barnabas's story - (Telogen Effluvium + male pattern baldness?!)

[barnabas]

I'm 22. Since I was about 12, I had a very high hairline - probably almost a NW2, and with fairly thin hair. Recently, I've noticed that I somehow got to VERY solid NW3+ territory with pretty major thinning over my whole head. I don't have any notable bald spot in back or anything, it's just a receded hairline with the rest of my hair really thinned out.

Starting last august, had about 7 months straight of extreme depression and almost constant panic attacks, and towards the end of it my hair started falling out in ridiculous volumes (it fell out from maybe february to may?). Since I was still reeling from my mental state, I didn't really take notice of this, I just remember brushing huge amounts of hair off my head every time I touched it. Since I was both not exactly paying attention to my appearance at the time and also since it was SOMEWHAT gradual (and, my hair was long, so a lot of it was covered), I didn't actually notice the damage until I got a haircut at the beginning of July. I just thought "hmm, my hairline seems like it MIGHT be receded" and basically disregarded it for a few days, but then mentioned it to my parents, and my dad said "yeah, I noticed that a while ago, but what was I going to say?" Thanks a lot, dad! Speaking of my dad, he is 56 and his hairline has not even begun to recede. His brother had pretty major male pattern baldness fairly early in his life, though, so I guess I must have gotten his genes somehow.

Anyway, this scared me into going to the doctor's so I could get a referral to a dermatologist. She said it looked like male pattern baldness to her, and that stress couldn't cause hairloss unless you'd had an operation or just been pregnant, and she ran a thyroid test on me (which came back negative), then referred me to a visiting dermatologist, who just comes by the walk-in clinic every week and isn't really involved here. He definitely didn't seem to be very professional or to want to listen to what I had to say.

When I saw him, he told me after a two second scan of my hair that it was male pattern baldness and that I would be bald really fast if I didn't get on propecia now. I tried to say something about stress and how I'd had hair falling out all over in a very short space of time, and he was just like "nope, the receded hairline means it wasn't that!" (I've had a slowly receding hairline for a few years, but during the stress-hairdeath event they receded considerably farther) and disregarded it.

SO, now I'm on propecia, which is probably a good thing cause I DID have a somewhat receded hairline before the huge explosion of hairloss in the last few months, but I remain fairly convinced that I had a stress-induced case of telogen effluvium, and it's unfortunate that the derm I saw was such a jerk and clearly just wanted to get me out of there as fast as possible so I can't be sure.

So, for the last few weeks I've been using nizoral shampoo twice a week, and taking propecia (the normal kind, this derm obviously didn't know about splitting proscar, and neither did I when I visited him - I just told him I was a poor college student and he said BE AWARE PROPECIA IS REALLY EXPENSIVE AND YOU CAN'T STOP IT EVER!). I haven't noticed any improvements or anything yet, and I'm really extremely worried about this whole thing. I am not 100% sure it was Telogen Effluvium or not, and from what I hear, if you have Telogen Effluvium and are susceptible to male pattern baldness, there's a fair chance your hair will grow back miniaturized in the areas that are affected by DHT. So there's not really any way to know if my hair will thicken again by itself and my hairline will go back to being a NW2, or if I'm just screwed and should attack with topicals. I really don't want to start rogaine until I'm sure that the hair is not going to come back by itself/with propecia, but apparently I have no way of knowing this for months and months. And if it IS just an abrupt massive acceleration of male pattern baldness, then I could very well lose the rest of the front of my hair before the propecia even kicks in! It's all really quite scary to me. Anyway, any feedback on this? Ways of telling if there was Telogen Effluvium going on or not? The top of my head might still be shedding, but not really...I just find a few hairs on my pillow in the morning and a few more fall out in the shower, but this is probably normal. They're exclusively full-length hairs instead of miniaturized ones, too, if that matters - as far as I can tell, the only small, miniaturized hairs I have are in the middle of the receded hairline areas and a couple on my temples.

