WEBVTT - Why Do We Go Bald? 0:00:01.240 --> 0:00:04.920 Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio Horhea 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:08.720 Cham and today we are tackling the science of baldness. 0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:11.760 Going bald is something that happens to a lot of people. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.720 But why do we go bald? Who goes bald? And 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:19.200 why does it affect us so much? I'm going to 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:22.720 be reviewing the most current theories about the origins of baldness, 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:24.840 and I'm going to talk to a couple of experts 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:28.160 on two related questions. Why is there a negative stigma 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:33.559 about baldness and is baldness really hereditary? In both cases, 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:36.840 I think the answer will surprise you, so comb over 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.440 with us as we uncover the hairy truth about the 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:50.400 science of baldness. Enjoy. Hey, everyone, here are some interesting 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:54.360 facts about baldness. According to a recent paper in the 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:58.600 prestigious journal Nature Reviews, about fifty percent of men and 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:02.560 twenty five percent of women experience some form of balding 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:05.720 or hair loss by the time they're fifty years old. 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:10.319 This translates to roughly fifty million men and about thirty 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:14.399 million women in the US alone. It also varies a 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:18.400 lot with ancestry or race. If you're of South Asian descent, 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:22.280 like from India or Pakistan, your chances of losing hair 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.480 by the time you're fifty jumps to fifty eight percent, 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.440 whereas if you're of East Asian descent, like from China 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:33.800 or Korea, the number drops to twenty five percent. It 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:37.039 also depends a lot on your age. For example, if 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:40.280 you're of East Asian descent, your chances of losing hair 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:44.400 in your twenties is small, only about two point three percent. 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:47.600 In your thirty s it's four percent. In your forties 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:51.480 it's eleven percent, although way up to forty seven percent 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:55.000 by the time you reach seventy. There are several types 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:58.280 of baldness for men and women. If names like M 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:01.640 one or C two, or YOU three or type three, 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:04.600 depending on the pattern of hair loss that you get, 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:07.960 whether it starts in your forehead or the corners or 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:11.600 the top of your scalp. Now, when I started this episode, 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.920 I wanted to answer the question why do we go bald? 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:19.359 But I quickly found out the answer is, we don't know. 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:24.400 From an evolutionary perspective, we don't know why this is 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:28.000 involved in humans. It's sort of related to your age. 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:32.240 So evolutionary biologists have proposed theories with that in mind. 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:35.640 For example, one theory says that it may be assigned 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:38.720 to the rest of your tribe that you're older and 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:43.040 therefore more mature and wiser, and therefore you should have 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:46.840 a position of dominance or leadership. But there are also 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:49.560 theories that say that it's as signed to others that 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:57.120 you're old and therefore not very good material. Both theories 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:01.560 but explain why baldness helps your species survive. We also 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:04.520 don't quite know why baldness happens at the level of 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:09.080 hair follicles. We know that when people experience androgenetic alopecia, 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:12.560 which is the scientific name for male and female pattern 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:16.160 hair loss, the hair follicles in your scalp shrink and 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.240 become the kind of follicles that cover the non hairy 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:21.840 parts of your body, But we don't really know why 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:24.919 this happens. Our current best theory is that it's kind 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.920 of the opposite of when young men start to grow 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:31.800 a beard during puberty. At some point, your hair follicles 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:35.280 are just preprogrammed to be more sensitive to your hormones 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.400 and change from one kind of hair to another. So 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.760 when you're a teenager, the hairs on your armpits pubic 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.720 areas and your chin and upper lip for men, turn 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:46.960 into the kind of thick and hairy kind of hair, 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:49.560 and at some point, when you get older the hair 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:52.520 is on your head do the opposite and turn into 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:56.480 the thin, wispy kind. There are hormones that scientists think 0:03:56.520 --> 0:04:02.400 are involved, like testosterone or diehydrotest ptosterone or DHT, and 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:06.800 enzymes that contribute to this, like five alpha reductase type 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:09.800 one and two. We can see that these molecules are 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:14.240 more active involving hair follicles, but what sets this process 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:17.680 in motion for what is actually happening at the cellular 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:21.960 and molecular level is not quite clear. Now, there are 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:26.160 some cool things we do know about the genetics of baldness. 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:28.560 I'll get to that later in the program with a 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:32.359 scientist who's done one of the largest ever genetic population 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:36.560 studies on baldness. But first, there was one section in 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:40.000 this Nature Journal paper that caught my attention, and that 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:44.200 is a section about how baldness impacts your quality of life. 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:50.560 The scientists right, quote androgenetic alopecia can trigger profound negative 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:55.760 psychological effects in affected individuals, owing to social pressure to 0:04:55.880 --> 0:05:00.920 maintain quote good hair end quote. In other words, the 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:06.400 only negative effective bondness are psychological. So to get to 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:09.080 the bottom of this, I reached out to a psychologist 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:13.040 who's made it his mission to debunk this negative stigma 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:16.000 that bondness has in our society and to teach people 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:23.440 that bondness, no pun intended, is all in our heads. Well, 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:26.719 thank you, doctor Jenkowski for joining us pleasure. Can you 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:28.520 please tell us who you are and what do you do? 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:33.839 Yes, I'm doctor Glennankovski. I am a associate professor University 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:38.200 College Dublin, and I'm a researcher in psychology who specializes 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:42.120 in the social and cultural interpretation of alopecia. 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:44.440 And is that the term we should be using for 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:47.560 bondness or are ukay we say bondness or. 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:50.839 Yeah, I'm much more for a further term, boldness as well. 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:53.520 I tend to use alopecia in the Ireland because my 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:56.200 accent and a lot of Irish people think I'm saying 0:05:56.240 --> 0:05:58.720 bravery rather than boldness. 0:05:59.160 --> 0:05:59.760 Is that true? 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:04.880 Yeah? I say boldness like being bold. Oh, I see, 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:07.800 and it's happened so many times now an island that 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:09.200 I really I've switched a bit. 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:11.440 Well, there might be another interesting topic for you to 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:15.080 research boldness. Yeah, and whether it's related to baldness. 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:16.680 Yes, but you've done a lot. 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:19.720 Of research on this stigma against baldness. Can you tell 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:21.000 us what that stigma is? 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:25.839 So there is a tendency for people to have attitudes 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:30.160 that are stigmatizing towards men and their boldness in particular. 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:34.279 Typically there's experimental studies that show that people hold more 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:38.200 negative attitudes towards men with boldness than they do men 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:39.200 with full heads of hair. 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:41.480 Okay, can you describe these studies a little bit. 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.480 It is actually a large evidence space. So the majority 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:47.520 of studies actually tend to be experiments where a group 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:51.480 of people are divided randomly into two conditions and presented 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:56.400 images of the same man airbrushed, typically with a full 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.120 head of hair, and then with some boldness. And so 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:02.159 it's that say, mimbiture of the man, same facial features, etc. 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:04.919 And they are asked to rate the image of the 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:09.920 man on certain characteristics like how masculine, how successful, etcetera. 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:14.880 And there's a bias towards certain attributes there. 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:17.280 Is, Yeah, and those tend to be that those men 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:21.320 are less attractive, older, that they may be less dominant 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:23.920 and some other negative characteristics. 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:28.200 So there is a negative bias that people have about 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.720 bald men. But here's the thing about those studies. According 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:36.560 to doctor Jenkowski, A, people also have a positive bias 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:40.880 towards bald men in some categories, and b these negative 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:44.080 and positive biases are not that big. 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:47.560 The re such does show that, and I don't mean 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:51.480 to minimize it. However, I do question how totalizing that 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:54.600 stigma is because there are also some positive attributes that 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:57.600 people make about bold men, like that they're more inclined 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:00.760 to be leaders, or that they're more affablen approachable than 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:04.679 haired men. And then sometimes these differences are also quite small. 