Sudden shedding questions!

[viralpiral]

Long time lurker, first time reaching out.

I've always had VERY thick hair. And by that I mean the strands of hair are physically beefy. They're like wig hair they're so thick. I've never been able to do much of anything with it because it's too damn heavy to style. And there has always been a lot of it. I've had a really big forehead since I was a kid[I'll be 30 in a month]so a receding hairline/temples snuck up on me. It was genuinely hard to tell if anything had changed, even when comparing to older photos, but I'm super paranoid and decided I didn't want to take any chances. I got on daily Finasteride. Hard to say if it has helped grow anything back, but I've been on it for over a year with no further noticeable recession up front.

A few weeks ago, my normal hair shedding [which has always been moderate to heavy-- I have a LOT of hair, guys] tripled in intensity. Every time I run a hand through my hair in front of the sink, as many as ten strands fall out. Lots in the shower, on my towel. And my hair is definitely losing volume. My scalp is also mildly itchy, on and off. All of the lost hair is thick normal hair with bulbs.

I know these are pretty much classic diffuse hair-loss signs. But is it at all possible that this is something else? I recently started on a new medication which made me lose around fifteen pounds over the past month, for one. I also had an emotional upset [death in the family] a little over three months ago which might support the telogen effluvium theory. I promise I'm not in denial! If I'm losing my hair all over... Well, that really sucks, but I'll deal. I've already made peace with the eventual receding hairline. But is it always this sudden for people? I'm talking just BOOM one day all of my hair was jumping ship. And would the finasteride I've been on for over a year do nothing to curb this? It's just an avalanche out of nowhere. I shudder to think that maybe the finasteride IS helping, and without it I'd have been bald after the first week.

 

[zzzzz]

maybe, sometimes people with male pattern baldness on finasteride or not on finasteride will experience a synchronization of hair cycles, causing hairs to shed at the same time and go into certain phases at the same time which may mean it would grow back with no furher miniaturization

the stress as well could be a cause, and also with this it will grow back and not cause any long term damage

third case is the finasteride is not effective enough for you (it probably is though considering your male pattern baldness probably isn't that aggressive since it didn't come up on you until age 29) if this was the case you might want to eventually switch to dutasteride but I would not do this now

 

[viralpiral]

Yeah, I'm definitely gonna have to wait it out. I thought that this kind of extreme onset of hair loss was odd for someone my age, but I didn't want to be naive about it. And I considered that the finasteride might have triggered a huge shed and regrow cycle- it's just that the rest of my head had never been a problem, you know. I'd understand if my hairline and temples started to fall out like nuts, but I'm surprised by the sudden all over loss. And none of the miniaturized hairs I'm used to losing from time to time. With the specific chunky hair type I have, it's very easy to tell healthy and normal from wispy thinning strands.

Or it could just be the stress. It's probably too early to know just now, but thanks for the suggestions. I will probably bring all this up with my doctor when I get in to see her next.