Louis Theroux has updated fans about his journey with alopecia following the release of his latest documentary, Inside the Manosphere.
In 2023, the award-winning presenter and documentary maker, 55, first revealed he had been diagnosed with the autoimmune disease two years earlier, with alopecia being the general term for hair loss.
Since then, he has kept fans in the loop on how he has been dealing with the condition that affects hundreds of thousands of people in the UK.
In a candid new Instagram post, he explained that he hit ‘bottom’ with the disease in 2025, during the same time he was filming for his new Netflix documentary.
‘Starting in 2021 my beard started falling out, then my eyebrows, then patches appeared in my hair,’ he wrote in his caption, explaining the ill-affects reached their peak in 2025.
Then explained: ‘Me and my scalp have been enjoying some bounce-back! Regrowth in several major areas! I don’t know what to put it down to. I don’t take any medication. Nor am I careful with my diet. Anyway, I’m very grateful. I like having hair.’
What is alopecia?
As laid out by the charity, Alopecia UK, there are several different types, including alopecia areata.
The definition on the website reads:
Alopecia areata is an autoimmune condition that causes sudden, patchy hair loss on the scalp, beard, eyebrows, eyelashes, or other parts of the body. It affects people of all ages and backgrounds and can vary in severity from small round patches to complete hair loss across the scalp and body.
In the video itself, he explained that his hair in the documentary was at his ‘lowest depths hitherto’.
‘Some of you may have noticed my hair is quite weird in parts of it, especially the back, when I enter buildings a couple of times, you can see it is quite patchy.
‘So I filmed that documentary last year, and that was my hair I think at its lowest depth hitherto.’
He continued: ‘The good news is, my hair seems to be growing back, not all of it, much of it. It’s better than it was,’ he added, and repeated that he had made ‘no interventions’ despite it getting better.
‘I don’t feel like I’m less stressed, more stressed. I’m just gonna put it down to just the vague mysteries of life and the human condition. I take nothing for granted, I’m pleased that I have hair,’ he reflected, showing viewers the sides and back of his head.
‘There’s bigger things in the world than this I realise but some of you may have alopecia and it is stressful and some of you may just have questions about my alopecia so I hope I’ve answered some of them,’ he concluded.
This time last year, the famed interviewer had announced he had ‘cut the hair short because I realised the longer it was the worse it looked’.
At the time, he had said he was ‘basically preparing the way for a full head shave some time in the next 12 months’, although with the condition on the up, this may not be the case anymore.
Over the past month, Louis’s Inside the Manosphere deep dive has topped the Netflix charts and sparked fierce online discourse about the influence of ‘toxic male’ content creators over young minds.
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