Finally, Success: A Story Of Diffuse Loss.

[Blessed2BeBald]

Scroll to the bottom for pics.

I first noticed I was balding at the age of 21. After having grown my hair out and worn it long for some number of years there finally came that fateful evening when I ran my hand through my hair and could not help but feel it felt a little thinner than usual. No sooner did this happen than I began to obsess over whether or not I was going bald and a few short months later my hair felt thinner still: not a lot thinner but enough to confirm my worst fears.

And so I did go on living in fear of the inevitable, worrying that I would no longer be desirable to women as a bald man etc. etc. Reading up about balding and the options which were available to me did little to instil any hope in me of keeping my hair. It seemed to me that perhaps only 2 out of every 10 people on the hair loss forums I visited were having any sort of meaningful success with the treatments available to them. Even so I was not willing to accept my fate without a fight and after reading about the big three I decided to get myself on Finasteride 1mg/daily immediately.

A year later I was still thinning and had made arrangements to purchase a hair system, this was shortly before my 23rd birthday. By this time I knew I was balding in a diffuse pattern and some days I was already spending upwards of 45 minutes styling my hair in such a way it concealed the thinner areas.

A year on I had given up, stopped taking Finasteride and shaved all my hair off. To my suprise girls were still attracted to me in spite of my lack of hair and hard features. Despite this, I missed my hair and wondered all the time how long it would be until I had none left (or at least very little.) Curiosity eventually got the better of me and at the age of 25 I decided I would grow my hair out again, just to see how bad it had got. To my suprise my hairline was still for the most part intact, however the hair all over the top of my head had become alarmingly thin, to the extent it was now obvious under harsh lighting that I was balding in a diffuse pattern. If I had to guess I would say I had lost around 30-40% of my overall hair density at this point.

But when my hair grew longer still I was just about able to conceal the most offensive areas with carefully styled locks. Even so my hair looked completely flat and did not look right even with the balder areas concealed. Furthermore I truly loathed having to spend over an hour styling my hair before I could even leave the house -and some days I could not leave the house at all because my hair would not co-operate with me. This was no way to live and since I could not bring myself to buzz all my hair off again I got myself back on Finasteride 1mg/daily.

How much this helped I can not really say as I continued to thin out and a year later as I approached my 26th Birthday I estimate I estimate I had lost around 40%-50% of my overall density. Styling was now next to impossible, yet with my hairline still faring better than the rest of the top of my head I decided against giving up just then -not without giving Dutasteride 0.5mg/daily a shot first.

Whilst Dutasteride did seem to slow my balding a little, it could not prevent the first cracks appearing in my hairline and as I approached my 27th Birthday I was ready to give up on my hair altogether after unsuccessfully battling diffuse hair loss for 6 miserable years. My hairline, the last stronghold in my war against balding, was vanishing before my very eyes and I felt utterly defeated and disheartened.

Then I did something I probably should have done a number of years before and purchased a 3 month supply of Minoxidil.

Three months on and my hair is thicker than it has been for a long time. I estimate that at least 10-20% of density has been restored in the short time I have been applying 2ml of Minoxidil daily -and my hair just keeps on getting thicker!

I never thought in my wildest dreams thought that I would be able to wear my hair in this style ever again, yet here I am rocking an undercut and people are complimenting my hair all the time. Meanwhile I am still taking Finasteride 1mg/daily for the time being but will swap back to Dutasteride 0.5mg/daily again when my current supply of Finasteride runs out.

I have read that after two years Minoxidil becomes less effective, albeit gradually, with a slow return to baseline which can take some number of years. This is great news however as I may now be able to hold out long enough for a more effective treatment -we shall see. And I dare hope that by using Minoxidil in conjunction with a DHT blocker it might be effective for even longer.

I only wish I had more pictures of my hair when my balding was at it's worst but I did not photograph myself much during this time and so far I have ony been able to find the two pictures which I have attached to this post below.

If you do not believe it is the same person in the before and after photos I will happily respond with the uncropped versions of these images which include my face. I am also currently looking for more old pictures of me which show my diffuse loss a lot clearer than these. If and when I am able to find any I will update this post accordingly (truthfully I never thought I would be posting a success story so didn't see much point in photographing my loss.)

I hope at least one person might be encouraged by this.

 

[Jerrod]

Hey man, I'm just sitting here pretty much on the verge of tears thinking about my hairloss. Your pictures help me out a little bit. Hope you're able to keep up the progress.

 

[FutureSaitama]

The before pictures you provided are very blurry, hard to tell if you were actually balding.

 

[Dontwannabeabetabob]

Weren't even balding before as I can see by your shitty pictures.

 

[Blessed2BeBald]

As I said I never thought that I would be posting a success story and had for the most part accepted I was going bald so it never really occurred to me to take pictures of my loss. I can assure you that I like you have been through the motions a young man goes through when he discovers he's going bald: anger, suicidal ideation, depression and tears, many times. At it's worst it destroyed relationships, friendships and prevented me from leaving the house. I am currently looking through some old SD cards for clearer photos and have already updated my original post with another two photos which are a bit clearer, albeit which were taken a couple of years ago when my loss was still for the most part undetectable to the untrained eye. I will update with more pictures as and when I find them, hopefully I can find a couple which are more recent.

 

[FutureSaitama]

As I said I never thought that I would be posting a success story and had for the most part accepted I was going bald so it never really occurred to me to take pictures of my loss. I can assure you that I like you have been through the motions a young man goes through when he discovers he's going bald: anger, suicidal ideation, depression and tears, many times. At it's worst it destroyed relationships, friendships and prevented me from leaving the house. I am currently looking through some old SD cards for clearer photos and have already updated my original post with another two photos which are a bit clearer, albeit which were taken a couple of years ago when my loss was still for the most part undetectable to the untrained eye. I will update with more pictures as and when I find them, hopefully I can find a couple which are more recent.

I understand, but a big % of people on this forum suffer from BDD. It's hard to say who is actually bading or who is just paranoid without high quality pictures. Did you get diagnosed by a dermatologist ?

 

[Blessed2BeBald]

Honestly I am gutted I have not yet been able to find some more recent photos before I started using Minoxidil where my hair looked absolutely dreadful. I hope that the two photos I have now added in addition to the blurry pictures might go a little way in convincing others that I am indeed a diffuse balder, as are the majority of males in my family. I am currently looking for more pictures to add to my original post.

Now I understand that many become paranoid that they could be going bald as the hairline generally shifts back a little when a young man transitions from his teens into his 20s but I made this account when I was 23, 2 years from the time I first realized I was beginning to diffuse, and I am now 27. What I mean to say by this is that I have now been diffusing long enough (5+ years) to observe streaks of slick baldness (one such streak is observable in the picture below) develop where there was once hair and it is because of this that I know with terrible certainty that I am in no way paranoid that I might be going bald: the simple fact of the matter is that over the course of half a decade I lost a visible amount of density in accordance with diffuse pattern hair loss.

In response to your question I did want to go and see a dermatologist but could not afford the consultation fee at the time. Instead I went to see my local GP who examined my hair and told me that I was indeed 'thinning out' before sending me on my way -which was of great help to me, as you can imagine.

Unfortunately I was taking a bic to my head throughout the majority of my hair loss and would rarely let it grow for more than a few days at a time. This was so that the loss would not become obvious to me, as it made me want to weep every time I saw it. So in most the pictures I have come across so far I am completely bald with no visible hair, which is not very helpful. I will continue to look though...

 

[PappinAce]

i believe you were being honest you didn't have bdd. you probably had Telogen Effluvium.