(HealthDay News) -- Male-pattern baldness is the most common form of baldness in men, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, and genes control baldness.

It starts with a receding hairline, and hair thinning on the crown. Eventually the hairline meets the thinning hair at the crown, leaving a horseshoe pattern of hair around the head.

At any one time, 85 percent of your hair is growing, while 15 percent is not. Each hair sits in a cavity in the skin, a follicle. Baldness occurs when the follicle shrinks.

Treatments to help baldness include medications such as minoxidil, as well as hair transplants, which remove hair from places where it is still growing and adding it to areas that are balding. Transplants can be painful and expensive, but are often successful and permanent.