Growing up, I always heard my mother say “You shouldn’t always wear a hat or you will go bald.” Of course like most things my mother said I ignored her, I wore (and still wear) a hat everyday, but what if she was right? One of the oldest beliefs passed down from generation to generation was that wearing a hat would cause hair loss. This idea is highly questionable, first off: by what mechanism could this even happen? And Second: Why hat’s and not just regular wear and tear on your hair? In this blog I went looking for the answer as to whether hats could cause baldness.

The two variables in this problem are easy to identify: the x variable here is: Wearing a hat; the y variable is: baldness or loss of hair. So was there enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis that: wearing a hat does nothing to induce hair loss? Not exactly. In his book, “Baldness, A Social History”, Kenny Segrave discussed where this idea originated. You can read the full book here. Segrave spoke about many doctors, including Chevalier Jackson and Dr. A.F.A King, in the early 1900s who said balding was directly attributed to lack of circulation in the head and that tight hats were to blame. The many men argued that tight hats cut off circulation to the head, and this caused men to go bald. The pressure on the blood vessels cut off nutrients getting to the hair and then killed the hair, which caused men to lose it. The men argued that since women never wore tight hats, that is why they were not balding at the frequency of men and that this was a huge issue the Dr.’s always brought up. Segrave later described that once the hormonal and genetic basis for baldness was established, the idea of hats causing baldness faded from accepted medical thought and into “American Folklore”.

So we know where the idea comes from, but what about this “Folklore” in our world today, does it have any truth? This idea was discussed in detail HERE in an article found online. In this article, the idea of wearing a hat and loosing hair was attributed to a hair loss called “Traction Alopecia”, or some people even thought it contributed to “AGA” (Or male pattern baldness). First AGA was examined. To be brief, AGA is caused by a hormone that affects the base of the hair follicle called papilla. The hormone combines with other elements in the body to kill the follicle and cause hair to fall out. So could wearing a hat cause this? Absolutely not: “So now that we understand more or less why people go bald with AGA, back to the question at hand- “Does wearing hats contribute to AGA?” The wearing of a hat will not affect testosterone levels, thus affecting DHT production. Putting on a brain bucket will also not affect the PGD2 gene. The result: no hat wearing problems with AGA.” Alopecia is the scientific word for hair loss, and the traction comes from pulling the hair tight. While the mechanism could be in place if you are wearing a tight hat, the article stated that it simply was not possible for a hat to pull your hair that tight. The article discussed this in detail: “On the surface, it appears that wearing a hat could cause the tension needed to damage the follicle. However, research done on the subject tells a different story. Dr. Aman Samrao of the Harbor-UCLS Medical Center studies traction alopecia and he states “hats don’t provide nearly enough tension to cause alopecia. I don’t see how a hat could cause that, unless you’re wearing it so tightly that it’s pulling”. So unless you’re a masochist who likes wearing your hat so tightly it causes headaches and hair pulling, you wont get traction alopecia from sporting your favorite team’s headgear.” So could wearing a hat cause you to get AGA or Traction Alopecia? according to scientists, no.

Conclusion: So was my mother right? could wearing a hate make me go bald? It seems highly unlikely. Like any wives tale or American Folklore it seems like more of a tale than a fact. The idea that it could cause AGA is impossible and non-relevant because hats cannot cause hormonal changes, and there wouldn’t be enough force pulling your hair back to cause traction alopecia, so no it really couldn’t cause baldness. People still may argue: “Well I always see bald people in hats so what if you are wrong?” I argue that reverse causation could be a huge factor here. If you go bald, then you would want to wear a hat to prevent others from seeing that. I have many relatives struggling with hair loss, and hats are a popular choice in apparel for them among other people I see in hats. Reverse causation is definitely a plausible explanation for this. So in short, if you are worried about your hat causing you to go bald: don’t. Wear your favorite hat with pride and don’t worry about loosing any sleep (or hair) over it!