So the other night I decide to shave my head down to 1/2 inch of hair, rather than deal with the wavy mass that is my hair.
My housemate was given the honours. His first statement after it’s over? “Man…You can already see your balding pattern.”
I immediately head to a mirror, only to find that sure enough, in the not-too-distant future, I’m going to have a “U” shaped pattern going from my forehead back.
I’m 23!!!
I realize that my grandfather was bald, my uncle is bald, and my dad is balding…but DAMN. This isn’t supposed to happen to ME.
So my question is this: I once saw a commercial for a rogaine shampoo of some sort…The slogan was “keep the hair you have”. What is the name of said product? (rogaine.com doesn’t list it) Has anyone used it? Does it work? Where can it be purchased? Should I quickly ask the closest girl (that is breathing) for her hand in marriage, lest I end up an old BALD* man without a family?
*No offense to the bald members of the audience…I’m just not ready for it quite yet.
Rogain can only treat the crown (back cap area of head), and does not affect the front receding hairline.
Propecia is effective at retaining more hair.
In terms of regrowth, nothing is really up to expectations, but in terms of overall hairloss prevention, propecia products seem best, while rogaine products have no success on the front hairline, just the crown.
A doctor I spoke to about this said that they say that only because that is where they did the testing. IIRC, he said that it’s less likely to grow back in the front but rogaine will help halt the loss of what’s left.
I’ve been on Propecia for about 7 months. I wasn’t bald to begin with and still am not. So I don’t really know how well it’s working.
Back in January, the woman who cuts my hair said it looked as if I was starting to lose it up top. This came as a major shock. About ten years ago when she started cutting my hair, she used to gush endlesly about how thick and full my hair was, and how I’d never go bald. I noticed she hasn’t said it so much these last few years, but I had assumed that bit of conversation had finally gotten old.
So now I take an expensive pill every day. I hope it works.
are you sure about this? i don’t have anything specific that says otherwise, and i am certainly not a hairolologist, but that doesn’t ring true.
weren’t minoxidil’s (sp?) hair-growing powers discovered when patients, undergoing minoxidil treatment for some other disorder, suddenly had hair growing on the affected body parts?
and won’t careless application of Rogaine cause hairy ears and whatnot?
anyway, as i said, nothing documented to back up my claims.
jb
p.s.- Progaine the shampoo contains no minoxidil! again, not a hair doctor, but i did work at CVS on the truck crew, and one of my aisles to restock was hair care. i know my shampoos like nothin else…
The baldness gene is on the X chromosome, which you get from your mom, so whether your dad or your grandfather is bald isn’t an indicator. You have to look at your maternal uncles and great uncles – that is, your mother’s brothers and your mother’s mother’s brothers.
I should have been more clear: My grandfather on my mother’s side was bald, as are all of his brothers. (My mother had no siblings)
My dad, and my uncle are both balding.
So no matter what, I’m headed down the road to being hairless.
My dad used to joke about it when I was a kid…Perhaps that explains my fixation on those “Hair Club for Men” comercials.
I would also like to point out that it’s really not noticable as of yet…It’s simply because I shaved my head that you can see where it is thinning. As soon as it grows back out, no one will be able to tell.
Last summer I noticed when I was washing my hair, (it was longer then) that it was coming out in my hands. At the time I thought about the shampoo, but rather than do anything about it, I chose to quit looking at my hands when I washed my hair.
Perhaps there is something going on besides just natural hair loss?
I’ve heard this again and again, “You get your hair from your mother.”
I’m now fairly hairless on top and I cannot name a member of my mother’s family that does not have hair. Her father died recently with a full head of thick hair. Her brother has lots of thick hair. Her uncles, etc.
My father, on the other hand, is bald.
I think baldness is more complicated that simply “you get it from your mother”.
For what it’s worth - I visited a dermatoligist about the my hair in the early days of its loss. He declared it male pattern baldness.
The minoxidil treatment, he told me, is fairly effective within the 4-4-40 rule: If you’ve been losing your hair for less than four years AND if your patch of hair loss is less than four inches across, AND if you’re less than 40 years old, then Minoxidil may work for you.
However, hair loss, he explained is when your hair folicle has a genetic message to stop growing at a certain age. So at age 25.435 hair folicle #13448 stops growing. Over time you have less hair on you head. Minoxidil works by making the folicle ignore the note to stop growing and it continues to make hair.
So - you use Minoxidil for 15 years. After this time, tired of the expense, you quit. All the folicles look up their old instruction set and see that they were to stop growing years ago. Poof! You hair rapidly falls out, leaving you where you were had you never used the stuff to begin with.
I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, I just let it fall out. I do, however, reserve the right to bitch about it.
Belrix- That’s great news man! I only need it for, oh…Say 10 years or so! Just long enough to find a wife who has to take me for better or worse, and then I can shave my head.
It costs me about $165 for a 90 day supply at my current pharmacy, but I started checking around and found it elsewhere for ~$130. I’m lucky that I’m able to afford it since it isn’t covered by insurance.
I didn’t read The Onion article, but the drug literature that accompanies each bottle gives very explicit, dire warnings about not letting women even touch the tablets. Very bad mutagenic things will happen to a fetus. IIRC they recommend a prophylactic “morning-after-pill” kind of treatment. Seriously.
The literature also states that Propecia is shown to be effective in treating baldness of the crown area, but not the receding hairline type of baldness. Whether they actually looked for growth at the hairline during the studies - I don’t recall how it was stated on the drug info sheet.
Good luck with anything you find that helps you stave off the more obvious effects for a few years. Or makes you think you have done so.
However, given the ostensible remit of this here forum, let’s not lose sight of the fact that there is no cure for baldness. First off, there’s no cure because it’s not an illness. It’s a perfectly normal, natural and healthy thing to happen to you if you are male, the precise timescale being entirely genetic. Secondly, there’s a big market for baldness ‘cures’ but only because ‘hope springs eternal’ and lots of us men are vain, not because any of them work. You want proof? How much money do think Elton John has? If he can’t do any better than a pretty awful-looking wig, what chance the rest of us?
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Good call on Elton. I remember back in the late 70’s he underwent a hair transplant. It looked incredibly bad.
I have recently come to terms in the last year that I’m losing my hair as well and this came to shock to me since I fancy myself a guitar playing rock and roller. However, I’m closing in on 40 and my hairline is receding and now all I can do is sit back and watch the war. I know I’m going to lose but who cares? I just recently cut off my long hair (last week) and after looking at it for 6 days…I went it today and got it cut shorter. Looks cool…not rock and rolly, but cool nonetheless.
