Myths Concerning Hair Loss

There are many myths regarding the possible causes of baldness and its relationship with one's virility, intelligence, ethnicity, job, social standing, wealth etc. While skepticism is warranted due to lack of scientific validation, some of these myths may have a degree of underlying truth.

Myth or Truth? You inherit baldness from your mother's father

Research suggests that the gene for the androgen receptor, which is significant in determining probability for hair loss, is located on the X chromosome and so is always inherited from the mother's side.

There’s a 50% chance that a person shares the same X chromosome as their maternal grandfather. Because women have two X chromosomes, they will have two copies of the androgen receptor gene while men only have one.  

However, research has also shown that a person with a balding father also has a significantly greater chance of experiencing hair loss.

Previously, early baldness of the androgenic type was thought to be sex linked dominant in males and to be sex linked recessive in females.

Myth or Truth? Intellectual activity or psychological problems can cause hair loss

This myth probably was inspired by the fact that the human brain is located inside the skull, very close and just below where hair grows, and so it was thought that the use and abuse as well as mental diseases could have negative effect on hair growth and number.

It may also be due to the fact that cholesterol is involved in the process of neurogenesis and also the base material from which the body ultimately manufactures DHT.

While the notion that bald men are more intelligent may lack credibility in the modern world, in the ancient world, if a person were bald it was likely that he had an adequate amount of fat in his diet. Thus, his mental development was probably not stunted by malnutrition during his crucial formative years, he was more likely to be wealthy, and also have had access to a formal education. However a sedentary lifestyle is less likely to correlate with intelligence in the modern world, and dietary fat content is less strongly linked to economic class in developed countries.

This is sometimes used as a stereotype in films, where the more intellectual or rather frustrated characters are most usually portrayed as bald and generally unattractive, as opposed to the main characters who are usually portrayed as attractive, fit, mentally stable and generally with no apparent hair problems.

This same myth normally extends to considering people having intellectual jobs more prone to baldness problems compared to manual laborers, sometimes further extending the myth to male college or university students when compared to workers of the same age. The myth is suspect because counterexamples can be found in any case.

There is evidence, confirmed by cross cultural studies, for an association between androgen levels and intellectual ability. These findings are controversial due to their implications regarding psychology and gender. Total testosterone exhibits a positive relation to tactual-spatial abilities and to the degree of lateralization. Total testosterone is negatively correlated with verbal fluency. Testosterone in the saliva is also significantly positively correlated to tactual-spatial test scores and, in addition, to field independence. DHT and the ratio DHT/total testosterone are positively related to verbal fluency and negatively to the degree of lateralization of tactual-spatial performance.