Hair Genes

[Baldingat22]

Where do men get the hair genes? You always hear moms dad if he is bald you will be but I see guys whose grandpa have great hair but they are bald or vice versa. So where does it come from in 99% of cases?

[NARMAK]

7 minutes ago, Baldingat22 said:

Where do men get the hair genes? You always hear moms dad if he is bald you will be but I see guys whose grandpa have great hair but they are bald or vice versa. So where does it come from in 99% of cases?

Both maternal and paternal side. 

Genetics are often cited as a ballpark guess. However do not take it as gospel, just a very educated guess as to what hair loss ball park you should expect. 

So if your family members tend to lose hair in their early teens, 20s and 30s quite a bit. Chances are you end up in a similar situation. 

Medication and generational hair loss are not currently studied on a long term clinical basis. Although it's been out for circa 20+ years now, as far as i can tell, no clinical studies are scheduled or ongoing to compare say a person who did use it VS their father, uncles etc. who didn't use it. There will be however users on this very forum though old enough to have started it 15+ years ago and might be able to offer anecdotal evidence on how their male relatives fared versus their own situation. 

Hair loss is overall multi factorial and genetics are probably a big part of the puzzle but not the only part. Hormone imbalance, Vitamin deficiencies, Immune disorders etc. can all contribute. 

The general recommended long term advice and clinical data suggests for the vast majority of males; inhibition of scalp DHT to be the best defence against hair loss that's Androgenetic Alopecia based. 

Hopefully other users can chime in. 

[Baldingat22]

17 minutes ago, NARMAK said:

Both maternal and paternal side. 

Genetics are often cited as a ballpark guess. However do not take it as gospel, just a very educated guess as to what hair loss ball park you should expect. 

So if your family members tend to lose hair in their early teens, 20s and 30s quite a bit. Chances are you end up in a similar situation. 

Medication and generational hair loss are not currently studied on a long term clinical basis. Although it's been out for circa 20+ years now, as far as i can tell, no clinical studies are scheduled or ongoing to compare say a person who did use it VS their father, uncles etc. who didn't use it. There will be however users on this very forum though old enough to have started it 15+ years ago and might be able to offer anecdotal evidence on how their male relatives fared versus their own situation. 

Hair loss is overall multi factorial and genetics are probably a big part of the puzzle but not the only part. Hormone imbalance, Vitamin deficiencies, Immune disorders etc. can all contribute. 

The general recommended long term advice and clinical data suggests for the vast majority of males; inhibition of scalp DHT to be the best defence against hair loss that's Androgenetic Alopecia based. 

Hopefully other users can chime in. 

Thanks for this. Yes I’d be curious. Because one of my closest friends has amazing hair and his dad has good hair too but both his grand fathers were bald. So curious as to why he has no recession and uses no finasteride/minox etc. and other people I know have no family balding and they are bald

[Gatsby]

No one truly knows the genetic make up that results in a male developing MPB. It's often stated that it's on the mother's side but in my case their is a strong argument that it came from my father's side. It could well be a mix of both and/or many genes that come into play.

[Gokuhairline]

1 hour ago, Baldingat22 said:

Where do men get the hair genes? You always hear moms dad if he is bald you will be but I see guys whose grandpa have great hair but they are bald or vice versa. So where does it come from in 99% of cases?

look at your mothers brothers aka uncles and their dad aka grandpa on mothers side....determines hair. 

[aaron1234]

2 hours ago, Gokuhairline said:

look at your mothers brothers aka uncles and their dad aka grandpa on mothers side....determines hair. 

My mother's brothers (my uncles) are twenty years older than me and are NW2s.  Her dad (my grandpa) is in his 90's and is a NW2 with slight diffuse thinning.  I'm a NW5-6.  It can come from either side.

[NARMAK]

11 hours ago, Gokuhairline said:

look at your mothers brothers aka uncles and their dad aka grandpa on mothers side....determines hair. 

The maternal side being solely responsible has been debunked by now i believe. Its a combination of both. After all, we are a combination of both sides genetics. 

[Gokuhairline]

39 minutes ago, NARMAK said:

The maternal side being solely responsible has been debunked by now i believe. Its a combination of both. After all, we are a combination of both sides genetics. 

probably true to a degree, i was just going off personal and a test of 5 people and it made sense but bigger picture is both sides is probably a safe assumption 

[EvoXOhio]

My dad is 1 of three brothers. My dad lost his hair slowly and was a NW5 by age 40. One of his brothers was a slick bald NW6 in his early 20s. The other brother had a near full head of hair until age 50, and then started losing it but never progressed past a NW3. All 3 had the same dad and same mom. So yes it’s genetics but the point is you can’t look at someone’s parents or grandparents and get a true gauge. 

[BDK081522]

There's a genetic component from both sides of your family. You cannot just look at maternal grandfather and assume you'll follow the same pattern. If there's any significant andogenetic alopecia on either side of your family then there is potential for you to lose a significant amount of hair if not on medical therapy. My father and maternal grandfather were both NW 6. My older brother is NW1 and younger brothers are showing NW5/6 patterns in their mid 30's. I was a NW 3 at age 38 before any hair restoration work and have been on finasteride for over 20 years. No crown or midscalp loss at all due to my 5AR inhibition. So, essentially it's very difficult to determine a final balding pattern regardless of family history. 

