Hi! my introduction and story

**Winston** · 05-06-2011, 07:31 AM

Welcome to the forum TMLviper. You are right, as Spencer Kobren always says, �you are not alone�. This is the very best hair loss forum on the internet, filled with compassionate , caring and knowledgeable people. It�s helped me a great deal just like it helped you.

**Havok** · 05-06-2011, 10:09 PM

hair loss sucks period. some people don't mind it as much as others but i suspect most men on bald truth are very bothered by it. hair can make all the difference in the world to someone's face. one can go from handsome/sharp to looking like ****ing smeagol. look at Ne-Yo with and without hat. even though i have mild thinning in front and temple area, i hate meeting new people and talking to girls because i'm always self conscious about my hair. i'm not one of those people who can 'look at the bright side' unfortunately. i hate the fact that we have donor limitations for hair transplant. i don't want to create an 'illusion' of having full head of hair. i just want a full head of hair whether i comb it, buzz it, go running, swimming, to be able to wake up in the morning and go out and have a bad hair day every now and then. now every waking moment is a 'bad hair day' unfortunately lol. i guess i can work on other aspects of my life in preparation for a miracle cure in near future. not holding my breath though.

**VictimOfDHT** · 05-07-2011, 12:04 AM

TMLviper, welcome to the forum where people share the misery (of losing their hair). Talking about it might help you feel better for a moment but I know the moment you look in the mirror or as soon as you wake up in the morning and realize you're losing your hair it all hits you again like a ton of bricks and the despair you feel is immeasurable. I've been battling this god damn CURSE for over a decade and it's never gotten any easier with time. On the contrary it's gotten much much worse and I can honestly say my life has been completely ruined by it.

Yeah, there may be things worse than going bald BUT, unless those things actually happen to us, we will always feel like baldness IS the worst thing. The simple fact is we can NEVER feel something that's not happening to us. Sure I know someone who's lost a leg or an arm is a million times worse than losing hair, but at the end of the day I'm still losing my hair and I will only feel MY pain and suffering. Like I said above, my life has been competely ruined. I could never achieve anything because of the psychological and emotional effects of the this ****ing curse and now I see my life slipping away. I don't know what things are worse than that. Having to go through mental torture every god damn second of your life for over 12 years and god knows how many more years to come is as bad a thing as it can get IMO. I've had a very hard life and have seen hell and still living it but hair loss has had the worst effect on me by far out of everything else. I'm at the point where if a doctor were to tell me I have cancer I'd actually thank him because I don't want to live another ****ing minute of this misery any more.

**DepressedByHairLoss** · 05-08-2011, 01:25 PM

I totally hear you, VictimofDHT. I've only been suffering from hair loss for about a year now, but it has been the worst year of my life. I went from being the life of the party to a virtual recluse in my own home. Make no mistake about it, the effects of hair loss are psychologically and emotionally devastating. I wish scientists would stop testing shit on mice until the cows come home and start testing on humans. There may be risks involved but I think many of us would gladly accept the risks if there was any chance that we could regrow our hair. I too feel that my life is being ruined by hair loss. I can't stand it either when people tell me that I should just "accept it". I cannot and will not accept it. I will not live life with something that I hate so much. I have been researching potential hair loss remedies (some of which I listed in the Cutting Edge Treatments section), and I've been looking into them. I can't believe there has been no effective remedy for hair loss yet. I mean, scientists are cloning kidneys and lungs, yet they cannot or will not clone hair. It really seems ridiculous to me.

**VictimOfDHT** · 05-08-2011, 04:22 PM

Depressedbyhairloss, if you've only been losing your hair for a year then I'm going to assume you're still young, and IF, IF a cure finally comes out in the next couple of years or so, you might still have a chance at starting your life. As for me, while I'm not over the hill or close, I still think it's too late for me. I'm not bald, YET, but the ****ing curse is picking up speed now like never before. But I have had HTs done to my hairline and temples. 5 GOD DAMN HTS, and now I'm losing my transplanted hairs. I mean, how more cruel can life be ???
But yeah, I know the feeling. Being in a virtual prison. I've been living that life for a long time. I literally feel like a prisoner watching out of my small cell window. Only thing, I'm not watching people go by. I'm watching my whole ****ing life go by while being totally helpless to do anything about it. I've actually started living like this even before I started losing my hair. That's how much I feared hair loss. To me, it's worse than losing an arm or a leg.

