Some of you may never have to worry about thinning hair.  You’ve won the genetic follicle lottery.  My hat’s off to you and your perpetual man mane (ya lucky bastards).  And some of you have been bald since your 20s and pull it off like a latter day Yul Brynner…

Bad Ass Bald Icon Brynner

Here’s to your magnificent chrome dome!

But for other guys (like yours truly) you’ve noticed a gradual thinning out of your once fearsome ‘do in the classic male pattern balding manner…

…which is kind of a bummer even if it is a normal part of getting older.

So…what to do?

There are a number of products that promise some sort of hair regrowth or at least a stabilization of hair loss (i.e. the more quickly you use it the sooner you’ll stop losing it!).

What do we think of ’em?

First off, there’s the old standby minoxidil (most famously sold as Rogaine but also available generically),  which now at least comes in a mousse-like foam and not just the oily crap they still sell for some obscure reason.  Theoretically minoxidil “revitalizes hair follicles and regrows hair.”  Meh.  I can tell you that it may have stabilized my hair loss to some degree after several years of use (although that’s pretty hard to measure) but regrow hair?  Not so much.  In fact, I haven’t ever really talked to anyone for whom minoxidil has worked and given them back the fro they had in their early 20s.

Was this you in high school?

So yeah, I still use minoxidil twice a day.  But really more out of habit and hope than massive results. And also vaguely because the (expensive) mousse aspect of it works well for styling.  But a 5 buck hair product would probably be just as effective so call me a sucker, I guess.

Then there’s the more recent pill finasteride (usually sold under the brand name Propecia), which I have had other guys swear up and down to me really does work.  It claims to “block the formation of DHT” in a guy’s scalp, DHT being possibly a factor in male pattern hair loss.  And the anecdotal evidence is fairly good on this score.  But I can say it did not work for me after around one year of daily use.  What it did do was lower my sex drive down into around 2nd gear and cause some problems with my voice getting dry/cracking.  YMMV and have at it but I wouldn’t take it anymore and it has all the hallmarks to me of an approved prescription drug that has unintended adverse health consequences down the road.  And I’m not talking hairy palms.

Finally, there’s hair transplant therapy, where they basically rip out a bunch of healthy follicles from the back of your head and insert them (painfully) in the thinning areas like the front of scalp line and the monk’s bald spot.  I have seen this look pretty good on another dude (although he had to wear a baseball cap for months while he was undergoing the stages of the procedure). And I have seen it fail badly: guy wound up just as bald as he would’ve been but with a long pink scar across the back of his head.  So I would say, caveat emptor on this one. Not only is it the most expensive option but it is also the one that cannot be undone if it goes south.  Better pick a good doc if you’re going to go under the scalpel for your scalp (ahem).

And no, I am not going to go into hair pieces because, well, because…

WTF, Burt?

It’s better to bald out than a bad toupee, man!

Besides, I’m sure they’re going to come up with a gene therapy that’ll make us all look like Viking warriors any day now.

Hemsworth, you magnificent bastard! I want that hair!

Any day…