I was 30 when I asked my barber if he thought I was going bald. "If you keep worrying about it, you will go bald," he replied.

The truth was that from around 28 I had been noticing, in certain lights, a certain thinning on top of what was previously a luxuriant head of hair. Most of the time I pretended to myself that it wasn't happening, but, by the time I spoke to my barber, there was no avoiding it.

My hair loss was not the result of the stress of worrying about it. It was not a result of having sprayed my hair like a member of Duran Duran during my teens, nor was it a result of a nutrient deficiency. Male pattern hair loss is a result of hormones and a genetic inheritance. My hair follicles have been programmed to become sensitive to the changing hormonal activity in my scalp and my body is slowly rejecting them.

Actor James Nesbitt recently stepped out with his new head of hair, revealing that his new look was all down to the two transplants he had received at the Hair Transplant clinic in Blackrock.

"Anyone who says it doesn't get them down is lying," confessed the Northern Irish actor.

Surprisingly, though, the average age of a man who comes to see Dr Patrick Treacy for surgical hair replacement treatment at the Ailesbury Clinic is between 18 and 26.

"They tend to be very distressed by the fact that they're balding," he says. "Hair is a secondary sexual characteristic in terms of attracting a mate, and the type of people we see are desperately worried they might not meet a partner, or they might lose their partner. It's a really big deal for them. We provide a lot of relief because we're changing lives, really."

The second set of men visiting Dr Treacy have grown past the desperate stage. "They tend to have a bit of money behind them and are doing it for aesthetic reasons," he explains. "Many of them have been through other treatments that didn't work."

Google 'hair loss treatment' and you'll get over one and a half million results and a bamboozling array of products and treatments, each promising to promote growth with money-back guarantees. But while Dr Treacy says that some medical regrowth products can have some effect, they are essentially made redundant by the strides made in surgical treatments.

Lotions such as Rogaine, which contains a medication called Minoxidil, are available from pharmacists and help slow down the process of hair loss. "The problem is that you have to keep on using the product, or it will stop being effective," says Dr Treacy.

The Ailesbury Clinic prescribes an FDA-approved drug called Propecia, first developed to shrink enlarged prostate glands. Researchers noticed it also helped grow hair, so a lower-dose formulation was developed for hair loss.

In clinical studies, approximately 20pc of men taking the one milligram daily dose of Propecia grew moderate to heavy amounts of new hair after one year. Another 30pc had less cosmetically apparent growth. These numbers inched up slightly when used for two years.

Propecia and Minoxidil (Rogaine) work best in men who are losing hair on the top of their heads (instead of a receding hairline or frontal hair loss). Minoxidil also may lead to new hair production, but results are variable because of individual inconsistencies in committing to a twice-daily programme of applying the solution.

While the medical establishment has been looking for ways to treat hair loss since the dawn of chemistry, the world of alternative medicine has also invested in the area. There are a host of herbal treatments, most containing zinc, magnesium, iron, vitamin E and other substances in various combinations, which might help slow the process down but won't stop it altogether.

Homeopaths treat balding, as do acupuncturists. Laser technologists, who more famously have found ways to get rid of unwanted hair, have also come up with the laser comb, a device said to stimulate the follicles, but some patients get better results than others, and compliance is a big issue.

The latest kind of surgery is the way to go, according to Dr Treacy. "One of the more recently prevalent surgical treatments is that you get a strip of hair cut out of the back of your scalp and it's moved up front," he says. "It's a hugely expensive treatment that requires an overnight stay and, depending on the stage of balding the patient is at, is not always fully effective.

"We said there has to be something better than this, so we looked at the work of John Cole, who discovered that if you transplant single follicles on their own that they will grow. This technique has been perfected, which now means that nobody ever has to go bald again."

In July of this year, the Ailesbury Clinic made headlines when it was reported that Calum Best had checked for surgical treatment.

While Dr Treacy is reluctant to reveal the details, he confirms the reports were true and that he's happy with his patient's progress.

A full treatment, which includes harvesting and relocating 4,500 individual hair follicles over five (painless) hours, will set you back €4,000. Dr Treacy says the results are more than worth the cost.

"You could spend a fortune on medical treatments that only work to a certain extent depending on where you are in your life, or you could have this treatment at a time in your life when you are beginning to go bald, and not ever need to take medical treatments at all.

"If somebody was dying of cancer you wouldn't wait until they were almost dead before treating them. That's the way we look at it here. Depending on what stage in your life you come at, you might need one treatment, two treatments or three."

I learned to accept my balding scalp and did what millions of other men have done -- shaved my head.

But Dr Treacy says that men are desperate to get a full, shining head of hair back again.

"We're flat out all the time," he says. "We've patients coming in from all over the world, from big film stars to ordinary guys on the street. But the great thing is that nowadays we have the technology to really help people, to make baldness a thing of the past."