Yeah, it is a joke that we, in 2011 STILL DONT have a cure for this curse. I don't even know if we're close. I've heard this crap before. In fact, I've been hearing it for the past 15 years. And every time we think we're getting closer to a cure, the mother ****ers come out and tell us "in the next 5-10 years".
I'm afraid I'm going to die waiting.

I think there's hardly an effort being put into finding a cure for this debilitating disease. Yeah, it is a disease IMO because it can totally **** up a person's life in more ways than one. I know it's ****ed up my life and now it's even affecting my nervous system. But yeah, 7 billion people and 10's of thousands of scientists, researchers and labs around the world and no one has been able to figure out something, well, because they don't bother with hair loss research. 4 companies !! 4 god damn companies that are TRYING to do something. That's it ! Of course there's a research lab at every street corner for breast cancer research. And I don't want to hear the arguement "well it's cancer". No. There are a 1000 other cancers that hardly get any ****ing attention, ESPECIALLY if they have to do with men.

So yeah. That's life. Aint life beautiful ?? If my father were alive I would've sued him for the pain and suffering and the hell I'm going through. The only thing I inherited from him is a shity life and hair loss.

**DepressedByHairLoss** · 05-09-2011, 10:57 AM

Yeah, I hear you man, living with hair loss is total hell, esp. when your father and brother both have full heads of hair. My life has gone from "great" to "depressed", "angry", and "suicidal" in this past year. I don't what I have done to deserve this baldness curse.
What really kills me with a lot of these scientists is that they'll experiment with hair growth chemicals on mice, yet they'll never work to try anything on humans. I have seen so many scientists say they have grown hair on mice using a variety of chemicals like WNT, Noggin, BMP, and TB-4, yet they'll never perform any clinical trials on humans. I mean, what the hell good is it to keep experimenting on mice, then say that these findings "could" or "may" "provide insight into the complex process of baldness", yet never perform any human trials. I've heard the argument before that many scientists are working hard to create a cure for baldness because of the huge amount of money involved. Yet if this was true, then how come there are only 4 friggin companies out there trying to develop a cure. It just pisses me off so much man.
I've thought about trying a hair transplant but that process is so imperfect, IMO. A person is left with permanent scars and the risk of the donor hair not holding. Instead of making money off of such an imperfect procedure, these doctors should work on developing a way to regenerate hair as opposed to pluck it from one place and move it to another.
And BTW, you are totally right, hair loss IS a disease. You said it has ****ed up your life and it's currently and majorly ****ing up my life. Anyone who says that hair loss is a purely cosmetic issue has never lived through the pain and despair of losing hair in the first place.

**VictimOfDHT** · 05-12-2011, 12:55 AM

I don't know what to say, man. I feel really sad for myself but at the same time I feel sad for all those who are suffering because of this god damn curse because I can understand what they're going through. Life is not fair and it's very cruel. Yeah, it really sucks when you're the only one losing hair out of a bunch of men around you. You just look at their hair and think, why can't I have that ? It's just ****ing hair, god. Why couldn't you let me have it ? Why ? What good does me losing my hair serve in this ****ing life ???

Those scientists/researchers have to keep working on mice so the money keeps rolling in. Never mind the FACT that mice actually DON'T suffer from Alopecia areata to begin with. They actually do something to the mice to make them lose their hair and then they -the scientists- try to regrow it. So, the cause of hair loss in those mice have NOTHING to do with what humans suffer from. They're totally unrelated. So, I don't even know what the point is of doing all the "research" on something that's NOT the same. But you see, if they stop working on those poor mice the funding will stop. And you know, those so-called researchers get billions and billions of dollars for their so-called research. I'm talking about all research not just in the hair loss field. They have "scientists/researchers" wasting millions of dollars "studying" the life of sharks !! Yeah, they wanna know why sharks attack people !!!! You see, that's very important for humanity because maybe one day we can play water volleyball with sharks and have them as pets once the "scientist" figure out how to stop them from attacking us.

Meanwhile, 100's of illnesses and disorders just continue to **** people's lives because there isn't enough funding or real researchers to bother to do something about them.
I just find it hard to believe that -with the exception of a handful of companies- there is any serious research going into the issue of hair loss.

