Can male pattern baldness Be Triggered By Outside Factors Or Is It Purely Genetic?

[12348501]

I know this is going to sound weird, but my hair loss really started only 1 or 2 weeks after I began obsessively taking pictures of my temples, crown, etc and becoming anxious over it back in mid January. Back then I seriously panicked thinking I had male pattern baldness as a teen, leading me to r/tressless and by now more than 1000 pictures of my hair in less than a year. In retrospect, it looked perfectly fine. It then suddenly became much thinner 1 or 2 weeks, around 10 days afterwards (a lot of density practically disappeared overnight, my hair became brittle, lost its color, etc but no real miniaturization since), and since then my hairline, primarily the temples, has been steadily receding (not as bad as the thinning) and my hair turned thinner, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. So basically placebo.

male pattern baldness is certainly genetic, but do factors like stress (not only due to hair loss) trigger it to start occuring earlier?

Unrelated question: In the case of thinning caused by stress if that's a thing, does only the top lose density/thin?

 

[DerDon]

Nobody really can say. Hairloss is just a huge mystery. From my experience its definitely possible to trigger it. I never had issues with hairloss until i turned 25. Suddenly out of nowhere i ve been losing 200 hair everyday for the last 2 years. I had a really stressful time before it started. I guess stress was the trigger.

 

[djhype]

Day to day stress is a vastly overrated cause of hair loss, taking pictures? No. You, like most of this forum have BDD and obsessive thought patterns.

If there is less hair appearing in the pics, it's most likely lighting and angles playing tricks on your mind, which most likely has a distorted view of your body anyway.

Now, external factors like anabolic steroids or certain meds can certainly speed up hair loss. A lot of things like hormonal fluctuations, starvation, diet changes can shock the body into (most likeley) temporary hair loss as well.

 

[barfacan]

I dont think anything can ever be 'purely' genetic, as we dont live in a vacuum

 

[abcdefg]

I think it can be influenced like sped up or delayed based on environmental factors, but most of it is simply genetics on how your hair stem cells and hairs age at what time they start to die off.
My big issue with saying its environmental is if it was how on earth do some men have perfect teenage hair lines at 45 or 50 years old? Wouldnt that be impossible? Then you say its genetics but then genetics basically overrode the environmental factors so something doesnt gel there. Just from this thought alone it has to be mostly immune system or genetic driven. Its not driven by environment because otherwise women would also have male pattern baldness

 

[Armando Jose]

Its not driven by environment because otherwise women would also have male pattern baldness

do you read recently about it?

 

[Bluelilac]

I think it is a mixture of both environmental, health, and genetics. In my case I clearly had the genetic predisposition for Androgenetic Alopecia, but other health issues and a stressful life combined with mental health issues and excess cortisol caused an aggressive early onset. I'm a female and literally went from a Norwood 1 to a Norwood 3 in less than one year. I also had a bout with Telogen Effluvium, but that ended a year ago yet little to no regrowth, it basically kicked started my Androgenetic Alopecia into aggressive mode. Before that, I knew something was up with my hair and health, but never in a million years did I think it was male pattern and diffuse balding.

 

[randolf_faust]

dudde..there are pictures of ausschwitz survivors with thick norwood 0

its genetics..maybe you can speed it up a bit but if sth like taking pics was enough to trigger it there is nothing much you can do anyways