I don't have very good before - after pictures cause my hair was generally long and fell over my hairline, masking the recession, and I also just hate having my picture taken so they're of pretty spread out times (I have some from this july, and then before that the last I have are from january, and then I have some from about a year ago that sort of show what recession had occurred then). I can post some of them anyway if they'll help.

Sorry for the HUGE post, I was an english major and thus am used to having to write 20 page papers. ;_;

 

[CCS]

so many terminal hairs falling out at once is a little suspicious.

read about Telogen Effluvium on http://www.altbaldspot.com
it has every type of hair loss there. did you lose hair on the sides of your head?

you should use diluted follegen spray on your head. people here will tell you how to use it. it is cheaper than nizoral, though you should use both.

that is all I can think of now

 

[barnabas]

so many terminal hairs falling out at once is a little suspicious.

read about Telogen Effluvium on http://www.altbaldspot.com
it has every type of hair loss there. did you lose hair on the sides of your head?

you should use diluted follegen spray on your head. people here will tell you how to use it. it is cheaper than nizoral, though you should use both.

that is all I can think of now

So many terminal hairs falling out at once is a little suspicious of what? Telogen Effluvium? Thanks for the link, I read all the info on Telogen Effluvium...it really does seem pretty much impossible to tell what you have without a biopsy, and since I just wasn't paying attention to it while it was in the more extreme phase it's a little bit late for that. I honestly could not tell you if I was losing hair on the sides/back of my head or not - they are definitely fairly thin (I can see lots of scalp if they are 'spiked' away from my head) but I dunno if they're QUITE as bad as the top - it's close. At this point, though, they don't seem to be shedding much at all, while the top might be very slowly.

Is folligen spray something like minoxidil, where you have to use it for the rest of your life or the hairs it helped to grow fall out? Or does it just promote growth without the new hairs being dependent on it? If this WAS a case of Telogen Effluvium and my hair will grow back by itself sooner or later, I don't really want to be on some topical that it turns out I didn't need and think I have to continue using for the rest of my life...that's what's holding me back from minoxidil. I just wish I had a time machine so I could see if it really was Telogen Effluvium and my hairs can grow back without any additional help

 

[CCS]

what is the treatment for Telogen Effluvium? i'm asking because you should not worry if there is no treatment, and if there is, you should be considering it.

i don't think your hairs would fall out as fast after stopping folligen as they would after stoping minoxidil. folligen tells your skin to repair itself, and it interfers with the attack on follicles.

also, minoxidil fall out brings you down to where you would have been without it, according to a graph bryan posted today in a different thread. it is a huge loss, but not lower than what you would have had otherwise.

 

[Guest]

male pattern baldness + Telogen Effluvium is definetly possible, I am pretty sure that I am suffering of both types and I was basically confirmed by my dermatologist yesterday. You can read it in my story.

Treatment for Telogen Effluvium: Eliminating the causes that lead to Telogen Effluvium! Sounds easy, but it isn´t........

 

[tchehov]

Hi Barnabas

Your story is very interesting - I feel the same thing happened to me - male pattern baldness kickstarted by Telogen Effluvium.

My hair was thin but acceptable and I thought I'd grow it out to thicken it up a little. That helped and I just kept growing it, but when it reached shoulder length it started falling out all over the place. The falling hairs were thick, healthy hairs with bulb ends and I lost thousands of them - and all within the space of about 3 months. Few have grown back since.
It's diffuse thinning, now taking on a distinct Ludwig pattern - my hairline is pretty much intact which makes it look even more ridiculous.

My understanding of male pattern baldness is that it's a gradual process over years where the hair which is affected by DHT grows back thinner and thinner each cycle until it stops growing altogether. I didn't experience that, but it's almost impossible to get a diagnosis of anything else apart from male pattern baldness. Maybe I'm just in denial, I don't know.

I started minoxidil two weeks ago because I gave up on the idea that the problem will eventually correct itself. I'm pretty stressed out a lot of the time, just a natural worrier and I can't see that changing so I think I need minoxidil to encourage regrowth. But it's hateful to be stuck on it for life if the problem was Telogen Effluvium.

