Baldness for the most part is seen as unattractive, and this has been true through nearly all of history for every culture. Early hair loss treatments have been documented in ancient Egypt, Greece, China and Rome; though they were completely ineffective, they still clearly show that baldness has always been an undesirable trait.

There are many causes of baldness; like medications and medical conditions like alopecia areata and direct physical causes like high tension. Even though these are all common, the vast majority of hair loss is due to male pattern baldness. This is caused by hormonal irregularities in those who have the genetic precursor for male pattern baldness in their families; but perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.

The hormone in question which causes the thinning and loss of hair we know as male pattern baldness is called dihydrotestosterone, or DHT for short. DHT works to cause baldness in two ways; first, it binds to hair follicles and cuts off the supply of nutrients coming to it through the blood stream. Without protein making its way to the hair follicle the hair first thins and then falls out not to regrow again. To understand the second way it causes hair loss you must first understand the hair growth cycles. Normally, about eighty percent of the hairs on your head are in what is called the anagen stage. This is the stage that it is growing and typically lasts four or five years. After that you enter the catagen phase where it stops growing, this last about two weeks, and then the telogen phase where it loosens, falls out, and waits for the anagen phase to begin again. Once DHT has bonded to a hair follicle it greatly decreases the amount of time your hair spends in the anagen phase, and this means of course that it spends a longer amount of time in the telogen phase where it is not growing.

So what can be done about this type of baldness? There are a few options. One of the most common today is to get a hair transplant. This is where hair from the back of the head or elsewhere on the body is removed and the follicles replanted on your scalp. While in the past hair transplants involved putting a large number of hairs into one follicle (giving the appearance of a dolls head, which lead to the term "plugs") they have evolved to become far more natural in appearance. The drawbacks to curing baldness this way is that it is expensive, extremely evasive and potentially painful. It is also slow; the majority of hair will fall out shortly after transplant and take about another nine months before the follicles begin producing new hair.

The other option is either a pharmaceutical drug or natural supplement to stop DHT from binding to the hair follicles, or as is the case with most pharmaceuticals, adjust hormone levels so that you do not produce as much DHT. The pharmaceutical treatments for baldness come with many side effects, and are infamous for their sexual side effects. The herbal supplements on the other hand do not, and are much safer in general. I almost always recommend herbal supplements over pharmaceuticals where possible, and especially in the case of baldness treatments.