Category: The war against baldness
6 articles in this category.
- Alopecia — The medical umbrella term for hair loss — a word that, charmingly, comes from the Greek for 'fox.' It covers everything from ordinary pattern baldness to autoimmune patches to the hair you shed three months after a stressful summer.
- Androgenetic alopecia — Ordinary male- and female-pattern baldness, and the single most common cause of hair loss. It is driven by genetics and by the follicle's sensitivity to a hormone called DHT, which slowly shrinks hairs until they all but vanish.
- Finasteride — The other main hair-loss drug — and unlike minoxidil, it attacks the cause. By blocking the enzyme that makes DHT, it slows the hormone-driven shrinking of follicles. Its discovery traces back to a study of people genetically unable to make DHT at all.
- History of the toupée — Humanity has been gluing other hair to its head for at least 5,000 years. A short history of the wig and the toupée, from shaved-headed Egyptians to powdered courtiers to the modern hairpiece.
- Minoxidil — One of the two main drugs for hair loss — and a famous accident. It was developed as a pill for dangerously high blood pressure, until doctors noticed patients sprouting hair in unexpected places and turned the side effect into a product.
- The comb-over — Combing long side hair across a bald scalp is one of the oldest tricks against baldness — and, improbably, a patented invention. In 1977 a father and son were granted a US patent for the comb-over, and in 2004 it won them an Ig Nobel Prize.