Hair today gone tomorrow. Women with too much hair; men with too little of it: while we in the NHS might be best employed spending our time curing major diseases, the fact is that splitting hairs takes up a great deal of it.

Like most men, I don't fancy the idea of becoming a slap-head. Some blokes are so preoccupied by their potential fate that they end up in my surgery, desperately seeking scalp cures. Obviously, they observe the traditional male-consulting rituals by doggedly spending their allocated ten minutes discussing a runny nose.

Only as they're about to leave my office do they spill the beans, which, with men, inevitably means a problem involving their bottom (pain in), erections (inability to obtain) or, in this case, hair (disappointing lack of).

After all, they've heard that treatment is available these days. And they're right. In the fine tradition of male medical research, this was discovered by accident when the boffins noticed that certain blood pressure or prostate treatments turned men into Phil Spector.

Sadly, the results aren't always that great. And the treatment is expensive. The Government won't allow it on the NHS, quite rightly reasoning that the general public values new hips over mullets, and that men won't complain, not least because baldies don't like drawing attention to themselves.

Men shouldn't be blaming the health service anyway - it's their parents' fault. The latest research shows that male-pattern baldness is strongly inherited. (Maybe I should mention that some of the research was performed in Iceland; given the current economic climate, there can't be many Icelandic men who haven't already pulled their hair out, which probably skewed the results a bit.

At the other end of the spectrum are women. Some are blighted by excess hair which, typically, occurs on the chin, hair and nipples; that's hirsutism, if you want to get technical. Or, to get even more technical, and hairier, hypertrichosis, the term for all-over hairiness, which understandably distresses the average lady.

I go into all this detail because a clever diagnostic classification may be all I have to offer these poor women.

A precise cause is often elusive and treatment can be disappointing. True, medicines and creams sometimes help. But fairly often I end up in a consultation that is frustrating, and hairy, because I'm at the periphery of my knowledge.

I hear myself advising on electrolysis, waxing, laser, and so on. Partly it's because I really want to help. But mainly it's because I can't bring myself to refer the patient to a specialist, who spends a large part of her day painting nails and asking where you're going for your holidays.

There's a clear irony here, though. On the one hand we have men seeking to gain hair and, on the other, women wishing to lose it.

Maybe they should just get together as a support group. After all, on average, they're fine, and it might do them good to let their hair down. Well, half of them, anyway.

Not that the medical aspects of hair are limited to the basics of having too much or too little. There are some fascinating hair-based obscurities that really do need the expertise of someone more than a beautician or a pharmacist. Waardenburg's syndrome, for example, which is a chromosomal problem causing a white forelock. And trichotillomania, aka compulsive hair plucking. And tricho-bezoar: bowel obstruction caused by hair swallowing. And even kinky hair disease, a rare disorder which sounds less funny when you discover that sufferers die by the age of 3.

Thankfully, the majority of trichological problems are less tricky and certainly less sinister. And the most serious hair pathology of all is rarely seen at all these days. Which is just as well: we're conquering cancer, we're preventing heart disease, we're helping HIV, but we still have no cure for the Bobby Charlton comb-over.

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