Tim's Story: Let's get down to business. 22 years old

[Guest]

Ok, I've put it off, and put it off. Not happening anymore. I first noticed my hair loss around a year ago. It just randomly started falling out. Like a lot. We're talking like 500+ hairs a day. I was confused. I went to the Doctor, he said he didn't see any signs of male pattern baldness and that it was probably just Telogen Effluvium, and it would go away in a few weeks. After like 3 weeks of non-stop shedding, I noticed a few thinned out spots on the top of my head, nothing major, just some visible scalp between hairs. I ended up starting on Rogaine foam from last july and used it until september. After about two weeks into treatment, all of the shedding stopped. Like I would use around 5 hairs a day. I continued using it until i felt like my hair was about back to normal, then stopped like an idiot. Everything was back to normal, then in around November, I noticed an increase in hair fallout. It wasn't anything too major, so I let it go for a while. To be on the safe side, I took some vitamins and picked up some Nizoral and used that. After a few months of wondering if i was really losing hair or not, I got a haircut, and it was pretty obvious to me at that point. It's no big deal when dry, but when wet there's a lot of scalp visable. The loss is diffuse, and really in no pattern, just generally thinning in the mid-scalp region. My hairline is fine, maybe has crept back a tinyyyyy bit, but hasn't really changed since I was in highschool. So I've decided to do something about it. I'm a student and living with my family for the summer. I don't want to order finasteride from an online pharmacy and freak them out, so I'm waiting till I move back to school. I'm picking up some minoxidil today when I go run out and do some errands and use that for the rest of the summer until I can get some finasteride. Other than that, I'll continue using nizoral with added topical caffiene and green tea extract which I hear can help, not that I'm putting all my eggs in that basket, but hey might as well give it a go.

I haven't really let hairloss get to me at my age. I caught it pretty early, so it's not even bad yet. Plus I'm a pretty good looking guy and hook up with girls all the time, hairloss hasn't really prevented that. I've got a lot of friends with hairloss worse than mine, so it's no big deal. As for my history, my granfather on my dad's side died with a full head of hair. On my mom's side, my grandfather has some slight temple recession and a tiny bit of thinning, but for 82 years old, he's got an awesome head of hair. Barely gray as well. My dad has some thinning that started in his 40's, and at 53 he is around a Norwood 3.5-4. Not too bad for his age, and he's still a ladies man like me, so I guess I'll always have that going for me. Anway, I figure I have another 3 years of school left, and if I can keep what I have until I graduate, I'll let the male pattern baldness take its path. So my regimen as of today will be:

minoxidil 2% liquid 1x daily
Nizoral 1% with added topical caffiene and green tea extract EOD
Fish Oil 1200 mg 1x daily
Biotin 5000 mg 1x daily

here's what the situation is looking like now:

 

[Obsidian]

I think you are catching it early for the most part and you still have a ridiculous amount of good hair, I doubt even people have looked at you and thought hair loss.

 

[Guest]

I think you are catching it early for the most part and you still have a ridiculous amount of good hair, I doubt even people have looked at you and thought hair loss.

Yeah it's kind of funny. I remember my ex girlfriend was talking to me a few months ago because she thought her hair was thinning (i still have no idea what she was talking about) and she just said "You're so lucky that you have hair like that. You're lucky you'll never go bald." i just laughed inside. For the most part at this point most people can't tell at all, I even fool myself sometimes. I have since cut it shorter which hides it a bit better, but makes it a lot worse when it's wet. Plus the fact that I've always had naturally very fine and thin hair helps as well, because seeing a little bit of scalp is fairly normal. Anyway, this forum has been fantastic and hopefully I'm hitting this up early enough to not let it bother me the rest of my college years.