Covid-male pattern baldness link (overactive immune system)

[JaneyElizabeth]

I don't see men over 40 getting their juvenile hairlines back on full blown HRT either.

I don't know all of the ages. @bridgeburn was pretty close to achieving that at 27. I have seen several pics of guys just out of puberty or their teens who have gotten their juvenile locks back. I am 56 and getting closer to my 18 year old hairline but I balded early. I had artifacts of both diffuse thinning and male pattern baldness. When I say juvenile hairline in this context, it's not exactly the same because the hair is much nicer and the hairline is oval as my body appears to "believe" that it is repairing female pattern baldness in terms of there being improvement that is noticeable, pretty much everywhere and not only in the crown or temples.

Many MtF's have claimed that hair regrowth is impossible even on HRT but this is clearly false. We just don't have good studies indicating what promotes hair growth/regrowth but it appears that maintaining female adult T and E2 levels works. I did have some incremental hair results before this point doing DIY, but not much and it certainly wasn't cosmetically significant. I don't want to jinx myself or promote false hopes but I just will keep posting every week or two. Even pics from two months ago are quite different.

 

[czecha]

I think very broadly speaking male pattern baldness is the end result of our bodies keeping us male in an estrogenic environment.
Nowadays it‘s, depending on race and genetic+epigenetic factors a matter of time until your body has to decide between gyno/female pattern fat storage but having hair or baldness but androgenic bodies.
Only the genetic white elite gets to keep both as of now, but it’s a matter of time, probably less than 2 generations, until old chads are going extinct through epigrnetic factors.
We have all seen old footage of androgenic men with hair like horses. Some of these men had much harder lifes, but no estrogenic environment, and no serotonin inducing environment with all the emf‘s, instant gratification etc
Generally speaking again, what grows hair on male scalps will also grow cancer in much higher probability
There is probably some anti cancer mechanism in male pattern baldness. It’s as if our bodies leave reproduction stage (having hair to attract) and enter survival stage
Dht fights off estrogenic stress. If you embrace that stress instead, you keep hair, get boobs and are more likely to get cancer
The tipping point where men can’t have everything anymore gets lower and lower

 

[inmyhead]

I think very broadly speaking male pattern baldness is the end result of our bodies keeping us male in an estrogenic environment.
Nowadays it‘s, depending on race and genetic+epigenetic factors a matter of time until your body has to decide between gyno/female pattern fat storage but having hair or baldness but androgenic bodies.
Only the genetic white elite gets to keep both as of now, but it’s a matter of time, probably less than 2 generations, until old chads are going extinct through epigrnetic factors.
We have all seen old footage of androgenic men with hair like horses. Some of these men had much harder lifes, but no estrogenic environment, and no serotonin inducing environment with all the emf‘s, instant gratification etc
Generally speaking again, what grows hair on male scalps will also grow cancer in much higher probability
There is probably some anti cancer mechanism in male pattern baldness. It’s as if our bodies leave reproduction stage (having hair to attract) and enter survival stage
Dht fights off estrogenic stress. If you embrace that stress instead, you keep hair, get boobs and are more likely to get cancer
The tipping point where men can’t have everything anymore gets lower and lower

This theory doesn't make any sense.

 

[czecha]

This theory doesn't make any sense.

The cancer paradox nobody points out is precisely that men who age well and stay young looking are more likely to get it
Cancer doesn’t grow on walking corpses. It grows on men with high dna methylation (replicating their youthful dna) and every attempt to methylate increases cancer risk in carcinogenic environments

 

[JaneyElizabeth]

The cancer paradox nobody points out is precisely that men who age well and stay young looking are more likely to get it
Cancer doesn’t grow on walking corpses. It grows on men with high dna methylation (replicating their youthful dna) and every attempt to methylate increases cancer risk in carcinogenic environments

In terms of prevalence, hair loss seems to have always occurred in white and Semitic males. We have recountings of rulers and emperors like Julius Caesar going bald and their being ashamed and teased about it. It might have occurred less though before industrialization. Napoleon was sensitive about his hairline. The prophet Elisha threw curses upon anyone making comments about his hairline. In this context, Jesus's hair as normally rendered probably is highly unusual. We also have seen essentially forever, depictions of people from the Middle East who seem to have huge beards and very little scalp hair.

St. Paul commented essentially that scalp hair was for females and their crowning physical feature. Even the head coverings often used by male Jews known as yarmulkes, might be related to baldness and not flashing the deity with one's naked crown but this might be taking a point too far since St. Paul writing to the church in Corinth states the opposite in one of the most sexist and confounding chapters of the Bible:

"Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. 2Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you. 3But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. 4Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. 5But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven. 6For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. 7For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man."I Corinthians 11:4.

Paul doesn't stop here though but continues with more inarticulate and foolish spouting of his personal vision for Christianity. Remember there was no official church at the time to counter his claims:

I Corinthians 11:7-10:

For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man. For this reason the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.

Hey, Paul! Got any references for that aside from your own letter?

I have no idea how angels relate to hair loss vel non but Paul seems pretty confident in his bewildering conjectures. Of course, his main goal often forgotten by history was to evangelize without their being any need for circumcision and this was the main issue among early church followers, especially James, Peter and Paul.

