Raz's Story: Big 3: Nw4v --> Nw1.5ish

[isishearmyplea]

Oh man!! must feel SOO good. Happy for ya bro, is it a co incidence that poets of the fall is playing in the background(u being finnish and all ). Ha ha . . Gratz, Stay Happy!!

 

[themiz1234]

Nice, nice, nice! Glad to see more hope from another user! I am starting finasteride this week after doing minoxidil for two years.

 

[damnsigningup]

wow man massive congratulations, this is very motivational I mean you just look like a kid with a high hairline in the last picture.
I made this account just to see all the attachments in this thread haha

 

[frenchy]

congrats, glad you came back from the depths of Androgenetic Alopecia

 

[albionlad]

Your hair and hairline have improved so much, you look great!

 

[Raz]

Oh man!! must feel SOO good. Happy for ya bro, is it a co incidence that poets of the fall is playing in the background(u being finnish and all ). Ha ha . . Gratz, Stay Happy!!

Thanks for the support dude!

Nice, nice, nice! Glad to see more hope from another user! I am starting finasteride this week after doing minoxidil for two years.

Good call on the finasteride, hope it works out for you man. Keep us posted.

wow man massive congratulations, this is very motivational I mean you just look like a kid with a high hairline in the last picture.
I made this account just to see all the attachments in this thread haha

Oh wow, thanks for coming by. I think most people would find it insulting to be called a "kid with a high hairline", but not on this site! Thanks, compliment accepted, haha.

congrats, glad you came back from the depths of Androgenetic Alopecia

Cheers man.

Your hair and hairline have improved so much, you look great!

Thanks, albionlad! Hope your jorney is also going well!


Now then... Time for a December update!

So yeah, I've been on Finasteride and Nizoral for 16 months now, ie. since August 2013. Minoxidil has been in the picture since May 2014, today marking me having been 7 months on it as well. It's been worth it for sure, my life feels great right now.

However, let me just say that the past month has been pretty bad in terms of shedding... Like, HOLY BATMAN -levels of shedding at times.You might have noticed a trend of: "shedding, but maintaining overall cosmetic appearance" in my posts from the last two months. This month, however, I took a bigger density hit. I'm actually surprised how decent the pics turned out this month, as I've noticed at least 100 hairs lost a day since the last 5 weeks or so. Basically, whenever I comb my hair (= twice/thrice a day), there's like 10-25 hairs stuck in my comb each time. When I shampoo (+ condition), my hands have like 20-30 hairs in them each time (times two for each showering session due to applying both, shampoo + conditioner). When I apply Minoxidil, I have like 3-7 hairs in my hands. There's some stray hairs on my pillow when I wake up. Some days it's even worse, some days it's slightly better.

Now, I am not overly worried about this: it was to be expected. I'm just pretty amused at how my hair can get visibly worse every two days or so, when it was the exact opposite upon starting minoxidil and getting the first results. I feel like I am on some drug-induced rollercoaster ride here. Luckily, even with the shedding in mind, the cosmetic appearance of my hair only becomes visibly worse when wet. (Or just slightly worse when doing these anti-airbrushing-status-pictures). In my daily life, it feels the same as before. But I can definitely tell I am shedding tons: crown density has taken a big hit, the fringe that was starting to be decent has taken a hit and the forelock has taken a mild hit in density. I'm confident it's just a cyclical shed and that I'll see some stronger hairs in a few months.

Minoxidil regrowth/shed -timeline for documentation-purposes:

Month 1: Moderate shedding.
Month 2: Moderate shedding into the beginning of results.
Month 3: Incredible amounts of regrowth and cosmetic improvement in hair.
Month 4: Incredible amounts of regrowth and cosmetic improvement in hair.
Month 5: Mostly stable, minor improvement/shedding here and there.
Month 6: Minor shedding early on into the month, followed by moderate shedding. Cosmetic appearance still mostly the same.
Month 7: Moderate to pretty heavy shedding. Mild hit to the cosmetic appearance.

I think I'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel, though! Still, trying to be realistic and not getting my hopes up too fast, so I'm expecting one more month of shedding. I did expect this "second shed" though, so I am not panicky. On the upside, my hairline is really good (seriously not that far off from my juvenile hairline status) and the cowlick area is improving little by little, I feel like.

Anyway, I've rambled too much, have some pictures:



Like last month, the orange-y ones are with flash, whilst the others are without it. Similarly, the last picture in the set is me without the anti-airbrushing. No concealers or any tricks, just how my hair looks normally. Cheers everyone for the support! Happy regrowing, comrades.

PS. Here's a little extra gem for you, from 2012 and around this time of the year, ie. exactly two years ago, when I was 22 years old (!) and not on any hair loss medication still:



Rocking that NW3v (+ with diffuse thinning you can't see) and looking too old for my-then age, haha. You can see how sh1t my forelock was even in that lighting.

 

[benjt]

Hey man,

wanted to congratulate on three things:
1) your regrowth results
2) your very good documentation, both regarding regimen and photos - the community needs more like this
3) your good music taste, as shown on your hoody

Keep it up!

 

[Raz]

Sup gents, time for a January update! I don't have a ton of time today but I feel like an update needs to happen so let's get into it.

Here are the pics I took just now:



So basically, let's keep it short this time: in my previous post you can see my shedding timeline on minoxidil, I'll repost it here whilst adding the 8th month (Dec-Jan) to the mix:

Minoxidil regrowth/shed -timeline for documentation-purposes:

Month 1: Moderate shedding.
Month 2: Moderate shedding into the beginning of results.
Month 3: Incredible amounts of regrowth and cosmetic improvement in hair.
Month 4: Incredible amounts of regrowth and cosmetic improvement in hair.
Month 5: Mostly stable, minor improvement/shedding here and there.
Month 6: Minor shedding early on into the month, followed by moderate shedding. Cosmetic appearance still mostly the same.
Month 7: Moderate to pretty heavy shedding. Mild hit to the cosmetic appearance.
Month 8: Heavy shedding in the first two weeks of the month. Slowed down to moderate shedding on the third week, whilst alternating between minor shedding and moderate shedding on the last week, with the minor shedding -days outweighing the moderate ones increasingly more often. Cosmetic appearance of hair at its worst after the heavy shedding, with probably 35-40% of the previous gains lost. Slowly rebounding thereafter, cosmetic appearance getting back to the pre-shed with pending regrowth/thickness, it seems. We will see.

That is to say, after my last update, I experienced some of the sh1ttiest shedding I've ever had, but it was sort of to be expected. I had read that many guys who get good results from minoxidil get these so called "second sheds", meaning they will shed after their initial shed and regrowth burst.

My hair looked its sh1ttiest at around the christmas time, but luckily it didn't really show on the family pictures that were taken during that time. I spent christmas at my parents' place with my girlfriend, and the bathrooms in my parents' house are really well lit, so I could see some thin areas here and there depending on the day, when on my last visit to my parents (October), I was thinking to myself, "man this is some serious minoxidil ownage right here, I look completely non-balding". That was a bit depressing. Here's one extra pic from the xmas for the heck of it:



However, I knew that this would just be a shed and not my male pattern baldness getting worse, because the areas where I shedded hair and their timelines corresponded with my previous regrowth burst. First went the right temple, then the mid-crown, then some of the forelock, then the left temple, then the cowlick. Incidentally, when I started shedding around the cowlick area in the back of my head, some of the other areas were getting regrowth after this shedding period.

It seems that my shedding at large has now come to an end (for now) and that re-regrowth (kekeke) is happening all the time. I feel like my hair looks better in here than on my previous update, but there's still some thinness left from the shed, so I am really looking forward to the next 1-3 months, depending on how things go.

As usual, thanks for checking out my thread, the support means a lot to me, gents. Happy maintaining and regrowing in 2015 as well!

 

[GoldenMane]

Amazing results. your hair looked really far gone, well past NW3 and now you're less than NW2. I'm pretty jealous! You're a lucky dude!

 

[SayifDoit]

Wowzers!
A success story!

Amazing stuff and happy for you bra.

You lost all your blonde hair which is kinda lame but hey atleast you have hair! Would you say you have naturally thin hair hair? Really growing in though isn't it!

 

[Raz]

Amazing results. your hair looked really far gone, well past NW3 and now you're less than NW2. I'm pretty jealous! You're a lucky dude!

Thanks man! Yeah, I think I've been lucky here so far, I definitely was in the NW3½ range with tons of diffuse thinning. Didn't expect to get back this far.

Wowzers!
A success story!

Amazing stuff and happy for you bra.

You lost all your blonde hair which is kinda lame but hey atleast you have hair! Would you say you have naturally thin hair hair? Really growing in though isn't it!

Hey bro, thanks for the support!

One thing though: my hair is not that blonde naturally. I had bleached it when balding badly, as having less contrast between the hair color and the scalp color kind of mitigated it to a certain point. This is my natural hair color, but I do think I've had some very mild darkening of the hair while on these meds. Perhaps my natural hair was going to be this dark anyway, as I would age beyond my teens, but I just lost most of it so I couldn't observe the changes in full, hmm? Anyway, when I was a kid, my hair was very blonde, but this is the norm now. Not too sad about it!

