Balding Men Root For A Miracle Product
The first ones vanished 30 years ago. Jeff Bereresford-Wood pulled a comb through his hair, stopped and leaned closer to the mirror.
He was thinning.
His scalp showed through his brown hair. His heart sank, but he fought back with hope and humor. Maybe all his hair wouldn’t fall out. Maybe it would just stay thin.
For years it did stay thin. Jeff adjusted his hair the way people change clothing styles to suit weight changes. Still, his dread never disappeared.
Then, the thinning accelerated, especially in front. Every article and advertisement for anti-balding products grabbed his attention.
Most remedies required a lifetime commitment and were expensive, sometimes thousands of dollars. Jeff, 53, refused to yield to his vanity, but he couldn’t quite shake the insecurity about his appearance.
“I asked my wife what she thought of the Michael Jordan look,” he says.
“I think he’s adorable with or without hair,” says his wife, Lisa.
Friends faced the same loss, but no one talked about it.
“Guys don’t say, ‘Hey, what are you trying, George?”’ Jeff says. “If you see a guy whose hair grew back, you don’t ask. You just wonder.”
Then last week, Lisa, who co-owns Hayden’s Northern Highlights hair salon, told Jeff that scientists for the hair care product manufacturer Nioxin Laboratories are now blaming balding on an ugly parasite.
Scientists have known for decades that the parasite lives in eyebrows and eyelashes, but apparently never connected it to baldness.
A parasite made sense to Lisa. She was one of 126 salon owners in five Northwestern states to buy an ultraviolet detection lamp to find the buggers and the special shampoo and medication Nioxin created to eliminate them.
Some salons were more skeptical.
“We know now that nothing really thickens hair, it just makes it feel thicker,” says a stylist at Coeur d’Alene’s Tomorrow’s Image. They sell Therapro to fight thin hair, but say the real answer may lie in Merck Pharmaceutical Co.’s new anti-balding pill.
Coeur d’Alene’s La Tourette studio sells Nioxin, but a stylist there says the treatment is expensive compared to Redken’s Vivagen and other over-the-counter treatments.
At $40 for 45 days for Nioxin, Jeff was interested.
Last week, a stylist waved the iron-sized detector over his hair. The purple light turned yellowish, a sign the prehistoric parasite is alive and feasting in his hair.
Jeff began using the special shampoo the next day. “If it helps, great. If it doesn’t, I have to shampoo my hair every morning anyway,” he says. “I haven’t let my vanity take over completely.”
Jeff is supposed to start growing new hair in 45 days.
He understands that dashed hopes are the most common result of anti-baldness products and begins this treatment with the right spirit.
“If I have a 10 percent chance of having hair grow back, then why not try? I have nothing to lose except more hair,” he says.
And what will he share with his friends if it works?
“Just a knowing smile,” he says.
A market is born
The opening May 9 of Kootenai County’s Farmers’ Market is nothing to miss. It’s a celebration of spring with fresh herbs and flowers, jams, breads, soaps and much more.
Everything for sale in the 60 booths is home-grown or homemade. Local musicians perform. Even the cars speeding by on U.S. Highway 95 don’t detract from the market’s peaceful atmosphere.
There’s no charge to browse, but it’s impossible to leave without buying. The market opens at 8 a.m. and closes at 1 p.m. every Saturday until early October. It’s on the corner of Prairie Avenue and Highway 95.