St. Paul to me, seems to be an arrogant jerk who articulates his own beliefs and attempts to paint them as deriving from nature or from God and not from Goddess. "Be ye followers of me?" It's all very self-centered and androgenic from someone who just loves talking about himself all of the time.

Back to science, never say never, but I doubt a general baldness cure without HRT. The precise means by which balding and beard growth occur seems to be delicate. Perhaps for males, increasing anagen is a better goal and it is a pseudo-way of appearing to have regrowth. Estrogen levels have been rising for males but usually via synthetics with an estrogen-like structure. Like phytochemicals, I don't think that we know the effects since both chemicals in the water and eating phytochemicals might actually crowd out estradiol, making situations worse or for MtF's perhaps, making them feminize more slowly if at all, not more so.

Your cancer warning might be overstated but the youth-promoting aspects of adding testosterone (in the short term) or estrogen in the long-term appear to be substantial to the point of violating or reversing normal aspects of ageing. I haven't done before and after skin pulls or anything but essentially everything except bone and teeth feels re-matrixed. Scars may spontaneously heal. Muscle decrease in the neck, might actually improve hair loss and make it easier to turn one's head without pain. Fat is re-distributed; collagen increases might take place. It's the closest thing to Ponce de Leon that I could ever dream of and the benefits even beyond scalp hair are staggering to me. I am thrilled about hair regrowth but HRT can be mind-blowing for some and kind of eh for others. Some of this probably has to do with skeletal size and the inability of estrogen to shrink bone while smaller folks haven't had their chests, shoulders, faces and other areas grow away from the pubertal/female oval face shape and muscular pattern.

Goddess bless.

 

[WMQ]

You might be on to something. A lot of docs are already speculating, that hair loss at young age is linked to some health issues, that we don't see yet. If you think about it, if you see a young dog losing fur it indicates you, that it is sick. Autoimmune diseases are more and more common at younger and younger age and so is balding. I know , that one Doctor told me theory, that balding is a sign of autoimmune problems. This study points links between inflammatory bowl diseases and balding: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4284339/
I have friend who has IBD confirmed and he was balding already at 19. Now he is always for some time on budesonid and he claims, that his hair always improves dramatically, while he takes it. And I can confirm his hair is better than when he was 20. There might be some link to it, because I had best results while on big 3 when I had inhalator with corticosteroids to trigger asthma. Since I am off my hair is slowly fading away even while on minoxidil, finasteride, dutasteride and nizoral. Pitty, that I cant get the inhalator again to try if it would improve my situation....

I find this plausible. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Ankylosing Spondylitis not too long ago and I might actually have early IBD too (waiting for test results. There is a correlation between AS and IBD). With the diagnosis in hand and looking back the first symptoms I had started almost exactly the same time my baldness started (when I was a teenager) and my AS and hair loss are almost always correlated in intensity over the years. When my AS treatment was working earlier, I also noticed less inflammation in my scalp (was definitely not expecting it so it probably wasn't in my head).

To anyone who is interested in diving deeper though, the root of it all could actually be in the gut flora. Since I got my diagnosis I have read a lot of this subject and to oversimplify this theory model: to the genetically susceptible individuals, a dysbiosis in your gut flora could cause certain gut bacteria to overgrow and offense the gut which turns out to be the first defense of human immune system if you really think about it. The immune system try to eliminate those bacteria but aberrantly attacks certain tissues like gut/joint/skin (corresponding to IBD, arthritis/AS, psoriasis & lupus, etc.). A possible reason could be that in these genetically susceptible people there is a structural resemblance between components of those afflicted organs and the antigens of the offending bacteria.

If you dig down deep enough into this forum's dust covered histories, I remember (but couldn't find anymore) a guy who once came here and claimed that by treating his colitis with a fecal transplant (you give the gut flora of a healthy person contained in his stool to a patient with significant gut flora dysbiosis to help reset his system, yes it's gross but a proven treatment, google it), he got his male pattern baldness cured as well. I kind of laughed at that thread back then but it all makes sense to me now.

I am trying this diet called Specific Carbs Diet for my Ankylosing Spondylitis. It's a diet that's primarily used for IBD people with growing evidences, but a lot of people with other autoimmune diseases benefit from it as well so I thought it wouldn't hurt to try in my situation. How it works is that you eliminate all complex carbs (sugar, starch, ...) from your diet and only consume monosaccharides for carbs, and because the monosaccharides are readily absorbed by the small intestine and doesn't trickle down into the colon like more complex carbs do, this is going to "starve out" the overgrown gut flora which primarily reside in the colon, and help the microbiome reset. Too early to tell but two weeks in I noticed a significant reduction in my face/scalp sebum, so I wonder if this would do something to baldness as well. Not to keep my hopes high but curious to see.

These are purely my anecdotal stories but I'm posting this in case there is any truth in it. Check my past posts to see for how long I have been involved in this forum and how I'm not a random rookie baldie who started balding three months ago and got himself crazy buying into random internet "alternative" therapies.

 

[Loife]

Its not bacteria its fungi we need to focus on in my opinion. I actually think its linked to diabetes as well, the candida breaks through the gut wall and travels around the body setting up in glands (pancreas being one, prostate maybe?), fungi thrives in high sugar environments which is why I believe it sabotages the insulin which then makes our cells attack and creates this high sugar environment. Just a theory but it makes sense.