Hair loss is on the minds of Ilford residents more than anywhere else in the UK according to their Google searches.

Analysis of Google Trends data over the past five years shows that the terms “hair loss” and “hair transplant” are most popularly searched in Ilford.

This is followed by the west London town of Hayes while the city of Birmingham comes third.

Ali Salih, 32, has been cutting hair his whole life and owns Goodfellas barbers with branches in Belgrave Road, Ilford, and Hackney.

Responding to the figures, he said: “I can say that it is probably 70-to-80pc to do with the water in London.

“Probably when people go on holiday they realise their hair loss is going slowly down.

He added: “It is not good. They make it clean by some chemical which is not good for the hair.”

He also said that his Ilford clientele appear much more fastidious in their hair upkeep.

“Ilford boys get more haircuts than anywhere else while people in Hackney come once a month or twice a month,” he said.

“In Ilford they go out all the time and have dates and meetings.”

The Google Trends stats analyse the popularity of certain search terms before giving it a value of between zero and 100.

In Ilford, that value is 100 for both “hair loss” and “hair transplants”.

Nationwide, searches for hair transplants have burgeoned in the last five years - going from 31 in July 2014 to 72 in April this year.

Hair surgeon Dr Bessam Farjo, who carried out the research, attributes the increase in interest to a change in attitudes as more celebrities opt for surgical hair restoration.

“It’s no longer the ‘embarrassing’ procedure it once was,” he said.

He added: “You can suffer thinning hair due to illness, stress, weight loss and even an iron deficiency.

“But the most the most common cause of hair loss is a hereditary condition called male or female ‘pattern baldness’ - what’s known as ‘Androgenetic alopecia’ and is simply down to genetics.”