Why does a receding hairline start at the front and not the back of the head?
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You won’t get a true answer in here.
Because it is unknown.
We do know that both men and women suffer from androgenic alopecia.
It is caused by excessive levels of the hormone dihydrotestosterone and/or an increased sensitivity of the hair follicles to this hormone.
Being exposed to increased levels of DHT makes the blood vessel that supply the hair follicle shrink and disappear over time.
This first causes the hair to grow more thin and brittle, and not for as long, until the follicle goes dormant, and eventually dies and gets replaced by regular skin about 1-2 years after the last hair has grown.
However your question as to why it starts at the front: that’s impossible to answer.
Because the exact same DHT hormone in men (or rather people with high testosterone compared to estrogen, doesn’t matter what chromosomes or sex you were born as) will cause the corners of the forehead to regress first, and then a spot on the crown of the head will start to bald, while the monk like ring around the sides and back will stay, whereas in women (rather people with more estrogen to testosterone) will not lose the corners of their forehead. Rather the hairloss will be nearly equally distributed all over the top of the head with a bit of focus on the part.
Sooo the only thing we know so far, is that there’s different variants of the receptor for DHT, and that hair at the back of the head produces more of the receptor that’s not as receptive to DHT.
But clearly this isn’t the only difference; because something is also affecting things, making only men lose hair at the front first, but not women.
So the very short and simplified version of the answer is: hair follicles at the back of the head (as well as beard and body hair) simply is not sensitive to the hormone that causes this type of hair loss.
Why that’s so? No idea. Why are the hair near the forehead much more sensitive to this hormone in men than in women? No idea.
Why does this even happen, or rather why does it happen so differently between people? No idea.
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