Alopecia - what causes it, and how can we treat it?

Alopecia affects half of men over the age of 50 and half of woman over 65, and also affects younger people. It can have devastating repercussions on the psyche. What causes the hair loss and what treatments are out there? Rita deBrún finds out.

Imagine having no hair. Not by choice, and not just on your head. No eyebrows, no eyelashes, no body hair. And you can’t do anything about it. In our fixation with flawless perfection, a lack of a crowning glory can be a follicular fiasco; a confidence-zapping twilight zone nobody wants to be in.

Yet hair loss, or alopecia to give it its medical term, is so common it’s normal, affecting — as one strain of it does — 50% of men over 50 and the same percentage of women aged 65 and over. For them, genes or hormones result in progressive hair loss of the androgenetic alopecia type, which manifests as hair-thinning, or baldness of varying degrees.