, a psychologist at Barry University, “in general, when men have something that the females don’t, it signifies that attribute is operating as a signal.” This got him thinking in the 1990s.
The majority of these sexually dimorphic’ traits also share another trait.
They typically have more prospects for reproduction and domination, according to Muscarella. In other words, baldness is like a male peacock’s tail, which is very long and has a lot of bright colors. It might have developed as a result of its appeal to women.
Prior research had indicated that women did not find bald males sexy, but this is probably because bald men tend to be older. It should be no surprise that women do not find old age attractive. Even though a man is not physically appealing, he may still be desirable to women since they are drawn to men of excellent social position, according to Muscarella.
Before you ask, Muscarella has no personal stake in this hypothesis.
He claims, “I’m not bald; I have a perfect head of hair.”
He decided to look into it in 2004 on behalf of the less fortunate. Muscarella knew that he would have to make up some bald men to remove variables that would distort his conclusions. But he knew he couldn’t just take a photo of several males and remove their hair in post-production.
Instead, Muscarella enlisted the help of a hairstylist friend, and together they visited a wig store. I asked him to cut the wigs’ hair so that one would appear to have a full head of hair for a guy, one had receding hair, and one had no hair at all, the man claims. Even for the bald look, men needed a wig because they naturally lost their hair around the back of the head and above their ears.
Muscarella purchased three plastic skullcaps and affixed the hair with Velcro when his companion had completed shaping the wigs.
Afterward, they made six poor kids try them on while taking pictures.
They obviously had the worst appearance, he admits.
Because his co-author had recently obtained some essential photo editing software, they could remove the sharp lines between the skullcap and the forehead pixel by pixel and make the images appear more or less normal.
They later tested the accuracy of their photographs.
After viewing the photographs, he invited 101 male and 101 female psychology students to rank the men’s beauty and various facets of their personalities.
Bald Men Were Frequently Rated as More Intelligent, Influential, Well Educated, of High Social Status, Honest and Helpful
Although they didn’t appear as well as the other males, the bald and balding men did perform substantially better in one area.
The men were consistently assessed as having higher levels of social maturity, including intelligence, influence, knowledge, education, high social position, honesty, and helpfulness.
He makes the speculative claim that baldness may have developed as a sign of superior social standing, which some women find seductive.
It’s interesting to note that bald guys were perceived as being far less aggressive.
“If you think about it, early men would have been going around absolutely naked and completely hairy, so you can imagine a big bushy mustache,” says Muscarella. “They would have been extremely kind of threatening looking.”
Shaving one’s head may distinguish mature, influential men from obnoxious kids. Salman Rushdie wed model Padma Lakshmi in 2004, even though his work is better known than his appearance.
If so, it’s plausible that we’ve been stealing this natural signal for a while.
Muscarella notes that monks, teachers, and philosophers have always preferred the clean-shaven appearance. Christian monks have gone one step further by shaving their heads in a manner that closely resembles how men go bald.
Numerous more investigations support the finding. Balding males are overwhelmingly perceived as more powerful worldwide, from small sugar cane plantation workers in Brazil to high school pupils in Zambia.
Even males who have just shaved off their hair can use it.
Some intriguing, if contentious, evidence suggests that bald heads might even save lives.
The contrary was confirmed for a very long time. Men who cannot manufacture DHT, such as those who have undergone castration, are known to have healthy, voluminous locks for their lives. It’s interesting to note that none of this group has ever been associated with prostate cancer.
It makes it reasonable that DHT would contribute to the growth of tumors in adults since it is responsible for prostate gland growth in infants. Baldness and prostate cancer may be related to their susceptibility to hormones, which runs in the family.
This was supported earlier this year by the finding that balding men have an increased risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer, which accounts for about 300,000 fatalities annually.
Although there may not seem to be much good news, there is a twist.
Another known risk factor for prostate cancer is low vitamin D levels, which the body can only make when exposed to sunshine. Furthermore, bald men receive much more sun exposure than the rest of us, as any bald man would attest. Did the development of baldness help to lessen some of the lethal consequences of DHT?
“It might have assisted those people in getting more UV light and making more vitamin D in Europe tens of thousands of years ago,” says Peter Kabai, István University in Hungary, who came up with the theory after he started to go bald. Given that women lack a prostate, this would also help to explain why they don’t develop bald spots.
Men with a Receding Hairline and Bald Spots Before Age 30 Are about 45% Less Likely to Develop Prostate Cancer.
The proof is mounting. Men who work outside have an advantage over those who work more indoors. The same is true for tanned people with a history of sunburns, who reside in warmer climates or take more vacations overseas. Because of how potent the effect is, even the time of year you receive your diagnosis matters: those who receive their diagnosis in the summer had a lower risk of passing away from their cancer.
Most individuals lack vitamin D, which is related to everything, claims Kabai. The last piece of evidence comes from a clinical trial that was released last year. 37 prostate cancer patients were randomly assigned to receive a vitamin D supplement (almost seven times the daily recommended dose) or a placebo.
Their prostates were removed 60 days later. The tumors had lessened in the group that had been taking vitamin D. The situation had gotten worse in the group that hadn’t. Additionally, the supplement altered the expression of essential genes, turning off those linked to inflammation, which is known to promote cancer growth.
In other words, balding men may be more prone to prostate cancer despite, not because of, the hair loss; in fact, the baldness itself may reduce some of the risks.
The fact that men whose hairline is receding and with bald spots before age 30 are up to 45% less likely to later acquire prostate cancer may also help to explain why the research is so conflicting. “While some bald men may choose to wear hats all the time, others may not. According to Kabai, this distinction may be one reason for the ambiguities in these findings.
So there you have it—having a beard may help men advance in their careers, land a girl, or simply improve. Maybe it’s time to stop cleaning up pigeon droppings and treat naked heads respectfully.
Final Words
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