You ‘re young and bald. Sounds like a song title. Maybe a happy song? Nope. It could not be further from the truth. Balding sucks. Especially when you are just starting to get numbers from women. You ‘re thinking “o no, I’m screwed! I’m looking like a clown!” Yes, you may, but hold on.
Before you ‘re starting to lose your mind, let me bring my friend “Mr. Beard” to our company and find out if he is a suspect in this crime. You will also find some surprising facts that will change your mood and appearance …for the better!
But first things first. Is your scalp thinning because of your beard? Let’s find the link between those two.
Thinning Hair and Beard: Is There A Link?
Sounds like an urban myth. “Thinning hair is usually a bi-product of high-testosterone bearded men.” Let’s explore what science can tell us.
There was a study (as always there is) where scientists observed three groups of people. The first group was the men group, while the second and third group respectively had women and children. The difference between 1st group and the other two was the testosterone and androgens. That’s the reason why they did it. Anyways, the interesting detail was that some men had beards whereas others did not. The same holds true with receding hairlines. Some men were balding and some did not.
Scientists were curious to find out if men with beards will bald easier than the other groups. One basic difference that bearded men had with all the other people was that their rate of sweat evaporation differed. Their beard did not evaporate so much as their forehead, whereas, in the other groups, rates of sweat evaporation were identical. Scientists were suspicious about that fact, and the decided to keep track of these men for 10 years straight (geek life).
After these 10 years, they took measurements of sweat rates again. This, time most bearded men (and some un-bearded) were “crowned” with thinning hair. The unbearded guys, with less thinning hairlines, and the women-child groups had the same rate as always.
The correlation was there. If those men sweated more on their foreheads than the other un-bearded people, that meant that beards possible raised the temperature. But how can this justify hair loss on the lobes (the usual suspect)?
Lobes are part of the forehead. Let’s begin with that. So lobes in bearded men are usually in higher temperature than in un-bearded men. What else drives temperature to the ceilings in that area? Yes, hair. If you have a lot of hair, you definitely can induce more sweat on your forehead.
Evolutionary scientists that see this study believe that beards growth was an evolutionary trait that kept the brain warm when hair was thinning. Keeping the brain warm and in stable temperatures is the best thing to do if you want to stay alive. So beards may compensate for those men with baldness, or they may induce hair loss so that temperature gets lowered to match the ideal one. No one knows for sure, but that is the hypothesis anyway.
Hypothesis:
Growth of beard in men is a regulatory by-product to re-adjust temperature induced from hair loss. Click To Tweet
Lets see another one.
In this study, scientists investigated whether testosterone and DHT (the hair loss trigger) were linked to more or less facial hair in 12 men. Facial hair growth was studied with photographs taken by the scientists of that study. Scientists also took blood measurements of plasma testosterone and DHT (dihydrotestosterone) concentrations. They found out that testosterone and DHT had independent roles regarding the thickness of beard. Testosterone seems to help with facial hair follicle boost and DHT with making facial hair more linear.
They did not find any evidence of losing your beard because of increased DHT but testosterone seemed to grow a beard faster. We can only suspect some things, but there seems not a clear indication of beard-baldness connection.
So, does growing your manly beard causes your scalp hair to fall?
We believe not. But sure enough, there are some chances that beard growing and baldness are correlated and interconnected.
The facts are that
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Higher testosterone grows more beard, but it does not make your hair to thin or to thicken.
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Higher DHT/testosterone ratio leads to hair loss (usually), but DHT increase seems not to induce facial hair loss.
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Your beard may be your thermoregulatory mechanism because you ‘re losing temperature on your scalp with your baldness.
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Your baldness may be your thermoregulatory mechanism because your beard raises the head temperature too much.
We also know that a specific balance of testosterone and DHT leads the hair to fall during a specific time through the three stages of hair growth. This is done by shrinking the follicles. Basically, these two androgens have specific androgen receptors on the hair follicles. When that two bind to their receptors, follicle shrink. The number of receptors differs from man to man. The more you have, the more the possibility for your hair to fall off, especially if those are DHT receptors.
Now as we already said, more androgens usually lead to faster beard growth. So as it seems, beard and scalp have a quite opposite use of androgen receptors. More DHT and androgens signal the facial hair follicles to grow, not to shrink. Testosterone seems to play a secondary role to beard growth because most older men have less testosterone, but their beard is still thick (or even thicker!).
As you can see, we do not know yet for sure if baldness and beardedness are 100% linked. But we know that they correlate each other. Let’s investigate another scenario. Is facial hair loss possible and can it be related to scalp hair thinning?
Beard…loss: Is that real?
Facial hair loss. Is it possible? Is it a myth?
No, it’s not a myth. It’s real. Although it’s rare, it can reveal us some hints between beards and scalp hair loss.
Case 1: Alopecia Barbae
The smaller “brother” of Alopecia Areata. Alopecia Areata affects mostly the scalp, but a smaller version of it, called Alopecia Barbae, affects the beard area. It’s an autoimmune disease that attacks your beard hair follicles and shrinks them fast. The mechanism seems similar to Alopecia Areata, so there should be a link there between beard and hair.
Case 2: Trichotillomania
This is a condition based on psychology. Basically, the man affected by this “disease” is impulsive and pulls his hair follicles. Most times these men pull out only their hair scalp, but some of them also “indulge” with their beard hair follicles. Here, we have no possible link between hair thinning on scalp and beard growth/thinning.
Now you have all cards on the table. Before you chose what to believe, let us introduce to you the only link between beard and hair thinning scalp, aka baldness.
Your Beard Is “Sexy” When Your Head Is “Empty”
Going bald is a tragedy. Nothing can save your attraction!
That’s a false perception and if you ‘re a fan of it, better read closely because things are better than they seem. Beard is there to the rescue.
Going bald is tough, but not so much as you ‘ve imagined. Many studies can confirm this statement. Studies show that baldness raises the perception of dominance and social maturity. Unless you ‘re a 5-year old boy, you should know already that dominance and maturity are two of the best traits that a male mate needs to attract a female. Although the studies show that attractiveness gets lowered, the perception of dominance and maturity seem to rise.
The best part is this. When baldness combines with a nice sexy beard, then your perception rises even more. Now, girls and guys think that you are a dominant and a tender aggressive mature man. With wise thoughts of course (ok that last one, I take it back). In evolutionary terms, women might think that the reason your beard is thicker but your hair is thinner, is because you are older. Now that seems bad, but it really isn’t. If you ancestor cave man did survive all these years, meant that he was capable of surviving and taking care of himself. Which meant that he was probably strong enough to push off his opponents and wise enough to dominate other males. So, he was a nice husband!
Also, being bald creates a less angular shape of your head. Less angular means less masculine and aggressive. Women are more oval usually, whereas men are more angular because of testosterone. Of course, there are exceptions, but we address the rule here. So, going bald sadly enhances your femininity, but that can be fixed with some masculine beards. That lowers the perception of uncontrolled aggression, but without beards, you rely on your jaw.
If your jaw is not angular (like mine isn’t), then you have a problem. You look too feminine and that’s not a good mate for any female. But if you grow a beard and make it angular, then most of your problems are solved. You have an angular aggressive view combined with your less angular scalp which provides the sign of maturity and tenderness.
Before we leave you with your day, read our last beard-to-baldness study that enhances the perception link that we ‘ve talked about.
Scientists showed different men images to menstruating fertile women. The men were either clean shaved, stubbed or with a full beard. Guess what? Women rated full bearded men as better mates in regard to health, social maturity and ability to parenting kids. The impressive fact was that masculinity perception was higher proportionally to the thickness of the beards. This effect was even stronger when women were in their fertile stage of their cycle.
In conclusion, the scientists commented that beards (bald or not) enhance a man’s perception as a better father and respected member of the society.
So the facts are:
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If you ‘re balding, beards can boost your dominance.
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If you ‘re balding, beards can boost your social maturity.
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If you ‘re balding, beards can boost your parenting perception.
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If you ‘re balding, beards can boost your tender aggression perception, meaning non-threatening aggression.
Conclusion
So take the razor and lock it up in the closet! Let your beard flourish and enhance your dominance and maturity perception. Not only you can date more women, but you could also use this trait to succeed in business! Be proud of your baldness, but adding a beard can make you look like a king!
Before you go, take a look at a visual representation of key points that we ‘ve talked about in this article.
Special thanks to:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/11/20/going-bald-according-scientists-can-blame-beard/#.Wa0XMchJaUk
https://beardspo.com/your-beard-might-be-balding-you-but-you-look-a-lot-younger-with-one/
https://www.baldingbeards.com/bald-with-beard/
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-every-bald-guy-should-rock-a-beard-2016-2
https://www.milkmanaustralia.com/blogs/news/baldness-and-the-beard
http://www.livestrong.com/article/279269-what-can-cause-facial-hair-loss-in-a-man/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonha-revesencio/science-explains-why-a-beard-makes-you-look-hotter_b_6618142.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8287580
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7126460
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3203673
http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(13)00022-6/abstract?cc=y
[…] found that this was due to temperatures in the face affecting the frontal lobe. Apparently, having a thicker beard can make your face hotter, which would raise that temperature. […]