This is truly a traumatic subject for most men who discover that they are, in fact, balding. Why? Well look around. Everywhere you go–grocery stores, shopping malls, movies, and football games–you can’t find balding men with hair loss en vogue. No. Guys everywhere are living a sort of hell on earth trying to live up to the modern-day demands of having it all (staying young, healthy and great-looking). But hair loss is a fact of life for most men. And male pattern baldness accounts for 95 percent of men who are losing their hair. There are a couple of ways that hair loss men can go through diagnosis.

So what is male pattern baldness (MPB) and how do I know if I have it? Male pattern baldness is usually determined by its appearance. You can also tell by your family history. Do Dear Old Dad or Grandpa Joe have it? Basically then, if it’s in your genes and you’re following the pattern of male pattern baldness, you have MPB.

To know if you have been the unwitting victim of male pattern baldness, you can do several things. You can get an analysis from your local skin doctor (dermatologist) who will scrutinize the size of your hair follicles with a magnifying instrument (densitometer). (You start losing hair when your hair follicles shrink and ultimately close up from an inherent sensitivity to the DHT chemical you are producing.) Or you might visit a hair loss clinic for a scalp biopsy to diagnose the cause of your thinning. But before you do, you should know that this analysis is limited to analyzing poison-induced hairloss. It is most unusual to be balding from lead or arsenic poisoning in the first place. And poisoning does not lead to male pattern hair loss.

Now we can follow the typical pattern according to the well-known Norwood Scale. This is a very useful tool for diagnosing male pattern baldness and avoiding misdiagnosing it. In the beginning will see a slight receding in the front of the hairline at the top and on the sides. As that continues, there will appear another bald spot, presenting itself in the crown of the head. The hair loss will be coming at you from both ends until they meet. Hence, as the hair at the top of your scalp continues to recede, there will be a thin band of hair separating the hair loss in the front of the scalp from the bald spot at the crown until it will be totally bald, leaving one giant horseshoe-shaped bald region at the top of your head with hair only around the ears and back of your head.