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.960 People can exaggerate how bigly are, especially journalists or businesses, 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:11.640 but actually if you look at their data, they're quite small. 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:13.880 New characterized how small they are. 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:17.320 Yeah. So one study found that out of a scale 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:21.600 of one hundred of attractiveness, bold men were seven percent 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:27.520 less attractive than their head counterpouts and rated on average 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:32.600 about two years older than the head counterpart images. So 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:35.440 two years older, seven cent less out of one hundred. 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:37.520 It's not a huge amount. 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:40.520 No, it's not. I would have thought it was higher, 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:42.240 but that seems are most negligible. 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:44.240 I would have thought that too if I wasn't a 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:48.720 researcher studying this. Most people think this too, because most 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:52.319 of us are influenced by advertising and marketing of anti 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:53.080 bold products. 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:56.720 And this brings up the question where does this negative 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:59.880 stigma against bog people, or at least the impression that 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:04.440 is a big negative stigma against boldners come from. And 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:07.760 here doctor Tinkowski has a s pricing theory. 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:12.880 It really does come from anti boldness businesses. They are 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:16.839 the ones who profit from this stigma. And we've had 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:19.640 a long history of it, and it's ramped up since 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:23.079 the nineteen eighties when anti bold products for the first 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:25.720 time in history, got more official approval. 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:30.360 Wow, so you're looking it to the business of selling 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:33.760 anti partners treatments. It's sort of a timing issue. 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:37.640 Well, we've always had boldness since men have been around. 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:40.520 But what we can see in the historical record is 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.480 that there were many neutral interpretations of boldness. There were 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:47.480 some negative and there were also some very positive interpretations. 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:50.959 When we see the rise of snake oil products in 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:53.600 the eighteen hundreds and the nineteen hundreds, some of them 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:57.520 were for hairy growth. Of course, they weren't effective, but 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:00.839 their marketing was designed to show that old men needed 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:05.960 these products, needed these treatments for this devastagencies, and if 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:07.600 they didn't take it, they might not get a job, 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:10.560 they might not get a date, they might not be happy. 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:13.760 When they became approved in the eighties and onwards, that 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:18.240 gave them scientific legitimacy these products so that doctors and 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:21.160 professionals could start to say, these are treatments I see. 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:23.600 Whereas before you might tell your doctor, oh, I think 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:25.840 I'm losing my hair, and the doctor might be like, yeah, 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:28.800 it's normal, no big deal, nothing's going to happen to you. 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:31.040 Now they might be like, oh, there's a treatment for that. 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:35.840 Exactly. Those pharmaceutical companies have done training videos, they've done 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:39.960 training programs, They've targeted medical professionals and doctors to convince 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:42.920 them that bolding men and bolding people in general need 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:44.040 these treatments. 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:47.080 Now, it's hard to say how much of a role 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:52.160 the pharmaceutical and Bontner's treatment industries have had in creating 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:56.280 this negative stigma against baldness. As I mentioned, there are 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:59.520 theories that tie it to our evolutionary history, but it's 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:03.400 also hard to discount. For example, remember the Nature Journal 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:07.640 paper I've been citing. That paper was written by nine scientists, 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:11.440 all of whom have positions at major universities, but at 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:13.840 the end of the paper, the journal requires them to 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.679 disclose any conflicts of interest. So here's the list of 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:21.600 those conflicts of interest for that paper. Authors one two 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.959 are inventors on patent applications related to hair loss treatment 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:28.360 filed by the University of California, Irvine. Author two is 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.320 co founder and chief scientific officer at a corporation and 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:35.559 has received consultation fees from Audit Labs and lorel Author 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:40.040 three has received consultation fees from DS Laboratories, Almirale, thirty Madison, 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:44.480 Eli Lilly and Company, Peiser, Iovan Sciences, Bristol Meyers, quibb 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:50.080 Ortho Dermatologics, and Sun Pharmaceutical. Author four has received consultation 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:54.840 fees from Eli Lilly and Company, peiser Olaplex, and Maovn Sciences, 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:58.520 and they direct the Ethnic Skin program at John Hoppins University, 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:02.319 funded by an educational brand from Jansen. Author five has 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:06.240 received salary payments from Life and Brain GNBH. Author six 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:09.360 has received clinical trial funds from Eli Lilly, and company. 