Also, I do think my hair is somewhat on the naturally thin side, but not super thin. Like, in retrospect I guess you could say my hair was a bit thin even when I had no balding prevalent, so you could pinpoint "that guy is going bald at one point in his life". But then again, I know a few people who have similarly naturally thin hair, but they never got any balding going on (yet?), rocking full NW1s, even if a tad more naturally thin than some guys' manes.

Thanks for the support gents!

 

[MercMan]

Thank you for sharing, I look a lot like your baseline pics (more like the ones where you shaved it tight shortly after starting). I have the same large diffusing pattern as you, and I think your pics are the first I've seen that looks the most like my hair. Granted I'm a bit older than you, it's encouraging to see your results and I congratulate you--I'm sure you feel great.

Only thing for me is my hair is darker and seems to be thicker on the sides than yours, so the "transition" zone between the top and the sides is a much harder line.

 

[Raz]

Best of luck to you, MercMan. If our patterns are similar, I hope our results will also be. Thanks for commenting.

On another note, I bought a new phone a few days ago. I am gonna be doing my monthly updates with its camera from now on, so with that being said, I am gonna add a few pictures I just took with the new phone's camera.

Note: this is not an "update" per se, just a 2nd set of January 2015 pictures for a reference point (as cameras were changed):



Now, these are not the best shots and I just took them quickly before going to bed (7am, yikes!), and I am also just learning how to tune this phone's camera a bit. Also, no temple shots and bla bla, but these are the most important areas for me right now and the temple areas were easy to see even with my old camera.

I just felt like I should add these pics so they can serve as a reference point between my actual progress, going from this month's update to the next month's update. Now that I have two sets of January 2015 pics (only a few days apart), you can essentially see the camera-differences somewhat, whilst my hair is otherwise the same, more or less. This way my next month's update and beyond won't feel that weird, especially if my hair looks a lot better (/worse), with the higher quality pictures. Just trying to stay consistent with the documentation!

PS. Even though I said this is not an update per se, and even if the pictures are of a bit higher quality now - I actually feel like my hair is improving at a super fast rate right now. My shed seems to be over and I feel like my hair is better every morning when I look at the mirror. It feels similar to my first regrowth spurt on minoxidil that started by the end of my 2nd month on the stuff.

I will update this thread with February pics in another 3-3.5 weeks or so, though I'd be more than glad to reply to any feedback/questions in the mean time.

 

[Lollerme]

impressive

 

[doublebatman]

Congrats dude, you really turned it around

 

[MercMan]

I would try doing a side part, so it doesn't look like there is hair missing from the middle of your head. While you have had a ton of regrowth, it looks like maybe your hair is naturally thin? Since parts are supposed to be a separation of your hair, maybe moving it to the side of your head will take the focus away from the middle of your head (which goes directly to your crown, where there is still a little thinning).

Just a thought. I certainly don't think it would look like a combover at all.

 

[Raz]

I would try doing a side part, so it doesn't look like there is hair missing from the middle of your head. While you have had a ton of regrowth, it looks like maybe your hair is naturally thin? Since parts are supposed to be a separation of your hair, maybe moving it to the side of your head will take the focus away from the middle of your head (which goes directly to your crown, where there is still a little thinning).

Just a thought. I certainly don't think it would look like a combover at all.

I am fine with "that dude's hair is naturally thin", because that does not equal balding. Let's say you have the arbitrary stages of: bald, nearly bald, heavily balding, balding, could be balding, thin hair, thick hair.

Considering I was pretty much between "nearly bald" and "heavily balding" before, my current hair in itself feels miraculous to me.

Also, while I understand your point, these status update-posts are pictured from the worst possible angles, with no airbrushing done to demonstrate the extent of my hair loss. In reality my hair looks pretty good nowadays, I mean, even when I don't do what you suggested, the area in the middle of my head doesn't appear to be balding.

I do hope I can get just a tiiiiny bit more of regrowth up in there, as like I said, I had a biggish shed before christmas for a while.

Thanks everyone for posting and commenting.

 

[MercMan]

I realize that most people won't be staring right down at the top of your head, I just think the side part looks rad. Maybe cuz I wish I could do it now :sad:

 

[Raz]

I realize that most people won't be staring right down at the top of your head, I just think the side part looks rad. Maybe cuz I wish I could do it now :sad:

Haha, I know what you're saying, and I agree, it looks good. I hope you'll get some great results, man.

It's sad to say this but I feel a lot younger now that I have hair again and can do things with it. Not that I have yet not been young, but you go from seeming to be in your early 20s to being in your 30s with bad enough balding. :/ Simply having this much hair now is such bliss and I can fully appreciate it due to my male pattern baldness history.

On a sidenote, I feel like my hair is improving on a daily basis again with the major shed behind me, it seems. We'll see in a later update when I take some pics!

 

[kuca]

Hej raz great results!!
I was just wandering what is your family history of male pattern baldness?