Good luck

 

[ANDREW_J_I]

^im a worrier too. what can we do??

 

[tchehov]

^im a worrier too. what can we do??

All that is visible clings to the invisible,
the audible to the inaudible,
the tangible to the intangible;
the thinkable to the unthinkable.

But don't quote me on that.

 

[Guest]

My hair was thin but acceptable and I thought I'd grow it out to thicken it up a little. That helped and I just kept growing it, but when it reached shoulder length it started falling out all over the place. The falling hairs were thick, healthy hairs with bulb ends and I lost thousands of them - and all within the space of about 3 months. Few have grown back since.
It's diffuse thinning, now taking on a distinct Ludwig pattern - my hairline is pretty much intact which makes it look even more ridiculous.

So if someone with male pattern baldness grows their hair out long then it will fall out?

 

[tchehov]

^im a worrier too. what can we do??

All that is visible clings to the invisible,
the audible to the inaudible,
the tangible to the intangible;
the thinkable to the unthinkable.

But don't quote me on that.

Sorry, forgot to add -

the growable and the ungrowable.

 

[tchehov]

My hair was thin but acceptable and I thought I'd grow it out to thicken it up a little. That helped and I just kept growing it, but when it reached shoulder length it started falling out all over the place. The falling hairs were thick, healthy hairs with bulb ends and I lost thousands of them - and all within the space of about 3 months. Few have grown back since.
It's diffuse thinning, now taking on a distinct Ludwig pattern - my hairline is pretty much intact which makes it look even more ridiculous.

So if someone with male pattern baldness grows their hair out long then it will fall out?

I honestly don't know, Jayman, I was just giving my own experience. I know I have male pattern baldness, but I think it was accelerated by two things - Telogen Effluvium due to stress, and not properly grooming and looking after my hair when I did grow it long. Don;t let that stop you from growing yours out...

 

[CCS]

inproper grooming or cleaning does not cause hair loss, or there would be a lot of bald bums on the street.

the kind of stress that causes hair loss is not emotional stress, but stress from a surgery or car crash or pregnancy.

 

[barnabas]

the kind of stress that causes hair loss is not emotional stress, but stress from a surgery or car crash or pregnancy.

1) There's a LOT of disagreement about this on descriptions of Telogen Effluvium I found. Those are some listed as "the most common" but most descriptions say that in many cases the cause is not even able to be determined, or that it CAN result from severe emotional trauma.

2) What mechanism causes your hair to fall out from a car crash (or most surgeries) that aren't present in severe, prolonged emotional stress?

I have an unrelated question, too - if you are already on propecia, and hold off on the folligen or minoxidil for a year or two, will you ultimately not be able to regrow as much hair using them as if you'd started the folligen or minoxidil immediately? Or doesn't it matter so much? I'm comfortable with the current state of my hair as if I have 2 inches+ on top I can totally cover the recession, and it doesn't seem to be deteriorating at any noticeable speed anymore, so I am fine with just waiting several months to see if it actually was Telogen Effluvium before starting any additional treatments, unless waiting will make it impossible for me to regrow hair that it would have been possible to regrow had I started now.

And yes, I know you stop Telogen Effluvium by removing the trigger - I've been better since about march, and I've been entirely fine since about two months ago. So, based on the general estimate of 6-12 months for hair to start coming back from the time the Telogen Effluvium ended, I guess I'll probably have to wait until at least the end of the year to be able to tell for sure

 

[CCS]

most of the hair regrown by minoxdil does not matter when you start it. If you can grow hair 1 inch, minoxidil grows it two inches; if 1/2 inch, then 2 inches. I don't know the exact ratio, and just made those numbers up. From a small sample size study I saw, I think it increases hair number and mass by 30%. I think the main difference it works better on people with more hair is 2 --> 4 is a bigger change than 1 --> 2. It is like Topik, but takes longer and is real hair.