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:13.400 Author seven has received consultation frees from Eli Lillyan Company 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:17.720 and has received clinical study funds from Eli Lillien Company, Pfizer, 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:25.120 and ATB. Authors eight and nine declare no competing interests. Yeah, 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:26.920 that's a lot of conflicts of interest. 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:27.800 All right. 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:30.120 When we come back, we're gonna talk about whether the 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:34.240 treatments all these companies are pushing actually work. Do they 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:38.760 stop baldness or is it all snake oil. Stay with us, 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:58.040 we'll be right back. Welcome back. We're talking about the 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:01.400 size of baldness, and so we've talked about what we 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:05.559 know and don't know about what causes baldness. Now we're 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:07.559 going to talk about the treatments that are out there 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:11.520 for hair loss. In terms of medicines, there's one called monoxidyl, 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:15.720 which was originally made to treat hypertension, but then women 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:19.360 patients started reporting extra hair growth and so it became 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:23.079 a baldanis medicine that you put on the scalp. Scientists 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.520 have some ideas about what this medicine actually does, but 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:32.440 not really. Another class of treatments are five alpha reductase inhibitors, 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:36.719 which includes the popular drug called finasteride. Scientists know these 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:40.480 treatments block the enzyme that splits the stosterone called five 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:44.840 alpha reductas, but they don't know much beyond that. Now, 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:50.080 do these treatments actually work a sort of, according to 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:51.760 doctor Jenkowski. 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:57.200 So there are metro analyzes. These are series of studies 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:00.400 that look at large pools of data of menking these 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:03.520 products versus men who don't take these products, and they're 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:07.080 more objective. So these matronalyses have looked many anti baldness 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:10.559 products and what they've found is that most produced between 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:15.080 eight to twelve hair follow calls in a centimeter squared 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:19.960 area of scalp that's monitored, and that's some hairy growth. 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:22.680 It's not nothing, but on average most people have one 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:25.880 hundred and twenty hair follow calls and that's centimeter squared 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:27.239 area of regrowth. 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:31.880 What doctor Jenkowski seeing is that these treatments do help 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:35.120 you grow back on average about eight to ten percent 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:38.960 of the hair you lose, which is not nothing, but 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:40.760 it's also not a lot. 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:43.840 So most people do not find that to be a 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:48.120 cosmetically meaningful amount of hair regrowth. I see these products 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:51.720 might be better at preventing further boldness. It's a bit hard 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:54.440 to determine that, but in terms of actual hair regrowth 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:56.240 is quite minimal. 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:58.680 And of course you have to weigh that against the 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:01.239 potential side effects of these treatments. 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:05.200 And obviously the bigger issues which the Metro analyses to 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:07.200 show as well, is that some of these products do 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:10.680 risk quite severe side of x. You know, if you're 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:15.000 taking finasteride, for example, this is a common antibodleness product. 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:20.240 Typically it's taken orally and it disrupts your hormonal system, 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:23.760 that's how it's working. But there's evidence so it's affecting 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:26.120 all sorts of other things that are really important to 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:29.600 your bodily functions, like your mood. Men who've taken a 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:34.800 finanasteroid of reported vision problems, reported mood issues, sexual dysfunction issues, 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:37.160 these hosts of side effects. 