Looking At Your Father - Biggest Myth Ever?

[Raphael13]

So ever since I've started to worry about my hair I've been very analytic. I always try to find a pattern or analyze friends hairline and their fathers and so on. What I've noticed is most of my friends dads are thin haired, much more so than my own father. I can only think of 1-2 of my friends fathers with a decent amount of hair/great hair.

But yet ALL my friends seem to have terrific hairlines. If you'd look at them you'd think they will never bald, or at least not to a more severe degree. My father has a quite good hair, not perfect..but a norwood 3 or 3.5 without thinning at the crown. Yet I am a norwood 2 (I know NW2 is far from a disaster) and I suspect that I MIGHT enter a norwood 3 (maybe it's the way my hair grows/parts that makes me feel this way, you can look my previous thread to see my hair).

Is this "look at your father" talk just pure bullshit? A clear majority of my friends father are either bald or on a more severe degree of losing hair..yet their sons (1 is 22..rest is aged between 25-29) have the perfect hairlines). Finding a norwood 2 among my friends doesnt even exist.

What is your guys take on this? Is it that they will bald later, or something else (mothers side?) controling their hairloss...or what?

 

[Raphael13]

I should also mention that another pal of mine whos 24-25 now almost got completely bald at 22-23 and his dad has more or less a full head of hair.

 

[Trichosan]

We don't know all the genetic factors that go into hair growth so to judge from very recent ancestry your potential hair pattern is going to be inaccurate at best. My hair pattern did follow my dad's but my two boys show zero loss at 30+ . And I've observed a lot of families over the years to gain some perception of inheritance factors and conclude prediction is for the most part very unreliable.

 

[That Guy]

Any of the "look at.." is bullshit.

I recently went through every photo I could find of all of my ancestors dating back almost 100 years and all of them died damn-near fullheads. My grandfather had better hair at 60 than I do at 25 and his dad before him, much like on my mom's side, had Reagan-level hair into his late 80s when he died.

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

Any of the "look at.." is bullshit.

I recently went through every photo I could find of all of my ancestors dating back almost 100 years and all of them died damn-near fullheads. My grandfather had better hair at 60 than I do at 25 and his dad before him, much like on my mom's side, had Reagan-level hair into his late 80s when he died.

Genetics are not as simple as people think.

 

[Itsmrdave]

Both my dad and grandpa have full heads of hair. My mom's dad is horseshoe bald on top. I started noticing thinning at 25. I'm a diffused thinner. I'm 31 now still with full head of hair but thinner. So unless you just have no trace of balding genetics in your family I feel like you always have a shot at losing your hair.

 

[BTW]

I started balding like my father and at the same age, stop making these useless threads anyway, go chat somewhere else please

 

[GotHair?]

It doesn't have to be just genetics it could be epigenetics as well. Not to mention there are 2 parents involved from which you get your genes.

 

[mr_robot]

Does this even matter? Knowing which side wont solve you hair loss, this should be in the general discussion section.

 

[Raphael13]

It won't solve anything, but lets say it's a very very big chance you will end up like your father, then you know more or less how you will look like at 20, 30...40, and you can determine based on the information what treatment you would like to get, how soon you should get it etc. But yeah, it's not this simple.

 

[mr_robot]

It won't solve anything, but lets say it's a very very big chance you will end up like your father, then you know more or less how you will look like at 20, 30...40, and you can determine based on the information what treatment you would like to get, how soon you should get it etc. But yeah, it's not this simple.

Well if you have male pattern baldness with today's crappy treatments you should treat it asap, if your father is a NW3 waiting until you are a NW2 isn't going to get you back to NW1.

 

[Afro_Vacancy]

It's from the mother side.

There's no evidence of that.

 

[inmyhead]

Very researchful post. Definitely deserves research section.

 

[sunchyme1]

Any of the "look at.." is bullshit.

I recently went through every photo I could find of all of my ancestors dating back almost 100 years and all of them died damn-near fullheads. My grandfather had better hair at 60 than I do at 25 and his dad before him, much like on my mom's side, had Reagan-level hair into his late 80s when he died.

pretty much the same for me

dad side......dad good hair in youth now nw4ish, his dad and both his grandads nw1 till death lol
mum side....uncle full head till middle age, dad full head till middle age, not sure about her grandparents

all i know is my mums dad has a large family and there is some balding within there. i appear to have the same pattern as my mum dad, just more aggressive.

considering all this, i wonder what the chances of me were getting such aggressive hairloss?

if you could put a percentage on it, what would it be?

 

[dralex]

Its all a game of luck. Having a strong history of male pattern baldness in your family increases your odds of balding, but it doesn't guarantee it by any means. Neither of my older brothers are balding (now 25 and 27), but it hit me at 19. One of my best friends has no hair loss at all, but his older brother is only 1 year older and a NW5 with very aggressive loss. My dad started balding around 45 (he is almost 60 now), but both his brothers (50 and 58 years old) have no hair loss at all. All luck.

 

[sunchyme1]

seriously if your entire dads family up until his granddads had great hair and most of your immediately family in your mums family had great hair, what percentage would you give to getting young aggressive hair loss?

 

[Jnix]

So ever since I've started to worry about my hair I've been very analytic. I always try to find a pattern or analyze friends hairline and their fathers and so on. What I've noticed is most of my friends dads are thin haired, much more so than my own father. I can only think of 1-2 of my friends fathers with a decent amount of hair/great hair.

But yet ALL my friends seem to have terrific hairlines. If you'd look at them you'd think they will never bald, or at least not to a more severe degree. My father has a quite good hair, not perfect..but a norwood 3 or 3.5 without thinning at the crown. Yet I am a norwood 2 (I know NW2 is far from a disaster) and I suspect that I MIGHT enter a norwood 3 (maybe it's the way my hair grows/parts that makes me feel this way, you can look my previous thread to see my hair).

Is this "look at your father" talk just pure bullshit? A clear majority of my friends father are either bald or on a more severe degree of losing hair..yet their sons (1 is 22..rest is aged between 25-29) have the perfect hairlines). Finding a norwood 2 among my friends doesnt even exist.

What is your guys take on this? Is it that they will bald later, or something else (mothers side?) controling their hairloss...or what?

Not "biggest myth ever" as that would insinuate there is ZERO correlation between your fathers genes and you. The myth was always that the gene for hair loss was recessive (no pun intended!), that it was from the mothers side. It really can come from any family genes. My brother in law is a Norwood 5, but his 67 year old father is a Norwood 0. It must kill him, we all work together and my father in laws hair is so thick you get distracted by it!! Sigh.....

 

[Medina]

I looked into my ancestry recently and found that baldness has become more aggressive with each generation.

Great Great Grandfather - NW3 at 45
Great Grandfather - Unknown
Grandfather - NW3 at 30
Father - NW3 at 25

All of them became NW7 eventually

 

[abcdefg]

How is it a myth that you could have some traits from your father? You could end up exactly like your dad or anyone from your family history generations back. You never know for sure, but family history is the best indicator we have.