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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2734 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 20, 2025

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I've done a relatively exhaustive analysis on male pattern baldness (I have a vested interest). I'm extremely relieved to find out that despite the reflection of the OR lights off dad's head being dazzling, I likely have lower than average odds of going bald.

Relevant factors:

  1. 50% of men lose some hair by 50.
  2. Dad's saving a lot of money on haircuts.
  3. Maternal grandpa has a respectable head of hair past 95. If I'm slightly thinning when I'm crossing my 80s, I can live with that.
  4. Only 1/3rd of my paternal uncles are bald, all of them older than my dad.
  5. I'm teetering dangerously close to 30, without losing anything off the top. That pretty much rules out early onset AO.

I can breathe a little easier, without having to worry so much about turning 30 and finding out that I've lost my hair, alongside my well-founded belief that you immediately develop arthritis and an inability to drink liquor like you used to. The jungles of Norwood seem less daunting, and worst comes to worse, it's time for minoxidil or a trip to Turkey. Going bald might even be good for career progression, just look at Scott!

(I was immensely annoyed by the fact that while stats on the probability of your dad being bald if you're balding are well established at around 80%, the odds of becoming bald with a bald dad are much harder to find. And MBP is annoyingly polygenic to boot.)

Edit:

Here's the final post

Yeah the genes are carried on the x chromosome so your own father is the one person in your ancestry who has almost no influence on one's baldness.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5308812/

Hmm? That's definitely not true. I'd know, I just submitted an effortpost on the topic.

Even in the study you linked:

Using common genetic variants with a minor allele frequency of at least 1%, GCTA-GREML analysis found that 47.3% (SE 1.3%) of the variance in baldness can be explained by common autosomal genetic variants, while 4.6% (SE 0.3%) can be explained by common X chromosome variants.

Fathers contribute autosomal chromosomes, even if they don't hand over an X chromosome. The relative risk if you have a bald dad is anywhere between 2.5-6x as much!

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