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:42.479 For finasteride fills. The US Food and Drug Administration or FDA, 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:45.160 has issued a warning that there is a risk of 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:50.080 depression in suicide ideation when using this drug, and according 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:52.720 to the Nature paper, there's also a risk of impotence 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:54.840 after you start taking the drug. 0:15:57.040 --> 0:15:59.760 And what's really difficult for men taking finasteride is you 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:01.520 don't which kind of man you're going to be. The 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:05.040 one that's going to be negatively somewhat permanently affected by 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:07.520 these side effects, or the ones that might have safe 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:08.280 experience of it. 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:11.680 Wow, in which case, maybe it's not worth it for 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:18.200 those extra eight twelve pollicles exactly. There's also the possibility 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:22.080 of hair transplants, which is where they take follicles from 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:24.840 one part of your scalp and implant them in the 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:29.200 areas where you're losing hair. This treatment is expensive and 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:32.040 it's not for everyone. It sort of only works for 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:36.240 thinning hair, not full hair loss. So now my question 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:39.800 was is this all worth it? What's really the impact 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:45.360 that baldness has in people's lives? Is there any data 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:49.520 as to how baldness affects you in life, or in 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:52.520 your profession or in your social life? 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:57.800 There is, yeah, Bolting men are surveyed about discrimination romantically 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:01.440 and employment socially. What's difficult is that most of these 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:04.840 studies are commercially funded and biased, and some of the 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:06.879 studies are very very poor, So it might just be 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:10.000 a market research a series of questions that are really leading, 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:12.919 that are kind of pishing men to suggest they're discriminated 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:16.000 against when they're not. Those surveys do show that some 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:20.000 men report some discrimination and many men do not report any. 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:23.320 A really important study by Goslin and colleagues in their 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:27.520 eighties asked bolding men and haired men what they expected 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:31.480 boldness discrimination to be, and then what the actual reality 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:35.120 of old discrimination was, and in all cases the reality 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:38.640 was much easier than bold men and haired men predict it. 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:40.919 So I think those are really useful to put it 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:45.400 into perspective for bolding men. We get told that there's 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:48.800 huge amounts of discrimination, but actually the reality is that 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:50.400 really it's quite rare. 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:55.080 What effect do you think this negative stigma and this commercialization, 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:58.520 what does it have on men and people who might 0:17:58.600 --> 0:17:59.720 be dealing with boldness. 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:03.639 You know, there's a word called medicalization, and it's this 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:08.159 term for how normal aspects of our bodies are often 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:13.399 changed into diseases, sometimes for commercial profit, and it really 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:16.080 changes how we respond to those aspects of our bodies 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:19.159 and how we view them. Bold men increasingly see their 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:24.639 boldness as a devastating, disadvantageous disease. It's real shame because 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:26.600 if you look properly at history and you see so 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:29.320 many bolding men of the norm, and that many many 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:33.359 accept it, and that also find positives from it. Shakespeare, 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.439 for example, said boldness gives you wits. You don't have 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:40.800 to listen to the political opinions of barbers. Shakespeare said, 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.680 there are all these lovely little advantages from it as well. 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:48.440 So it's a little bit about having a healthier perspective 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.600 about it. The loveliest thing for me is that many 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:55.160 bold men report a healthier perspective from it, including feeling 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:58.560 less superficial about their own appearance. You know, they accept 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:01.160 their bodies and that's great because all of us age 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:03.280 and all of our bodies change in different ways and 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:06.159 that shouldn't be feared. But also they don't look at 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:09.720 other people so superficially. They can also see past appearance, 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:12.320 and that's a beautiful thing in a vain world. 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:17.400 Yeah, oh that's interesting. It can change how you see others. Yeah, 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:20.920 it is beautiful. It can also help you see. 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:24.920 Beauty, real beauty, which is inner beauty, which is making 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:28.520 someone laugh or you know, acts of kindness. It's that 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:31.120 kind of beauty that you know, sustains a long term 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:34.120 relationship as well. If we're judging people on their head 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:37.200 hair follow calls, I don't think that makes a good marriage. 