And the silent suffering continues and more lives continue to be destroyed.
**** life. I Haven't seen any good thing about it.

**DepressedByHairLoss** · 05-12-2011, 04:35 PM

VictimOfDHT, I couldn't have said it better myself. I could literally name you a laundry list of people who have had all these "insightful hair loss discoveries" with mice, but never apply these discoveries to trying to cure hair loss in humans. I've even written to some of these scientists, pleading with them to conduct human trials based on their findings. Maybe there are some small risks involved, but I think that people like you and me (who have been so adversely affected by hair loss) would accept these risks and try anything to regrow our hair.
I often ask myself what I did to deserve this curse; I used to have such a full head of thick hair. I'm always pissed off about this and I can never just "accept" it. I really think that I may have to look outside of the U.S. for some sort of treatment for hair loss since Rogaine, Propecia, and hair transplants are such chickenshit and don't do much of anything. I mean, how can I just focus on FDA-approved treatments when they don't do a damn thing? I heard that in China they are using umbilical cord blood-derived stem cells to grow hair, but I'm skeptical.

**VictimOfDHT** · 05-13-2011, 08:41 PM

Yeah man. I remember hearing and reading about all the "success" in regrowing hair in mice since the 90's or even before. But we never see that applied to people. Reason : those so called researchers ARENT interested in regrowing hair in humans. It's totally about pretending that they're doing something to make them deserve all the money they're making. Pure and simple. So, the risk to humans isn't even a factor. I mean there are always trials on humans and that always involves some risks but that's part of the process. That's how all drugs are tested. So again, the risk factor is NO factor in why they won't apply their "discoveries" to humans.
I'm thinking maybe if researchers got paid depending on how much they produce or how much they progress into their research maybe then they'll be serious about finding all kinds of treatments and cures.

And yeah I hear you about being mad about losing your hair. I can't stop asking the same question. Not why me ? But why this whole hair loss shit at all. I still don't get what the purpose is of losing one's hair. I mean we get hit with all kind of shit in this miserable life. A million and one thing can go wrong with our bodies, so why the hell not at least let us keep our ****ing hair instead of adding to the misery? I won't ever accept it or get over it either not even if I turned 100. I have a shitty life as it is. Why do I have to accept more shit ?

Minox and Fin/Dut might not be a fix-it-all drug but at least they're better than nothing. I have two brothers, one completely bald and the other 1/2 bald. The first didn't use anything. The second uses minox occasionally. I still have a good coverage -though it's not as thick as it was even a few months back- but it's the front that's always been the problem and that's where all my HTs have gone. Of course if you've been following my posts you'd know that I'm losing my transplanted hairs now, and that's why I'm chocking. But you need to know that my case is a rare one. The vast majority of people who get HTs keep their hair. My bad luck is unmatched however.

I dont think there's any place on the planet that has a good answer to hair loss, yet. Not even China.

**DepressedByHairLoss** · 05-15-2011, 06:03 PM

You are totally right bro. If these scientists got paid based on how much progress they make in attempting to cure diseases for humans (not mice), then maybe we would have better results. I mean, everyone else gets paid on results. I work in the computer field and if instead of fixing a computer problem, I kept "gaining insight" and "developing clues" in how to solve a problem but never actually solved it, I'd be out on my ass. Granted, the human body is different from a computer, yet it gets really frustrating and excessive when all of these scientists sell their articles for profit to these science publications, claiming that they have developed new ways to grow hair in mice, but these so-called results are never tested on humans. I mean, what the **** is the point of that?
When I first started losing my hair a little more than a year ago, I started researching on the internet all of these articles where scientists claimed to make hair growth discoveries. I e-mailed over 100 of them and of course none of them were testing their discoveries on humans. Sometimes I wish I could just steal all of their mice so that they'll be forced to maybe begin testing on humans. Some of them just told me about shit like Rogaine, Propecia, and hair transplants. Granted, Rogaine, Propecia, and hair transplants are better than nothing, but treating hair loss by these ineffective methods is like putting a band-aid over cancer. I've tried Rogaine and it didn't do a damn thing for me. I'm on Propecia right now and although I'm shedding a bit less, the results are very, very minimal. And VictimofDHT, you're not alone with having your transplanted hair fall out; my friend had the same thing happen to him. IMO, there are so many flaws with hair transplants: 1) doesn't create any new hair, 2) leaves permanent scarring, 3) transplanted hair can fall out, 4) only a limited amount of hair can be moved during one session (multiple sessions are needed to achieve anything close to a full head of hair). It just baffles me that in this day and age, we don't have better options to combat hair loss. I mean, we've cloned a full sheep (Dolly the sheep) and we're even cloning full organs like liver and kidneys, but we can't clone hair. I doesn't make sense, and despite what others say, I certainly don't believe that cloning a hair is much more difficult than cloning an entire organism like Dolly the Sheep.

