I'm 31, and have been balding since my early 20's with a diffuse pattern.
My hairline is pretty much intact, but the center of my head is one giant diffuse bowl.
Now I never tried finasteride, or minoxidil, for fear of chemical castration (no offense to anyone) fear of the former, and just general not being a cure, collagen damaging effects of the second. I have used Nizoral shampoo and I think it did help in maintaining some of my hair but I can't be sure.
One thing I am sure is that (this is going to sound controversial to some) my most itchy and inflamed parts of my scalp (particularly the apex/crown), are the areas with the heaviest loss. My hair was an oily greasy dandruff ridden sh*t field in my teens no matter what shampoo I used and was always very frustrating. In my early 20's I started loosing large amounts of hair in the shower.
Over the years I've found a few things help with the itchy, dandruff ridden scalp. Dermarolling gets rid of dandruff straight up for almost a week, and applying castor oil and massaging it in for about 10-20 minutes (like a detumescence pinching/pressure) kind of mottion also greatly helps. I also supplement with Nizoral which I believe helps but alone is pretty useless for the itch and dandruff in my experience, but it does a good job of cleaning my scalp after all those castor oil applications.
Anyway I hope this helped somehow. Sorry it wasn't what you wanted to her maybe, but I do really believe in the link between scalp inflammation/itchyness/dandruff and diffuse balding especially.
My brother is also not balding at all and he never had dandruff in his life.
