I'm 20 years old, and I've probably been slowly losing hair since 18. The hair loss is mainly diffuse thinning on the crown of the head, but I also have a very slight recession at the temples. I've always had fine fair and male pattern baldness runs in the family so I knew that one day I would probably be forced to deal with the problem. A few months ago I grew my hair out longer than I ever had before, and that's when I noticed what I judged to be excess shedding. I had probably been shedding before my hair grew out, but the longer hairs falling everywhere made me fully aware of the problem. I let another another month go by, the shedding continued, and I started to notice more visible scalp.
After looking (here mostly) at the options, I decided to delay finasteride and started with kirkland minoxidil 5% twice a day, nizoral 1% three times a week, and American Crew Revitalize copper peptide solution once a day. The applications were tedious and left my hair looking terrible, but I stuck with it every day. For the first 2-3 months of treatment my hair looked noticeably worse, and I considered stopping several times.
But over the past few weeks (now nearing month 4) I've noticed a marked change in the quality of my hair. The individual strands are thicker and my hair seems healthier overall. My scalp is hardly visible in the mirror any longer. There are also visible, colored but fairly thin hairs that are growing in those areas on my scalp that have had treatment (even on the hair line).That being said, the amound of shedding I experience has not decreased significantly. I still lose quite a bit of hair but I still have better coverage than I did a few months ago (not just wishful thinking).
I just started folligen for blondes on my hairline and I'll soon be starting topical spironolactone as a possible DHT inhibitor to try and lessen my shedding. It's worth a shot. I plan on keeping everything else in my regimen for as long as it seems to be working.
I'm not writing this to discourage the use of finasteride or any other systematic DHT inhibitors, but to give some encouragement to those who don't want to (or can't) go down that path yet. Other's encouragement, information, and results that I've read on this board have helped me a lot, so I hope that this can help some one.
Good luck to every one.
After looking (here mostly) at the options, I decided to delay finasteride and started with kirkland minoxidil 5% twice a day, nizoral 1% three times a week, and American Crew Revitalize copper peptide solution once a day. The applications were tedious and left my hair looking terrible, but I stuck with it every day. For the first 2-3 months of treatment my hair looked noticeably worse, and I considered stopping several times.
But over the past few weeks (now nearing month 4) I've noticed a marked change in the quality of my hair. The individual strands are thicker and my hair seems healthier overall. My scalp is hardly visible in the mirror any longer. There are also visible, colored but fairly thin hairs that are growing in those areas on my scalp that have had treatment (even on the hair line).That being said, the amound of shedding I experience has not decreased significantly. I still lose quite a bit of hair but I still have better coverage than I did a few months ago (not just wishful thinking).
I just started folligen for blondes on my hairline and I'll soon be starting topical spironolactone as a possible DHT inhibitor to try and lessen my shedding. It's worth a shot. I plan on keeping everything else in my regimen for as long as it seems to be working.
I'm not writing this to discourage the use of finasteride or any other systematic DHT inhibitors, but to give some encouragement to those who don't want to (or can't) go down that path yet. Other's encouragement, information, and results that I've read on this board have helped me a lot, so I hope that this can help some one.
Good luck to every one.