Calculator can predict baldness risk
Now, you can stop keeping a hawk eye on your hairline. If going bald is your biggest fear, here’s something to reassure you – or make you feel worse. A baldness calculator can predict the age at which you will become follicularly-challenged, or not.
The first-of-a-kind computer programme, developed by German researchers from the hair care company Dr Kurt Wolff, asks users 12 questions related to profession, age, marital status, current hairline status, number of hair lost daily, familial hair loss history and stress levels, etc. It then calculates whether you can expect a head full of hair at old age or a shiny pate, and if the latter, at what age.
Unfortunately, the calculator, available at www.baldness-calculator.co.uk works only for UK-based men as it asks about the residential location, too.
Dr Adolf Klenk, who heads the research and development wing of Dr Kurt Wolff, said, “We have developed the male baldness calculator to raise awareness among men. Genetic predisposition is by far the most common cause of baldness. But other factors include severe, long-term emotional stress, perhaps associated with a divorce or the loss of a close relative.”
Receding hairline affects men mostly at ages above the late 20s and begins either at the temples or at the top of the head. As stress levels rise and hair loss worsens, hair implants have become a popular cosmetic treatment to hide baldness.
Critics of the calculator say it preys on the universal fear of baldness that plagues most men. “(The calculator) is little more than an advertisement cloaked in a quiz framed under the guise of science,” wrote Robert Roy Britt, the editorial director of noted science website Livescience.com.
Britt added that scientists feel the high incidence of male baldness could have evolutionary advantage, “such as acting as a sign of physical and social maturity, thereby increasing status”.
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