Who is male pattern baldness inherited from

No tests are needed to diagnose hereditary hair loss, but blood tests may be done to rule out other conditions that can cause hair loss. Losing your hair slowly is a normal part of the ageing process for most men and some women. Treatment is not usually necessary. However, hair loss that occurs rapidly or early in life can be distressing. If you wish to slow or stop the progression of hair loss, there are treatments available.

Hair loss that is caused by a temporary situation such as illness, medication, stress or insufficient iron will stop when the cause is resolved. Read more about abnormal hair loss.

Finasteride and minoxidil are the main medicines currently available to treat hair loss. However, they are not subsidised in New Zealand, so you need to pay for them yourselves. Medicines that are used to treat hair loss provide different results for different people.

It's also not possible to predict who may or may not benefit from treatment. This is a prescription-only treatment for hereditary hair loss in men. It is available as a tablet. It works by blocking the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone. The hair follicles then are not affected by this hormone and will not shrink.

Treatment needs to be continued for at least 6 months once started. If successful, the treatment is continued to maintain the effect. Talk to your doctor to find out whether finasteride is suitable for you. Women should not take finasteride as a treatment for hair loss. Hair clinics may arrange prescriptions for both local and oral treatments. Read more about finasteride. Minoxidil is a rub-on treatment that can be bought from your local pharmacy.

It can be used by both men and women. It needs to be applied twice daily to the scalp while it is dry. Minoxidil is more effective in the earlier stages of hair loss.

If successful, treatment is continued to maintain the effect. Sometimes, a low-dose minoxidil tablet can also be prescribed for hair loss. Various supplements are often advised by health clinics.

However, the only useful study on a supplement featured saw palmetto extract and the results were inconclusive. Why is topical vitamin C important for skin health? Preventing preeclampsia may be as simple as taking an aspirin. Caring for an aging parent?

Tips for enjoying holiday meals. A conversation about reducing the harms of social media. Menopause and memory: Know the facts. How to get your child to put away toys. Is a common pain reliever safe during pregnancy? Hereditary-Patterned Baldness April 1, Research health conditions Check your symptoms Prepare for a doctor's visit or test Find the best treatments and procedures for you Explore options for better nutrition and exercise Learn more about the many benefits and features of joining Harvard Health Online ».

Sign Me Up. Print This Page Click to Print. Free Healthbeat Signup Get the latest in health news delivered to your inbox! This doesn't mean that your father's and paternal grandfather's genes don't play a role, but it provides real support for the widespread idea that your maternal grandfather's genes are especially crucial.

The key question: are they actually more important than your father's? All these genes and perhaps more still to be discovered interact in complex ways, and continuing genetic research will be necessary before there's a foolproof way to predict the fate of your scalp. Theoretically, if all the important genes were on the X chromosome, men would match their maternal grandfathers more strongly than their fathers, on average.

If they were all on autosomal chromosomes, they'd match their fathers more closely. In other words, if more than 37 percent of the influence comes from X chromosome genes, men will more closely resemble their grandfathers; if it's less, they'll more closely resemble their fathers.

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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. How to use genetics to figure out if you'll go bald. Share this story Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share All sharing options Share All sharing options for: How to use genetics to figure out if you'll go bald.

Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. If he was bald, the thinking goes, you'll be bald too. If he wasn't, you're safe. Baldness is highly genetic Many physical traits are the result of a complex interplay between a person's genes and the surrounding environment.

Baldness genes reside on different types of chromosomes To use this information to estimate your own chance of going bald, there's one key thing to know: inside each of your cells, you have two basic types of chromosomes structures of coiled DNA that contain most of your genes. So, for males, all the X chromosome genes you have can be traced exclusively to your mother. So can you use all this figure out if you're going to go bald?

Shutterstock Alas, not completely — but you can get some rough clues about what'll happen to your hair as you age simply by looking at your father and maternal grandfather's heads.

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