PERSONAL HEALTH : Bald Facts on the Stress of Hair Loss

Going bald is a bummer. Just ask one of the 35 million American men who is.

Hair loss is a stressful process, concludes Thomas F. Cash of Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Va. He polled 145 men--103 balding, 42 not--and reported the findings in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Balding men envy hairier men, he found. Some balding men are preoccupied with wishes for more hair and worry about what others think of their appearance. The greater the hair loss, the more likely men are to be teased about it. Hardest hit psychologically are balding men under 26 and single men.

The good news? “Most bald men do cope pretty well,” says Cash, 44 and thinning. Hair loss “doesn’t appear to alter their personalities or impair their functioning in any significant way.”

Coping strategies are more plentiful than, uh, the hairs on some heads. Some men opt for potions, even surgery.

Cheerful resignation works for Dr. Richard Fleming, a Beverly Hills surgeon who pioneered an operation to rotate hair flaps to bald areas. Day after day, he describes the surgery to patients and then explains why he hasn’t had it. “I’m too bald,” he says, pointing out his lack of donor hair.

Humor helps. Members of Professor Cueball’s Bald Club for Men ((800) 252-BALD) get bumper stickers proclaiming: “Real Men Don’t Need Hair.” John T. Capps III, head honcho of the Bald Headed Men of America, lives by a simple credo: “No drugs, no rugs, no plugs.”