Losing Hair? Take Care Of Your Heart

New Study Finds More Evidence That Baldness, Heart Disease Are Linked

Tony Cappasso on health for working people and active families
Men who are going bald may be at increased risk of heart disease, especially if they also have other heart-disease risk factors, according to a report in a recent issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

Baldness and heart disease: Illustration by Karl LaunThe researchers looked at data from the Physicians' Health Study, which examined the health of more than 22,000 male U.S. doctors.

About 19,000 of the doctors were free of heart disease at the start of the study. Eleven years later, the doctors completed a health questionnaire concerning their pattern of hair loss at age 45.

According to the research team, 1,446 of the doctors had documented heart disease at the 11-year follow-up.

When compared to men of the same age who had other risk factors for heart disease but were not balding, the men with frontal baldness had a higher risk of developing heart disease.

The greater the degree of hair loss, the more the risk of developing heart disease during the course of the study. Men who also had high cholesterol or elevated blood pressure were especially susceptible, according to the research team.

The new research backs up an earlier study presented in 1998 to a meeting of the American Heart Association that concluded that men under age 45 had a 9 percent higher risk of heart disease than men with no hair loss.

But the medical establishment is not unanimous. A 1996 Massachusetts study found no correlation between baldness and heart disease.

What To Do

So what can you do to protect yourself? Don't go bald, obviously.

Just kidding. The evidence in the study means that men with receding hairlines should be extra certain to undergo thorough heart screening through their physician.

For more information on keeping your heart in shape, try these links:

    And if you've got hair loss on the brain, try these links: