How do you know it's the treatments?

[wastingpenguins]

I was just thinking about this today.

I have an uncle who developed a bald spot in college at the back of his head. The rest of his hair seems normal, no recession, and reasonably thick. Just that bald spot, around 3-4 inches across maybe?

My point: he's 40 now. After that spot developed, his hairloss seemed to suddenly stop. He's had a bit of general thinning in that 20 year time span, but it's hardly noticable.

So-- I'm assuming some people are just genetically predetermined to reach only certain levels of baldness? He's never used any kind of treatment in his life, I have talked to him about this.

So this leads me to two things.

1) Maybe I won't ever reach a level of serious hairloss? Maybe my hair will thin up to a certain point and then stop? I always feel like I assume that once hair starts going, it doesn't stop till it's gone.

2) Couldn't it be that people who experience sucess with their regimens are really just seeing the results of their genetic disposition, and they were never intended to go completely bald in the first place?

 

[Trent]

that is what the point of a double blind study is with propecia, it eliminates this possibility. The chances are very low that ALL of the people that just happened to have a hair loss situation that would just happen to hault at precisely the timespan they used treatments because they were genetically determined to, and those that were in the placebo experiment were predetermined to just keep losing hair.

the regimens work. there's no way i went from where i was five months ago to where i am now from just randomness. though you are probably right, some people that started propecia may have never actually lost all their hair and may have stabilized. Its a crap shoot. I see propecia as a way of eliminating that chance, and maintaining with a 90 percent chances, rather than just hoping i am genetically predetermined to grow some hair back and keep it.

 

[Rawbbie]

I would definitely say yes to both of your points.

You'll see guys that develop mild thinning at some point in their lives and stay that way for many, many years. So I would absolutely believe that we are programmed to lose a certain amount of hair and no more.

As for knowing whether or not the medication works, well yeah, that's the risk we all take- if our hairloss suddenly stops, is it because of the Propecia or because we just naturally stopped? There is really no way to tell except to get off of the medication and see if your hairloss progresses- and that, my friend, is a risk I don't think any of us want to take!! We'd risk losing more hair and have a real hard time growing it back again. So the safest thing to do is stay on the meds.

In a nutshell, the drug companies got us by the balls- we just keep shelling out the money for medications we don't even know if we need or not. But that's life.