**VictimOfDHT** · 05-17-2011, 02:10 AM

I know. I think those so-called researchers should be treated like every one else - produce something or get the **** out. We're not just gonna pay you for torturing mice and doing USELESS experiments on them. There are so many ****ed up things with the way the world is run. Some of those "researcher" have been doing the same god damn thing for decades, probably their whole damn career life, without producing a damn thing. What are they getting paid for exactly ?? I am a firm believer that most of the research -and also researchers- is total USELESS BULL SHIT that does NOT work in real life and is NOT actually meant to. Plain and simple.

I know it's really ridiculous that they still cannot find a way to end this ****ing curse. And yeah, I don't understand it either. They can clone a whole sheep or whatever but they cant clone hair. I don't know but I feel this is done on purpose. Maybe there's pressure on them NOT to find a treatment so the HT doctors keep making the 10's of thousands of $$$ they make every week. Can you imagine what would happen to them if suddenly a miracle treatment comes out ??? I know that's a bit extreme thinking but you just can't help but wonder.

I still think your best bit at the moment is Minox and Fin. Minox has been very good for me in slowing down the hair loss. It does suck to use but I don't care as long as I don't become bald. How long did you use it for ? You probably already know that but you should give it at least a few months. You can also try increasing the Fin dosage. I think I'm gonna do that myself.

As for HTs, I know they're the best solution only for people with a small balding area. But what else can someone do if he's already bald ? Either live with this shit or have an HT. At least he won't be considered bald even if his hair was thin. Yeah, it's not the perfect answer but it's better than baldness. The scar isn't an issue if the doctor is good. What's shitty about HTs is the expense and the time involved. But talking about your friend makes me wonder if this problem (of losing the transplanted hairs) is more common than we're made to believe. Did he lose all of his transplanted hairs ? The guy must devastated. I know I AM. I haven't lost all my T hairs yet but I have lost a whole lot and I'm really worried that I'll end up losing it all after so many HTs. This is really really ****ed up. I still won't write off HTs as a good way to get rid of the bald look but I wish there was a way for people to know if they're going to lose their new hair or not before they go under the knife and lose thousands of dollars for nothing.

