24-Year-Old Engineer Attempts to Determine if He’ll Lose His Hair….
I liked this reader question, so I’m going to share it with you. It comes from a 24-year-old engineer who has seemingly inherited most of his genes from his dad’s side of the family. Does that mean he won’t go bald? My answer will follow….
Do genes come in sets from one side of the family?
Hi, Thanks for taking my question! I’m a very healthy, fit 24 year old male with no hair loss. My dad had a thick, solid head of hair until 40, and pretty much every male on his side of his family dies with a full head of hair (including my grandpa and uncle on his side). My dad eventually went bald but I firmly believe that this was due to extreme stress and a unhealthy life. His baldness happened rather rapidly over the course of a few years when stressful events happened in his life.
Unfortunately, almost everyone on my mom’s side tends to go bald (though she has wonderful, thick hair for her age at 50). BUT I seem to have inherited every gene I can think of from my fathers side. I am the spitting image of him, I am left handed like my grandpa, and am a talented engineer like everyone on his side.
In addition, I have an incredibly weak tolerance for spicy food, something my grandpa was known for. It seems like I have inherited most of my genetics from my grandfather. Does the fact that I seem to have gotten almost all of my genes from my dad’s side mean that it is more likely that I will have his hair genes too? Or is it still complete chance and I could have inherited that one gene from my mom’s side. Thanks.
My Response – Will This Well-Spoken, Young, Fit, Left-Handed Engineer Go Bald?
Definitely, maybe.
Your resemblance to your grandpa doesn’t make you any more or less likely to inherit his baldness genes. Different genetics regulate hair loss and hair texture as well, so just because your hair looks like a particular relative’s hair, doesn’t mean you’ll ultimately end up being twinzies on the Norwood Scale.
So your hypothesis at the end is correct: It is still a “toss-up” of sorts and you could certainly inherit that one gene, hair loss, from your mom’s side. Or you may not…
At what age did the relatives on your mom’s side start going bald? That would be a good thing to know, because if you do inherit baldness from that side of the family, there’s a decent probability that you’ll start going bald at around the same time as one or multiple relatives on that side.
Finally, I highly doubt that your dad went bald due to stress and/or unhealthy hair habits. That seems extremely unlikely. 95% of hair loss cases in men are genetic, from what I’ve read. Smoking, drinking, and general stress can certainly speed up the process a bit, but they won’t turn a person from Brad Pitt into Dr. Phil, hairline-wise. So you may be more susceptible to MPB than you think. But at 24, with what sounds like no hair loss at this time, you’re doing fine for now. So try not to over-analyze your genetic code too much and see a doctor if you’re worried! Thanks for your question.
Robert Price is a writer, consumer advocate, and hair loss researcher with thousands of hours of experience in the field. His goal is to keep you out of the hair loss rabbit hole, underworld, or whatever you want to call it. He founded Hair Loss Daily, the unbiased hair loss blog, in 2016. You can learn more about Robert in the my story section of this website.
I lucked out. Most of my male relatives had/have a full head of hair. None of my brothers are bald. My dad and my maternal grandfather had a full head of hair. Only one of my dad’s brothers was bald (late in life) and my dad’s father was bald. All my mother’s brothers had a full head of hair. Only one of my great grandfathers (my mother’s grandfather) was bald. Bottom line: only three of my several dozen male relatives were bald. So I had much less than a 50% chance, based on my genetics, of going bald. But I wanted to go bald. In fact, all my life I desperately wanted to go bald. I prayed to go bald. I finally got my wish and answer to my prayers in my early 50s. Better late than never! I couldn’t be happier. Like I said, I lucked out. I beat the odds. I went bald despite the low probability that it would happen to me.
As for that 24 year old engineer, he doesn’t know how lucky he is that all his mother’s male relatives and his dad are/were bald. Unlike me, it is almost certain that he will go bald. And he could begin balding very soon. What he needs is an attitude adjustment. He needs to develop an urgent desire to go bald. I wish I could help him. When it starts happening, I wish I could be there to encourage him and to urge him to just let it happen. He needs to understand that male pattern baldness is not a disease in search of a cure, and that it is a natural, normal inherited trait. In my opinion, a very desirable trait. He also needs to marry a woman who loves male pattern baldness. Women like that are out there. I know, I am married to one of them. Lucky me!
Nice to hear from you as always, Eric! I tend to concur with your assessment – he will likely go bald to some degree, at some point. But the fact that his dad retained a solid head of hair until he was 40 is a favorable sign (or unfavorable, I know we view these matters differently!). So he may not have any significant hair loss until later in life. And he may still not go bald at all, given that most of his relatives on his dad’s side have hair.
Thanks. I’m glad you haven’t abandoned this website. About balding, it all boils down to probabilities. Right? I know I’m just guessing, but based on his family tree, he has as much chance of retaining all his hair as I had of going bald: about 25%. I know, it’s just a guess. His dad’s male relatives have/had hair. When my dad died at age 75 he had a full head of hair with a Norwood 1 hairline. My mom’s dad also had a full head of hair with a Norwood 2 hairline when he passed away. With only three out of two dozen male relatives bald, what chance did I have? You have to understand, I really, really wanted male pattern baldness, so I was very depressed about this. But here’s the thing, my uncle, my dad’s dad and my mother’s grandfather all went bald late in life. So it is no coincidence that I went bald in my 50s, not in my 20s or 30s, as I so fervently wished.
I didn’t know it back in college, but when my hairline receded to between Norwood 2 and 3 my senior year, it was a hint of what was to come. For any other guy it would have been a warning and a cause for panic. For me it was a promise, a hope, and I clung to that slender hope for the next thirty years. Unbeknown to me, coded into my DNA were instructions for rapid male pattern baldness to set in, in my early 50s. I had an appointment with the male pattern baldness fairy and didn’t know it. But ‘in the fullness of time’, when I had almost abandoned all hope, I went bald. And to my panic and endless delight, I went bald fast! My choice would have been to go bald fast … in my late 20s, immediately after my wife and I got married. I would have loved to have been a shiny top baldy by my 30th birthday. And as it turns out, my wife would have loved it, too. But that doesn’t happen often enough and we don’t get to choose, do we?