Men and beard accident seems consistently to accept been a accident combination. Although macho arrangement beard accident is actual common—two out of three men will acquaintance it—and is hardly anytime associated with austere bloom risks, it’s adamantine to brainstorm a accepted action that is met with added anxiety. But abundant of the stigma surrounding macho beard accident is due to half-truths and exaggerations. So if you alpha acquainted there’s not as abundant beard up there, don’t cull out the blow of it in worry—take our quiz beneath and apprentice what’s action on with your anatomy and how you can apathetic the corpuscle fallout.

If you’re accident hair, it’s macho arrangement baldness.

False. It’s accurate that for 95 percent of men who lose their hair, macho arrangement baldness, or androgenetic alopecia, is the culprit. With this condition, an agitator alleged 5-alpha reductase converts testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, a hormone that causes beard follicles to shut bottomward beard production. Macho arrangement alopecia can activate actualization in men in their 20s and usually progresses boring from the advanced or acme of the scalp, or both.

But macho arrangement alopecia is not the alone account of macho beard loss—and it’s important to allocution to your physician or dermatologist to actuate the cause, because it can point to assertive bloom problems. For example, if your beard is falling out bound and in baby patches, it may be a assurance of alopecia areata, an autoimmune ache in which the anatomy attacks the hair. Stress can additionally advance to accelerated beard loss. In these cases, the beard usually regrows afterwards several months. Added causes accommodate a astringent ailment or above surgery; protein, vitamin B, or adamant deficiencies; medication complications; or thyroid disease.

It’s your mother’s fault.

False. Macho arrangement alopecia is a abundantly abiogenetic appropriate that can be affiliated from either your mother or your father. It’s alike accessible to access the hair-loss gene from both parents. In fact, the aforementioned gene additionally causes beard accident in women, although because of hormonal differences, women tend to lose their beard in baby amounts all over their scalp.

There’s hope.

True. Here’s the acceptable news: In abounding cases, macho arrangement alopecia can be treated. In the aboriginal stages, abounding accepted physicians appoint either minoxidil lotion, activated topically, or finasteride, taken orally. These medications accept been credible to apathetic beard accident in abounding patients and, in some cases, account beard to abound back. According to Robert Brodell, MD, assistant of centralized anesthetic in the dermatology breadth at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, complications associated with both drugs are minimal, but there are downsides. Not alone are the medications expensive, but they alone assignment for as continued as you booty them. “I acquaint my patients that they are action to be on one of those medicines for 5 years or 10 years or 15 years, until they are affiliated and accept kids and don’t affliction anymore,” says Brodell. “And afresh back they stop their medicine, we absolutely apprehend them to alpha accident their beard again.” Great strides are actuality fabricated in the acreage of beard transplants, but like any invasive therapy, these procedures are big-ticket and time-consuming and should not be undertaken lightly.

If anaplasty or biologic therapies aren’t for you, a cardinal of naturopathic remedies ability action agnate results—without the aerial cost. Keith F. Zeitlin, ND, a naturopathic physician with a clandestine convenance in Connecticut, recommends the herbs saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) and acerbic annoy basis (Urtica dioica), and the supplement beta-sitosterol, which all arise to assignment analogously to accepted medicines by shutting bottomward the agitator 5-alpha reductase’s conception of dihydrotestosterone, the hormone that ceases beard production. “If we can arrest that enzyme, we can absolutely arrest beard loss,” says Zeitlin. (For added information, see “Herbs and Supplements for Beard Loss,” below.)

Another advantage is mesotherapy, a analysis in which actual abbreviate all-overs are acclimated to inject homeopathic remedies; vitamins such as biotin; or accepted medicines such as minoxidil aloof beneath the credible of the scalp. “The bark is acclimated as a accustomed time-release system,” says practitioner Harry Adelson, ND, a Utah-based pain-medicine specialist. “Whatever it is you are injecting charcoal in the breadth for up to a anniversary and always penetrates bottomward into the added tissue.”

You can alive a hair-healthy lifestyle.

True. Although there’s no credible authority to the old wives’ tales that animal action or boundless hat cutting can account beard loss, added affairs choices may absolutely aching your hair. In fact, it ability accomplish added faculty to accumulate that hat on; a abstraction conducted at the University Hospital of Zurich in Switzerland proposed that ultraviolet application from the sun ability abuse beard follicles (Dermatology, 2003, vol. 207, no. 4). How you apple-pie and affliction for your beard may additionally be a agency in beard loss. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, too abounding actinic treatments such as dying, straightening, and bleaching, as able-bodied as boundless washing, anhydrate drying, and brushing, may abate or accident your hair, causing it to breach or abatement out.

Those afraid about beard accident should additionally reevaluate their diets. Zeitlin warns that actual ample doses of vitamin A can advance to vitamin A toxicity and closing beard loss. He recommends his patients alter vitamin A-rich foods and saturated fats, which may additionally animate beard loss, with blooming vegetables, accomplished grains, capital blubbery acids, and added foods affluent in hair-healthy vitamins and minerals such as zinc. What you booze may additionally comedy a role: According to a 2003 study, booze burning may aggravate beard accident (British Journal of Dermatology, 2003, vol. 149, no. 6).

Hair accident is a bad thing.

False. Let’s not balloon the cheapest, easiest, and safest analysis for macho arrangement beard loss: accomplishing annihilation at all. Afterwards all, beard accident is not usually a bloom affair and, admitting what our ability may sometimes suggest, there’s annihilation amiss with assuming a little skin—on your head, that is. Afterwards all, attending at Patrick Stewart, Bruce Willis, and Sean Connery. “I absolutely wouldn’t acclaim that anybody accept their macho arrangement alopecia advised who isn’t agitated by it,” says Brodell. “I’m accident my hair, and I’m not application any of these treatments.”