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:39.399 I think a good marriage is you know most people 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:41.040 realize is beyond the surface. 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:46.399 All right, we talked about the word when and why 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:49.480 of boldness. Now we're going to talk about the who 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:53.520 who ends up losing their hair is a genetic and 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:57.280 if it is, is it something we can predict When 0:19:57.320 --> 0:19:59.480 we come back, We're going to talk to each geneticis, 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:03.440 especially in appearance traits, and who was involved in creating 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:07.800 one of the largest and most comprehensive genetic population models, 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:11.840 that is the world's or most expert in predicting who 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:14.879 will go bald. We'll see what it says about me. 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:31.200 So stay with us and we'll be right back. Hey, 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:35.920 welcome back. We're now going to talk to Professor Manfred Kaiser, 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:40.160 a molecular biologist at Erasmus University in the Netherlands who 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:44.840 specializes in the genetics of appearances. Now this is pretty cool. 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:48.399 Imagine that you're at a crime scene and you find 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.800 some DNA of the person you think might have committed 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:55.280 to crime. What if you could take that DNA and 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:57.919 from that genetic code you could tell if the person 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:02.359 was tall, or had dark hair or blue eyes, or 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:06.800 had a small nose, or was bald or what if 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:10.000 you found the DNA of a famous historical person like 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:14.200 Genghis Khan or Cleopatra, or the DNA of a distant 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:18.080 human ancestor, could you tell from their DNA what they 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:21.600 looked like. That is the dream of doctor Kaiser and 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:24.960 his colleagues, and to test his idea, they decided to 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:29.480 start with baldness. In twenty twenty two, they published the 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:33.520 results of one of the largest genetic population studies ever 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:37.480 done on baldness, where they looked at the DNA and 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:41.320 the hairline of one hundred and eighty six thousand men 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:44.840 of European descent, and then they looked at whether the 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:48.240 resulting data could predict who was going to go bald 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:52.120 or not. To tell us about what they found, here 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:57.639 is Professor Manfred Kaiser. Well, thank you doctor Kaiser for 0:21:57.760 --> 0:21:58.239 joining us. 0:21:58.320 --> 0:21:58.959 Well, you're welcome. 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:02.960 You recently posted the paper on the genetic markers of baldness. 0:22:03.040 --> 0:22:03.200 Yeah. 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:06.320 So, baldness, of course is a very remarkable visible trade, 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:09.840 especially in men. So we were interested in looking into 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:13.880 the predictability. So people do what they call genome white 0:22:13.920 --> 0:22:17.760 association studies, so they basically scan the genome of one 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:21.639 thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:25.120 which they know, for instance, may it pad on baldness. 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:27.600 So you need these two types of information, and then 0:22:27.640 --> 0:22:31.200 they ask is there one site in the human genome 0:22:31.440 --> 0:22:34.760 that is more frequent in people with baldness. 0:22:35.720 --> 0:22:38.640 In other words, doctor Kaiser and his team had access 0:22:38.680 --> 0:22:41.679 to the DNA of one hundred and eighty six thousand 0:22:41.800 --> 0:22:44.400 men in Europe, for which they knew if they had 0:22:44.440 --> 0:22:47.920 baldness or not. Then they asked that there was one 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:50.720 gene that could predict whether a man was going to 0:22:50.760 --> 0:22:53.879 be bald or not. And they found two things that 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:57.800 are surprising. The first is that there isn't a gene 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:01.880 that is going to make you bald. There's hundreds of them. 0:23:02.520 --> 0:23:06.040 For male pattern baldness. It seems to be hundreds of genes. 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:08.960 All these different genes work together and make what we 0:23:09.040 --> 0:23:12.399 actually see in the end as made pattern baldness. 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:16.199 Yes, it's not just one gene that makes you go bald, 0:23:16.720 --> 0:23:21.080 it's hundreds of genes. Wow, so many genes. Why are 0:23:21.160 --> 0:23:24.520 there so many genes involved in something like hair loss. 0:23:24.680 --> 0:23:27.000 Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question. You 0:23:27.040 --> 0:23:32.359 have to ask evolution why they made it so complicated. Apparently. 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:35.560 You think, oh, so the hair falls out, that is simple, 0:23:36.680 --> 0:23:40.080 But the reason why a hair may fall out is 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:43.280 not simple at all. And of course these genes, they 0:23:43.320 --> 0:23:48.280 all play different roles in molacular pathways that exist, and 0:23:48.320 --> 0:23:49.640 that makes the complexity. 0:23:50.119 --> 0:23:53.560 I see. It's not a simple process, even though the 0:23:53.760 --> 0:24:00.840 end result is relatively simple. Indeed, yeah, baldness is complicated. 0:24:01.400 --> 0:24:04.120 You might have heard that male pattern baldness was due 0:24:04.160 --> 0:24:06.480 to one gene that is passed down from your mother's 0:24:06.520 --> 0:24:09.400 side of the family, but this is not quite true. 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:11.800 When you look at the genome of hundreds of thousands 0:24:11.840 --> 0:24:14.800 of men, you see that there are hundreds of genes 0:24:14.880 --> 0:24:18.960