Losing your hair is different from losing your keys.
You can’t run down to the hardware store and get more made.
You might choose to shave the rest off to match the bald areas or wear a wig.
You might even let bygones be gone and do the best you can with the hair you have left.
Men and women lose hair over their lifetimes, in similar numbers, but men lose more strands over larger areas, and women typically thin more diffusely in a slightly different pattern (1).
Many women hide their thinning hair by having it set every week, an intervention most men don’t participate in.
Fellas often try covering up thinning areas with a “comb-over,” for a time at least, then give up when there isn’t enough hair to cover the sparse areas.
Anyone might lose hair or experience slowing hair growth.
Your genetics predict the tendency you’ll have to go bald or not, but it isn’t easy to know which genes from your parents will express themselves in you (2).
Both of your parents might have thin hair, but you’ll always have a full and lustrous mane.
Or you might be the only one in the family who’s bald at twenty-five.