How Men Deal With Hair Loss
It’s a significant riddle technology has yet to completely solve, but there’s definite progress. Male pattern baldness is that mysterious condition that has enormous social significance but almost no medical significance… and it’s been a great boon to the baseball cap industry, of course.
In this survey, we take the pulse of American men who have experienced hair loss, to understand three primary things: how men respond to that hair loss (with treatments or lack thereof), what motivates their responses, and how they feel about the subject overall. Go ahead and comb through the data below! Learn about PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma) for hair loss here.
The first order of business for us, was to establish how much hair men are losing. Between thinning hair and more significant hair loss that results in bald spots, widow’s peaks and full baldness, it’s a fifty-fifty split. Among the half of men experiencing more severe hair loss, 43 percent report having a bald spot or widow’s peak and seven percent report they are fully bald. Naturally, the response to hair loss is informed by the amount of hair that’s been lost, so it’s important to keep these base lines in mind.
Surprising or not, a majority of men do very little to address their hair loss (particularly in the Northeast)—50 percent have responded by cutting their hair short or shaving it all off, while an additional one in four men don’t do anything different as their hair begins to disappear.
The least likely response is to go under the knife—just one percent of men undergo hair transplant surgery. Much more popular are shampoo treatments and medications like Rogaine and Propecia, the former being a spray, the latter being oral medication.
Guys on the West Coast are by far the most likely to explore over-the-counter treatments—nearly twice as many men experiencing hair loss on the West Coast have tried shampoos, than men in the Northeast. West Coast men are also most likely to have used sprays or medications: 34 percent on the West Coast have tried, versus an average of 18 percent throughout the rest of the country.
What motivates a particular guy’s response to his hair loss? Well, it’s not all about sex appeal. The most common answer was that doing something about it makes men feel more confident (sex appeal aside). That said, one in four men copped to wanting to enhance his sex appeal. Just behind that, statistically, was a desire to “fit in.” And the reasons men were least likely to cite as motivators to do something about their hair loss? It’s important to their work… or their significant other.