Do Hair Follicles in Bald Men and Women Completely Die?

In those who experience male or female pattern hair loss, what happens to the hair follicle after it stops producing hair?   Does it Completely Die?

This insightful hair loss article was written by hair restoration forum  member “HLBD”.   Below he shares with us a piece of what he has learned in researching real hair restoration solutions for his hair loss  condition.  

Hair Loss Myth: Hair follicles which have endured the end stages of female or male pattern hair loss are dead.

Many recent studies have been able to determine what some balding men and women have suspected for a long time: hair follicles do not actually “die”, not in the literal sense anyway. Truly, a hair follicle that has stopped producing a hair due to hair miniaturization has simply reverted back to the same inactive state it was at during infancy.

The human male is, in fact, covered from head to toe in hair follicles. Most of this hair, 60% to 85% (depending upon the sample), is in the same inactive state as during infancy or the end stage of male pattern baldness. I have used this example for awhile and it seems to get the point across: google “dog boys of Mexico”. These men and women have not inherited the same genes as the rest of the population and so, most of their hair follicles are active and produce thick viable hairs. They have no hair loss  in any family member – although, I’m betting that, for them, some hair loss  would be a welcome occurrence. Biologist, geneticists and anthropologists believe that at some point in (relatively) recent human history, all humans looked this way. It could have been during an ice age that this state would have been beneficial enough to keep the genes active. It could also be, due to hair’s virtual redundancy in terms of human health, that baldness and alopecia (hair loss) affects such a wide section of the population. This theory, however, doesn’t account for hair’s role in sexual attraction and, before we balk at this idea, there are many examples of unnecessary and flamboyant sexual affectations and genetic accoutrements within the entire animal kingdom which serve only to attract mates.

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Bill
Associate Publisher of the Hair Transplant Network and the Hair Loss Learning Center
View my Hair Loss Weblog

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