Male hair loss can be treated if discovered early enough, even male pattern baldness, a Taipei dermatologist said.
The main cause of baldness in men is male pattern baldness, which is largely a congenital condition, Lin Sung-jan (林頌然), from National Taiwan University Hospital’s dermatology department, said on Tuesday.
The hair loss comes from follicles in the scalp, or other parts of the body, abnormally metabolizing androgen, Lin said.
The metabolized matter affects local follicles, which eventually inhibits the ability of follicles to grow hair and ultimately causes the follicle to wither, he said.
Hair begins to thin and grow shorter, and eventually less hair grows, Lin said.
A common symptom of male pattern baldness is a receding hairline, which often takes the form of an M- shaped indent in the hairline, he said.
More serious conditions involve loss of hair at the top of the scalp, with the bald patches eventually connecting, Lin said.
There are two kinds of treatment — one addresses the withering of hair follicles and attempts to revitalize them through follicle stimulating solutions, while the other involves prescription medication to help inhibit the metabolizing of androgen, he said.
The first method only treats the condition and not the cause, which means that hair loss would continue once a patient stops using a revitalizing solution, Lin said.
“The abnormal capacity of hair follicles to be able to metabolize androgen is only observed in another place — the prostate, and usually causes prostate hyperplasia,” he said.
The medication used to treat male pattern baldness was adapted from medication used to cure enlargement of the prostate, he said.
Baldness should be treated as early as possible, as the longer one takes to seek help, the less doctors can do, Lin said, adding that if one can easily tell that hair has thinned, then the patient has already lost 30 percent of their hair mass.
The age of patients seeking help has gradually fallen, and his youngest patient so far was a 15-year-old student, Lin said.
Frequent hair washing does not increase the rate of hair loss, as on average, 90 percent of a normal person’s hair mass is growing, with the rest either resting or in decline, he said.
It is normal for a person lose 120 to 150 strands of hair per day, he said.
“Washing one’s hair every two or three days is simply losing the combined amount of hair in one go,” he said.
A claim that including sesame in a person’s diet would prevent hair loss is dubious, as hair follicles are primarily made up of protein, Lin said.
Maintaining a balanced diet is crucial to maintaining hair growth.
Lin also cautioned against the belief that certain brands of shampoo are more effective or help condition hair, as the skin is a natural barrier against germs as well as the “nutrients” that hair products and shampoo claim to have.
“Washing one’s hair is simply a way to clean it,” the dermatologist added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching