Male Pattern Baldness and Healthy Aging

It is the scourge of modern man. While we have flown to the moon and built technology enabling anyone to view those missions with the click of a button, everyday millions of men around the globe continue to lose their hair. In fact, there is some evidence that men are balding earlier in their lives. Where is all the hair going and why can’t we stop it?

We cannot cure male pattern baldness anymore than we can halt the sands of time. For male pattern baldness, like wrinkles, like stooped spines, and winged tipped eyebrows are part of the aging process; nevertheless, traditional medicine has a lot to say in terms of healthy aging, which can delay and arrest the balding process. Additionally, integrated with the more aggressive tools of modern medicine, some men may even be able to regrow hair.

Let us delve more into what causes male pattern baldness and then explore the fundamentals of health integral to healthy aging. A balanced healthy lifestyle can arrest the balding process.

Imagine your body as a dry sack of flesh, you wouldn’t last very long. Blood* sustains life in your body. It is the medium that circulates nourishment to all your cells, tissues, and organs. A temporary block in blood flow to an important artery, like one that feeds the heart, begets a heart attack and instant death.

This may come as uncomfortable news to some men, but your head hair is not as essential as your heart; thus, when the body is faced with limited resources it prioritizes essential organs – brain, heart, kidney, liver – over luxurious locks. Hair does have some practical function – it senses our surroundings. It also has a secondary function of communicating good health for sexual selection, but head hair is not essential to sustaining life. Accordingly, the body fills with Blood from the inside out. Peripheral hair growth only occurs after Blood sufficiently nourishes our internal organs.

While a minority of women will experience the familiar horseshoe shaped pattern of balding, it is a predominantly male issue. This is because female physiology is Blood* based and male physiology is Qi** based.  Females physiologically generate more blood than males. Every month they drain excess blood during menses.  Females are therefore less vulnerable to the type of blood depletion that would affect their hair health than men.***

As we age, our overall reservoir of resources dwindle. Chinese medicine calls this underlying resource Jing. It is the deepest source of what sustains our life, enlivening from the cellular to the macro. Totipotent, Jing can generate all other bodily substances. A long and healthy life depends conservative usage of the Jing. Whether Jing or some other resource such as the Qi from food propel you through daily life depends on your lifestyle choices.

According to the ancients, age fifty is on average when Jing naturally declines enough for balding to begin to set in for men. Balding in modern society is setting in earlier because people are not living balance lives and overdrawing from their Jing leading to accelerated aging, and yes, balding.

Protecting your Jing is very simple, yet requires a good deal of disciple amidst modern society. In our capitalistic individualistic culture, we are asked to go, go, go… nourishing rest periods are not built into our social flow.

A good self-evaluation of Jing usage is to ask oneself: From where am I generating my daily energy? If you are relying on drugs, stress, and stimulants to get through the day, then you are drawing heavily from your Jing. Overtime, this type of lifestyle will accelerate your aging and balding process; however, if mindfulness, nutrition, and rest fuel your daily energy needs, then you are on track for a longer life and fuller head of hair.

Some people may say, ‘Well what about my friend Gary?’ He doesn’t take care of himself at all and still has a full head of hair at age sixty. Well, each individual is born with a different reservoir of Jing. Perhaps Gary is one such fortunate individual endowed with a prodigious supply of Jing. Secondly, just because one person eats fast food everyday and still appears ‘healthy’ does not mean it is a good idea for the rest of us. Poor lifestyle choices eventually catch up with us.

One aspect of longevity that does not get discussed in the west is sexual moderation. Western medicine does not make any recommendations concerning ejaculation frequency. Considering that your semen is literally your life seed, it makes sense that the frequency at which you spill your seed will affect your reservoir of Jing. Giving your body adequate time to replenish between emissions will conserve Jing and slow the aging process.

Chinese medicine recommended emission frequency guidelines are as follows:

• 3-4x / week in your 20s
• 2x week in your 30s
• 1x / week in your 40s
• Every other week in your 50s

When you are living a balanced life practicing good daily health practices – eating well, getting proper rest, participating in mindfulness, and practicing sexual moderation – your body will be full of Qi and Blood. You will have sufficient Blood to reach the ‘cherry on top’ which is your luscious locks at the tippy top of your head.

If you went through an extended period of hair loss, it is possible your hair will regrow overtime with your health in alignment; however, arresting or slowing down balding is the most likely outcome for the vast majority of men because:

1. Regrowing hair goes against the grain of aging. As we age, we have less available resources to grow hair than we did when we were younger.
2. The hair follices may have atrophied over the dormant years.

But fear not! Equipped with the knowledge of healthy aging practices, I will share supplemental techniques to add-on for regrowing hair in my next article.

*The term Blood in Chinese medicine does not only refer to the red substance that moves through our arteries and veins, but the medium of nourishment traveling thought the body. Going forward, I will use the term Blood in reference to the Chinese concept.

 **Qi is the all encompassing term for energy in Chinese medicine. It is what makes things go both in the body and the universe. While there is no exact equivalent, many westerners may think of Qi within the body like ATP the chemical ‘currency’ of energy.

*** I use the terms male / female and men / women to refer to the two distinct physiological biotypes. The author makes no claims to extropolate from these biotypes into sociological realms of gender and / or sexuality. Not all humans conform to polar male / female biotypes, but the vast majority do, and the article is limited in scope to a discussion of those majority groups.