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by zug_zug 17 days ago
Do you work out?

If so creatine is supposed to help people push themselves harder and thus build more muscle. As a side-effect of intense exercises you'll create more testosterone. Increased testosterone leads to balding.

3 comments

Sometimes when I see muscular guy with a head full of hair, I wonder what is counteracting that increased testosterone.
Sometimes people just have good hair and spend a lot of time in the gym.

Even early 90s famous era mass monsters were not all bald.

Baldness is known to be related to a bunch of things: testosterone levels, something to do with blood delivery to the scalp, deeper genetic factors.

Surprsingly, for some of the cases scalp massage is known to help.

Arnold still has a full head of hair for example.
increased testosterone from working out is probably around 10-30% long time, which is a far lower variance than natural level variance in healthy adults. i think i heard from several (claimed natural) strength and bodybuilding athletes that their total testosterone is at the lower end of the scale.

that said, natural free test levels are at a fraction of what enhanced pro bodybuilders tend to supplement, and there are mass monsters with hair. cutler, yates, ferrigno and golden era bodybuilders like schwarzenegger, zane, columbu all had full heads of hair.

Yeah, wanted to point this out. I have mid-range natural test levels, more than my dad, and don't have any signs of balding. My dad lost half of his hair by the time i was born.

Steroid consumers have al least ten times my leves, and while this is a factor indeed, in is not necessarily decisive.

The comments here are unfortunately reddit-level of (in)correctness, but if you really want to know: testosterone doesn't affect your hair in any way, what does affect it is DHT which is synthesized from testosterone by your body with 5α-Reductase and the way to significantly dial down that process is to take 5α-Reductase inhibitors (widely available and affordable medications).
That means maybe the people with great muscles and good hair have a genetic mutation that reduces the efficiency of DHT synthesis? I am assuming DHT doesn't affect muscle growth.
Firstly, "working out increases your T bro" is reddit-tier simplified. For example, if you are shredded, your testosterone (especially free testosterone due to higher SHBG) can be lower than normal. Just because someone is muscular doesn't mean they have a naturally high T.

Secondly, yes, someone might have just won a genetic lottery but 5α-Reductase inhibitors are quite popular these days.

Not what you want to hear, but genes, probably ...
Probably. Money seems to help too, though. A few Hollywood actors have miraculously reversed their male pattern baldness.
Hair transplants are probably affordable enough for 90% of people on HN.
Along with at least one tech billionaire.
Yeah I think that is the biggest factor. I got family members that are built like brick shithouse from a life since childhood of physical labor that still have their hair into their 70s, there is no way they weren't maintaining high levels of testosterone their entire life but it didn't seem to matter.
I would have thought so too. Also, I have heard oily scalp and stress to be factors detrimental to good hair but but not sure if they actually are.
Probably some combination of Minoxidil, Finastride, PRP injections, and hair transplants.
Scalp massages. No seriously
What kind of massages? I'm curious of this really works.
Not sure about the "kind", but minoxidil works by increasing blood flow to hair follicles. So if massages can have a similar effect, I don't see why it couldn't help.

I've also read that maybe massaging the muscles around the scalp to loosen it might help. E.g., a scalp that's too tight can have detrimental effects on the hair follicles.

That being said, I don't know what kind of evidence there is to support either of those things. Seems like a safe enough thing to try though.

It’s not increased testosterone in general that causes balding, it’s increased concentrations/sensitivity of testosterone byproducts in the hair follicles. There is no correlation between testosterone itself and baldness.
The effect of creatine is measurable but in no way is related to balding.

Using steroids does have the effect. And a bunch of others, most of them unhealthy.

These things might look correlated as steroid ppl often consume creatine as well as some other things.