Quote: (05-25-2015 09:58 AM)XPQ21 Wrote:
I'm not sure where else to put this, so I'll try posting it here. I'm 36 years old and have some frontal hair loss - I'm what the dermatologist calls a "diffuse Norwood A variant" where I don't have a receding hairline but just generalized thinning in the front. My hair basically looks a bit like this picture except my thinning doesn't extend nearly as far back as this guy:
http://i.imgur.com/Mn8M7.jpg
I'm currently treating it with Nizoral shampoo and Rogaine to stabilize the loss and hopefully regrow some - I'm not sure at all that I want to use pills. Getting the money for a HT wouldn't be a huge problem but would require careful consideration and a lot of research.
I currently rock a #2 guard buzzcut with a beard and it looks OK. The question is - there's this concealer product I tried called Dermmatch which seems to work really well with my type of diffuse loss - it takes a few minutes to apply in the morning, makes it look like I have very little loss at all, and seems like it would be very hard to detect. It also seems to stay put pretty well even when it gets somewhat wet.
In my position, would you use this product sparingly in profile pics on social/dating sites or whatever to make the loss a little less obvious, until hopefully the meds work more or I go the HT route, or is that a bad idea? Women use metric tons of makeup to cover their bad skin, and extensions and perfect lighting and angles and digital image filters to make themselves look good in photos - it seems a shame that we can't work the same game a bit.
Hey,
Your hairloss is pretty advanced and shows thinning across the entire scalp.
As someone said below, go on Topix right away and show your dating pics with Topix. No girl will be able to tell while on a date. Good Looking Loser has a lot of info on Topix (he has similar hair loss to yours). I'd check out his website.
While Topix will help, it's a quick fix and meant as a crutch. Thus, I recommend you start tackling your hairloss before Topix can't help you anymore. The only three products that will treat your type of hairloss in descending order of efficacy are:
1) Propecia - I recommend you go to your dermatologist and get on it now.
2) LLLT (low-laser-light therapy) - Since your scalp is thinning everywhere and not just on the vertex, the laser therapy would likely be better than Rogaine. Refer to the links in this post for info about LLLT, otherwise I can fill you in some more.
3) Ketoconazole shampoo 2% - This is prescription only. You should only use it twice a week otherwise your hair will be completely dried out. You have to let it sit in your hair for five minutes while in the shower. Your dermatologist can prescribe this as well.
1% of Propecia users suffer from sexual side effects. Based on pressure for years the FDA has decided to put a warning label on the prescription box indicating that a small amount of users suffers side effects.
While I feel for the men for whom the drug does not work, the vast majority of men derive extreme benefit from taking Propecia, namely they get back most of their hair.
In order to save the hair follicles you have left, I would get on Propecia as quickly as possible. If you suffer sexual side effects, you can discontinue, which will make them go away immediately (only a small fraction of the men who discontinued Propecia because of sides had prolonged sexual issues, we're talking 1% of 1%).
I have heard anecdotally that men who are thinning but have plenty of body hair don't suffer nearly the sides from Propecia that men with little body hair do.
I also think that if you suffer from sexual sides, that your total and/or free testosterone is probably low to begin with. This can be rectified by taking exogenous T; you'll find plenty of posts on this subject in the forum (MikeCF talks about it a bit).
I'd be curious if other users of both test and Propecia would chime in with their experiences. I'm fairly certain that they're all very positive.
Full disclosure: I use at this time ketoconazole 2% and LLLT. My hairloss is not significant yet to warrant Propecia, although I'm seriously considering it. I probably wouldn't go on it, however, until I go on HRT.