Hair Restoration Success Story: “It’s a Family Curse.”

It’s well-documented that hair loss for men can be a devastating experience. When male pattern baldness runs in the family, many men jokingly call it, “the family curse.” That’s what Bosley hair restoration patient Andrew Raphael called it before he went for his first consultation.

“In my family hair loss is – it’s a family curse. I was the only brother that was actually able to hold onto it longer than everybody else and I started noticing hair loss at about 27 years old,” recounts Bosley patient, Andrew Raphael.

The clinical name for male pattern baldness is “androgenic alopecia,” which can begin at any age and in varying degrees of loss. The “curse” is actually a question of genetics. Contrary to rumors and folk tales, researchers have found that while either parent can hand down the gene for baldness, men who have a bald father are more likely to show male pattern baldness than those who do not.

Bosley’s own considerable collection of data that spans 40 years and after more than 430,000 hair restoration procedures performed, most alopecia sufferers start noticing their hair loss in the mid to late twenties – often found either at the hairline or the top of the head. We’ve also found that about 50% of men show some visible hair loss by age 50.

A few years back, Andrew and his wife went to a renaissance festival. “One of the attractions was there was a guy who sticks his head out of a hole in the wall and you could throw tomatoes at him,” says Andrew. Andrew was a baseball pitcher in high school and easily hit the guy’s head squarely – several times. But while this was going on, guy was taunting him with insults. “The first thing he went for was my hair,” Andrew recalls. “He was like, ‘What are you holding onto? Scraps?’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God – it shows!’”

At first, Andrew took the insult “like a champ.” But later in the day the playful insult struck a nerve. Then his wife took a picture of him with the wind blowing just in the right direction, and all he could see of his hairline was bare scalp.

“The very next day I called Bosley and made my consultation,” says Andrew.

It wasn’t until that moment that Andrew realized how important his hair was to his sense of well-being. Back to that moment when he was 27 years old and first started to notice hair loss, he thought to himself, “Oh, my God. I can’t believe this.” Then he went on with his life, hoping to cover up the loss as much as possible. As the years went on, the balding grew. He knew that he couldn’t hide it. It was the guy at the tomato attraction who spelled it out for everyone to hear.

“I’m a product of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I’ve always had long hair,” says Andrew. “I like having hair. Losing my hair never affect me in any areas. I’m a pretty confident person but just losing – it just hurt my self-confidence. I just stopped caring about my physical appearance, put on a couple pounds and everything.”

Andrew isn’t alone.

Rather than allow the situation broil in his mind, Andrew did something. “After I got the surgery, I noticed it [Bosley] actually worked,” he says. “I went back to the gym, watched what I eat… it [Bosley] really, truly changed my life.”

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