Hair loss: fat smokers go bald faster

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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Smoking is harmful to health - and the head of hair can also suffer from the poisonous haze. This is especially true for smokers who are also overweight.

Researchers led by Cristina Fortes from the Istituto Dermopatico dell "Immacolata in Rome had evaluated data from 351 participants who suffered from hormonally hereditary hair loss (androgenetic alopecia). On average, the test subjects were 35.6 years old, most of them were men.

At the beginning of the study, all of them answered questions about their weight, their diet, their wine and tobacco consumption, the medication and dietary supplements they took, and their education.

Sixfold risk

The evaluation showed that overweight participants and the smokers among the test subjects were six times as likely to suffer from moderate to severe alopecia as lean non-smokers. If someone was fat and smoked on top of that, the hair loss was usually particularly pronounced.

Except for age and gender, all of the other variables surveyed had no influence on the severity of the hair loss.

Unexplained causes

Why smoking is associated with a higher risk of baldness is currently unclear. It is possible that the toxins in tobacco smoke damage the hair roots directly. Poor blood circulation in the scalp in smokers would also be a possible cause.

In addition, general inflammatory processes that are stimulated in the body by smoking could be the cause of hair loss. . The latter is also the case with overweight, because fatty tissue also sends messenger substances into the body that fuel inflammation.

Earlier studies had already shown that overweight people and smokers also turn gray earlier than slim non-smokers.

Hypersensitive hair roots

Androgenetic alopecia is the most common type of hair loss. The predisposition to this is inherited. The cause is an over-sensitivity of the hair roots to the male sex hormones (androgens).

Every second man in Germany is affected in the course of his life, this form of hair loss is much less common in women. A progressive loss of hair density with subsequent baldness is typical.

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