Prince William has been criticised over his hair loss by the Hollywood star Rob Lowe.
Lowe said the 36-year-old royal’s baldness must have been ‘traumatic’ and he wondered why British men set such a ‘low bar’ over their appearance.
As regular readers of this blog will know, the Duke of Cambridge suffers from his family’s baldness gene.
There is a powerful gene running right through the Windsor males.
It started with Prince Philip, was passed on to his son Prince Charles and now Prince William and also his 34-year-old brother Prince Harry are showing similar signs of hair loss.
Poor Prince William has the strongest baldness gene in the family because he is already balder than both his father and his grandfather.
Rob Lowe said: “Can we talk about William?
“I mean the future king of your country let himself lose his own hair! So when I say British men set a very low bar.
“Honestly, one of the great traumatic experiences of my life was watching Prince William lose his hair. But he’s going to be the King of England.”
Rob Lowe suggested that William could have taken a pill to combat his baldness.
He said: “And there’s a pill!
“The first glimmer that a single hair of mine was going to fall out, I was having stuff mainlined into my veins.”
It was sugggested to Lowe that Prince William perhaps was not aware of medications to treat hair loss.
Lowe added: “No, but can’t someone make him?”
Lowe is right that there are medically proven treatments for hair loss – the ‘pill’ he referred to is called Finasteride, also known as Propecia, and it is prescribed to some patients at Crown Clinic by our consultant hair transplant surgeon Asim Shahmalak.
Finasteride won’t help patients to grow any new hair – so it would not be a lot of use to Prince William with his advanced male pattern baldness.
What Finasteride does is stop men from losing any more of their natural hair.
It is often prescribed in the early stages of baldness. It is also used after a hair transplant – either a FUE (follicular unit extraction) or FUT (follicular unit transplantation) procedure.
All transplanted hair is permanent but there is still a risk that a hair transplant patient will carry on losing more of their natural hair.
That is why Finasteride can be used in dual strategy (surgery and medication) to combat hair loss.
Sadly, there is not a lot Prince William can do now to combat his hair loss. If he were to have a hair transplant, there would not be enough donor hair to cover the bald patches.
He is doing what many men with advance male pattern baldness do and that is to wear their hair short or shaved to disguise their hair loss.
Rob Lowe’s advice would have been better directed at Prince Harry. His hair loss is at a far earlier stage than his big brother.
There have been signs in the last year that Harry’s hair loss has become more aggressive with some noticeable bald patches appearing recently.
Harry would benefit from the use of Finasteride and a hair transplant could cover up the growing bald patch around his crown which is now spreading to the front of his hairline.
Prince Harry should check out some of Crown Clinic’s celebrity hair transplant clients to see how his hair could be benefit from an FUE procedure. Coronation Street star Jack P Shepherd, Homes Under the Hammer presenter Martin Roberts,
Celebrity Big Brother star Ben Jardine, soccer pundit Didi Hamann and Googlebox star Chris Butland-Steed have all had FUE procedures with Dr Shahmalak.
TV doctor Christian Jessen has had two FUT procedures with Dr Shahmalak.