Edited February 22, 2022 by BDK081522

[JDEE0]

Yeah, genes are complicated, especially in relation to something like hair-loss where there are a whole lot of them. 

Some research has been done in this very subject and some has come to the argument that lots of these genes come from the inheritance of the X chromosome, and whilst it might have some credibility, the answer is that no one really knows, at all. Quite frankly, it's impossible to predict imo and ultimately any given person inherits a random set of potential genes from each parent. You could inherit MPB genes from both parents, just your father or just your mother. All are definitely viable outcomes to you having MPB. Even if one (maternal) did contribute more to the issue on the whole/on average, it doesn't really matter and it's likely to be a mix of genes inherited from both in most cases.

I myself have brothers older than me with much better hair, one is nearly 10 years older in his mid 30's and has a flat NW1 hairline. Same parents, different hair. My dad has a great head of hair with a NW2 in his 60's and all his 5 brothers are bald, so was his dad. My mum's dad had decent hair up until he died I believe, yet I was/am NW3-ish in my late 20's. No idea what combination of genes led to that, but that's the outcome.

Family history is a good thing to look at as it's all we have, but it's far from an accurate predictor of where you will end up a lot of the time, you are unique, and you will inherit a unique set or combination of genes from both parents as a result. 

At the end of the day, many of the genes identified in MPB have been confirmed to exist on and pass down from either side and as such both parents can contribute. If either side of your family has baldness in it, which is the vast majority of people, you can certainly inherit those genes. 

In my own opinion, the biggest predictor or indicator of how bald you will go is as simple as the age of onset, speed of progression and type of hair loss. I think age of onset alone is less important, but when combined with rate of loss, a good picture can be painted. If you notice hair loss at say 20 and are showing signs of nw5+ by your late 20's, you can assume you'll go pretty bald. If you notice signs at the same age but are only teetering on a NW2-3 by your late 20's which was mostly lost in the first 3-4 years, then it stands to reason that the rest of your follicles unaffected are much more resistant. If they weren't, they would've balded at the same rate as the area's now barren; they've been exposed to the exact same androgen profile in your body after all.

Anyway, going off track a bit there, but my point is it's a lot more fruitful to look at your own situation at a certain age, say 30 ish, to figure out where you're headed as opposed to looking at relatives. A lot of the signs will be there at that point in life, especially when examined with a microscope. 

[NARMAK]

On 2/21/2022 at 5:41 PM, BDK081522 said:

There's a genetic component from both sides of your family. You cannot just look at maternal grandfather and assume you'll follow the same pattern. If there's any significant andogenetic alopecia on either side of your family then there is potential for you to lose a significant amount of hair if not on medical therapy. My father and maternal grandfather were both NW 6. My older brother is NW1 and younger brothers are showing NW5/6 patterns in their mid 30's. I was a NW 3 at age 38 before any hair restoration work and have been on finasteride for over 20 years. No crown or midscalp loss at all due to my 5AR inhibition. So, essentially it's very difficult to determine a final balding pattern regardless of family history. 

This is actually why i've been saying for a little while now that family history is a somewhat outdated method of hair loss assessment if somebody is actively blocking DHT with Finasteride/Dutasteride every day with the dosages of 1mg/0.5mg respectively. 

Even in those that have much more susceptibility to DHT can potentially still slow down their progression from the standard hair loss without medication by a decade or more. I genuinely feel men may live more life in their 30s to 60s, but realistically your 20s to 40s are the primary years the majority of males try to enjoy life before Father Time catches up. I know due to economic influences its also why men are settling down later which is why i'm including 40s.

I wish or hope there's some kind of generational hair loss study going on to compare DHT inhibition between a paternal/maternal generation who never used it and a generation that did from when it became FDA authorised. 

That's why i think it's important we have Doctors who are also taking a more holistic approach for the individual in front of them and their hair loss state alongside whether they're on medication etc. 

I think a lot are tbh and a change has been done over the last decade. However, i blame a LOT of the younger guys issues on hair mills that are cheap and easy to try get to in both the USA, Turkey etc. for these expectations of super low aggressive hairlines, which probably aren't even suitable given their balding. Like Zayn Malik hairlines for like a Norwood 5 mid 20s guy not even using medication. 

[mmokin]

On 2/20/2022 at 1:12 AM, Baldingat22 said:

Where do men get the hair genes? You always hear moms dad if he is bald you will be but I see guys whose grandpa have great hair but they are bald or vice versa. So where does it come from in 99% of cases?

the main balding gene is on the X chromosome so you have a 50/50 chance of getting it from either your mums dad or your maternal grandmums dad.

you can do a 23andme test and use the raw data on other gene sequencing sites with bigger databases for hairloss to be 100% sure

but even with this theres a chance you still lose hair earlier than normal for a myriad of reasons or you have a lot of genes on the Y chromosome that also cause hairloss, the point is that balding is polygenic and therefore very hard to predict with 100% accuracy

[SD1984]

You can get it from either side or even both. If your paternal side has all NW7's and you're losing hair in your 30's but your maternal side has flawless hair, that may play into things and give you hope for not going full NW7.

[ssimpson7511]

On 2/20/2022 at 2:28 AM, Gokuhairline said:

look at your mothers brothers aka uncles and their dad aka grandpa on mothers side....determines hair. 

Thats a myth, genes come from both mothers and fathers side.