#391 Hair Today

Testosterone is a bad mother—shut your mouth. It’s good for some things, strength, independence, going out into the woods alone to hunt game, going to the barcolounger to watch the game, but in excess it pretty much assures a shorter lifespan than those without much of it, for example women. Testosterone also causes two of the big problems that bedevil men in the later decades of their life—loss of hair and loss of prostate health. Benign Prostate Enlargement, which you would think would be called BPE, is in fact called BPH. Because scientifically it’s Benign Prostate Hypertrophy. Atrophy is a scientific word that means withering away. Hypertrophy is its opposite. It means overgrowth. Prostate tissues are quite susceptible to this, as males grow older. Also, as males grow older, there’s a problem known as male pattern baldness. And it too appears to be related to testosterone, or at least one of its precursor molecules, di-hydro-something-or-another. When the di-hydro-whatever molecule comes into contact with hair follicles it chokes them off and hair falls out. Therein lays the paradox. Too much testosterone, a sexual hormone whose primary function is to promote sexuality and propagate the species, turns deadly at about the time most men are: A) not interested in propagating any more babies anyhow or B) beginning to feel their mid-life crisis and wondering if they will ever again be able to court and win a lovely female companion now that they’re bald as a baby’s butt. And also paradoxically, the relative levels of the menopausal hormones in women means testosterone may account for their mid-life aberrations. When estrogen levels dip, testosterone levels in women—yes they produce testosterone too— are relatively higher, and that may result in an unexplained tendency to go out in to the woods and hunt game, if you know what I mean. Nudge nudge. Naturally, or perhaps unnaturally, modern science has rushed into fill the gap. One of the mega-pharmaceutical companies came up with a drug known as Finisteride now marketed as Propecia. It interrupts the production of testosterone. Its original purpose was to reduce prostate enlargement and make it easier for men to relieve themselves and stuff. Surprisingly, it also helped them grow back hair. I mean hair back. Back hair was a bad side effect. So now, it’s being marketed to prevent hair loss. Unfortunately, its other major side effect is impotence. That’s okay, they’ve made a deal with Viagra to bundle services. Not really. It is a little ironic though. The whole point of a full head of hair is to advertise virility. At least in popular wisdom. Actually the more virile and the more testosterone laden, the less hair you can expect. But men still want that full head of hair to look the leading man sex symbol in the movie. Even if they don’t get the action figure later.
America, ya gotta love it.