Nasty little mirror reveals dirty secret

At my father's house in Collingwood, there is this nasty mirror on the wall. And while a mirror may have worked wonders for the Queen in the classic Snow White fairy tale, as she deceived herself daily about her beauty, it provides a different perspective on my fading youth.

This malicious mirror is placed in a strategic location, perched on an angle on the wall behind the toilet. What it reveals, as I stand to relieve myself, is an expanding bare patch on the top of my head.

As we all know, it's hard to see, without some great effort and ingenuity, what's going on up there.

As I prepare myself for each working day, carefully combing my hair in an effort to combat the receding front on my forehead, I am oblivious to what's going on up there on the crown. It's an area of the head that only a carefully place mirror can reveal.

While spending time at dad's over the holidays, I had the opportunity to be reminded once again that the flowing curly locks of my youth have left for greener pastures.

I guess I should feel fortunate my hair stuck around as long as it did.

As a teenager, I did some pretty strange things to my mane in an effort to look different from my peers.

For highlighting, I was known to use food colouring. To keep everything locked into place, I would use a concoction of sugar and water, and later, even shoe polish.

In university, I would straighten my curly hair with a flat iron, and then add gobs of gel and hair spray. What was amazing about the amount of product in my hair was that even after wearing a motorcycle helmet, it would pop back into position after I took it off.

The sugar and water was a reliable staple for styling as a teenager. The only problem was mowing the lawn on a hot summer day.

For months I couldn't figure out why flies and bees would swarm my head as I pushed the lawnmower around the yard at our family homestead. Finally I figured out why they were so attracted me.

I guess I should feel fortunate to have retained a solid mane to this point, considering the crap I put into my hair and the fact many men went bald in their 30s.

I've never been one to shave my head, as seems to be the popular style for so many men these days. My philosophy has always been that I'm keeping my locks attached to my head as long as I have them. There'll be lots of life to live when being bald is no longer a choice, but a reality.

Now that that little mirror in dad's washroom has revealed the tragic loss so nastily, I wanted to find out a little bit more about what I have to look forward to.

While some men never go bald, everyone's hair thins out over the years. Despite much research, there's little men can do to slow down or reverse hair loss or androgenetic alopecia.

I've always been told that you inherit the hair genes from your mother's relatives.

But apparently, that's a bit of a myth, as baldness can come from either side of the family, or both. Looking at your family can give you at best, an educated guess about how you'll turn out.

When I look at my father, he's already missing most of the hair on top of his head. Maybe he put that mirror there to see if anything grows back?

"I had nothing to do with it," he said when I asked him to explain. "There was nothing sinister about putting it there, but I'm not really sure why we did."

Sure dad.

Another myth of hair loss is that wearing a hat to often can cause it. This is completely false, thankfully, as I may have to resort to wearing a ball cap for the rest of my life.

Did you know you lose up to 100 hairs per day normally? These hairs have finished their three-year life span and are ready to be shed, then replaced, or... not.

Many conditioners, shampoos, vitamins, and other products claim to help hair grow in some unspecified way. These are harmless but useless. To slow down hair loss, there are two options:

Minoxidil (brand name: Rogaine): This topical application is over-the-counter, no prescription is required. It works best on the crown, less on the frontal region. Available as a 2% solution, Rogaine may grow a little hair, but is better at holding onto what's still there.

Finasteride (brand name: Propecia): This is a lower-dose version of a drug that shrinks prostates in middle-aged men. Propecia is by prescription and is taken once a day. Propecia seems to do a nice job of retaining hair, however, it may also grow or thicken hair a little.

Other options include hairpieces and weaving (never) or surgery.

For me, I'm prepared to live with what I've still got up there, and pray that it hangs on as long as possible. This loss is an inexorable fact of life, and I am prepared to deal with it mentally.

But I don't need a stupid mirror, mirror on the wall to throw reality in my face.

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News Source: http://www.ancasternews.com/an/viewpoint/viewpoint_697977.html