However, to a small extent, it does protect blood vessels from damage as well, I read. Long term use of small amounts like 2% may keep your hairs alive longer if propecia is not enough, by protecting the blood vessels.

Copper peptides are different. They don't stimulate growth, I think, but stimulate repair and do other stuff. Whereas minoxidil starts growing hair faster, copper peptides repair stuff, and tricomin, in a 6 month clinical study, regrew about as much hair as 2% minoxidil. I heard in the long run (I don't know where this came from. Perhaps speculation, perhaps Bryan posted a study I have not seen) that it regrows more hair than minoxidil because it is stronger at repairing and protecting than minoxidil is. CP's and minoxidil work in different ways, and are sinergistic. The actual repair is smaller than the fast hair growth would imply, but it accumulates, whereas the hair growth of minoxidil disappears uppon stopping. No longer using copper peptides would mean no more protection, and lead to descline in hair, but not nearly as fast as the minoxidil fall off.

 

[CCS]

I forgot: did you state how you got over your depression? I forgot how I got over mine. I remember a few pieces, but I just see that it is almost gone now.

 

[barnabas]

I forgot: did you state how you got over your depression? I forgot how I got over mine. I remember a few pieces, but I just see that it is almost gone now.

Well, this might sound ridiculous to someone that doesn't know much about the subject, but first I was depressed cause I did a TON of research into oil supplies and learned all about peak oil and since half the info on that comes from nutjobs and another 48% comes from people who figure it will only ALMOST be the end of modern society, I was convinced the world was soon going to end for a few months (that was when I had all the panic attacks and hardly slept, etc). Eventually I just read some convincing arguments from the non-doomsday people and then completely cut off all sources of info on anything related to that, so I stopped being upset. THEN almost instantly I had a really, really ugly breakup with my girlfriend of over a year, which caused more depression and inability to sleep and massive stress (but, no panic attacks this time). I mostly got over that after a couple months, cause that's just how things work if you don't have to see your ex ever. SO I figure if I did have Telogen Effluvium and it was triggered by emotional trauma the trigger has been gone either since about the time we broke up (when the more severe trauma ended) or, at the latest, a couple months after.

I might have to look into getting folligen spray - what's the best source?

 

[CCS]

It is $29.90 everywhere. Even this site sells it.

 

[tchehov]

inproper grooming or cleaning does not cause hair loss, or there would be a lot of bald bums on the street.

the kind of stress that causes hair loss is not emotional stress, but stress from a surgery or car crash or pregnancy.

College, do you think malnutrition could cause hair loss?

 

[CCS]

severe malnutrition DOES cause TEMPRARY hair loss, but not in the male pattern. It would fall out all over your head or maybe in random patches. Once you get a multi-vitamin or some food, it grows back in 6 months. If your hair falls out do to malnutrition, you probably will have some other bodily issues too.

 

[barnabas]

3 month update - propecia maintained my hair for 3 months, I think, but the last couple of weeks there's been an increase in shedding (my hair was really thin already so it's not like handfuls of hair, but it has gotten worse), and my hairline is visibly receding in front. I've lost at least a couple millimeters just in two weeks! It's horrible. I am just about to switch to finpecia, too, so that makes me even MORE stressed out over this, but from what I hear on this site it is just as good as the 'real' stuff.

I've also been on folligen, which I've put on my temples and hairline for a bit more than 2 months now.

I have a few questions - one is, if you lose full, dark, healthy hairs, can they be gone forever (healthy hair straight to vellus)? Or does the miniaturization process always go in steps, with the hair regrowing gradually thinner and thinner until it finally reaches vellus stage? I'm really freaked out about this, cause my front is getting REALLY, REALLY visibly worse over these last two weeks. Now you can clearly see my scalp through my hair even when it's dry and not under bright light. My other question is in regards to regrowth - it's preceded by sheds, isn't it? But whenever I hear reports of people getting regrowth they say things like "my hair shed more but it didn't LOOK like it was getting any worse."

Basically, I'm not happy right now.