**DepressedByHairLoss** · 05-17-2011, 10:48 PM

As for the doctors and researchers being pressured NOT to find an ultimate cure for hair loss, I wouldn't be surprised if that was true either. Hair restoration is a multi-billion dollar business and if a cure was found, then it really would put all of these HT doctors out of business. Nobody would buy Rogaine or Propecia anymore and the pharmaceutical companies that produce them would lose money. Places like Bosley would go out of business. So many companies/people would lose money or be out of a job if a hair loss cure was found. I mean, what incentive would a lot of these doctors have in trying to create a cure for hair loss if they already have experience making a ton of money through these shitty hair transplants? Other people would argue with me and say that whoever invented a cure for hair loss would make millions if not billions of dollars, and that would be a doctor's motivation for developing a cure. But if that was the case, then how come so very few companies/people are even attempting to cure it? How come there is literally tons of "research" done on "potential" hair loss cures, but none of these discoveries are tried on humans? A lot of these researchers are just content on making their money selling their "hair loss discoveries" on mice to scientific publications, yet don't give a rat's ass about trying their discoveries on humans. Or maybe a lot of these researchers aren't qualified to conduct human clinical trials, maybe the job of conducting human clinical trials falls to the doctors and the big drug companies? Maybe they're supposed to pick up where the researchers left off? And if the doctors are already making big money on these shitty hair transplants and the pharmaceutical companies are already making big money peddling shit like Rogaine and Propecia, then why would they bother testing new discoveries on humans when they're already making a ton of money doing the shit that they're already doing? At least I give credit to people like Dr. Cotsarelis, Dr. Hitzig, and Dr. Greco, who are at least attempting to try to find cures.
This issue not only relates to hair loss. As I said before, when I first started losing my hair, I started researching stem cell treatment which could possibly regrow my hair. Through my research, I found that many people with a wide variety of diseases continuously go to other countries for treatments that have not been approved by the anally-retentive FDA. Michael J. Fox and Muhammad Ali go to other countries to get stem cell treatments for Parkinson's Disease that aren't available in the U.S. And then a lot of the researchers here claim that these treatments are unsafe and unproven. But if some one is suffering from a disease, what choice do they have? Should they just accept the suffering or should they try and do something about it? I for one will NEVER accept hair loss and will always try and do something to get my hair back. That's why I don't blame you for getting the hair transplants that you did. I am just hesitant to get a hair transplant because I believe that it is such an imperfect procedure where far too much can go wrong. I mean, I've seen the bloody mess that these hair transplants can cause and there are plenty of people on here who tell stories of their botched hair transplants. I am not bald but I have two gaping receding hair lines and thinning on top. Yet I don't want to take a chance and lose that remaining hair through "shock loss". And I someday want to have a haircut like a fade, I would never be able to without the transplant scar showing through. I don't believe that Rogaine and Propecia do a damn thing either. I tried Rogaine for a year and it didn't do a damn thing. They advertise that 85% of people regrow hair on Rogaine, which is absolute horseshit and shows the level of honesty of the pharmaceutical industry. Propecia maybe caused me to shed a bit less, but none of these do a damn thing to regrow hair. I just feel that there are so much better methods out there to regrow hair, yet no one is trying them. I posted a whole list of potential treatments in the "Cutting Edge" section of this website. For example, scientists have recently been able to reprogram stem cells and give them embryonic characteristics. If these reprogrammed stem cells were applied to hair loss, then these stem cells would theoretically be able to grow hair like they did when they were in an embryonic stage. Yet no one tries this and unfortunately we're stuck with the limited shitbag options that we have now. Despite the fact that hair loss is a multi-billion-dollar industry, I read somewhere that only like 7 percent of people actually spend money trying to do something to combat hair loss. It's not because people want to accept being bald or like it. It's because the options are so few and ineffective that some people believe that they have no choice but to accept it.
Oh, and my friend who had the hair transplant lost most of his transplanted hair. He wasted a ton of money and got nothing out of it. He won't tell me which doctor did it (he doesn't want to talk about it, just wants to forget it), yet he lives in NYC so I doubt it was some dipshit clinic in the middle of nowhere.

**VictimOfDHT** · 05-18-2011, 10:54 PM

Well, special interest groups and lobbyists are no secret. We know how much influence these guys have. It is obvious that it is NOT in the interest of any HT doctor, the makers of Minoxidil, Fin, Dut or the countless numbers of so-called companies that rake in billions of dollars selling their bull shit hair loss products. Even the FDA are a bunch of crooks. It's a fact that there are many treatments (for different illnesses) in other countries around the world yet you can't find shit for these illnesses in N. America. I'd say "safety" is second to profit and special interest groups in the eyes of the FDA. The fact that there's hardly any research into hair loss is something fishy. Yes, that who invents a hair loss treatment will make billions but all the guys we just mentioned will LOSE billions and they'd be pretty pissed. So....

I don't know what to say, man. Believe me, I'm more pissed and depressed than I have ever been regarding the problem of my hair loss and all the empty promises we keep hearing. I think I'll probably die from a heart attack from my stress before I see a real treatment for baldness. There's no word to describe my despair. I just can't sit and watch my hair fall out especially after all these years of torture going thru HTs and all the money that had been spent. I don't know, maybe those injections being offered in the UK by dr. Hitzig or don't know who can really do something. I'm gonna look into that and try to follow any new stuff about it. It's my only hope to at least stop any further hair loss. 4 or 5 years will be too long for me to wait for Histogen or follica or whoever. This really really sucks.

I think you should continue to take Fin. What other options do you have ? I wish there were a ****ing place even on the moon that had a solution to this god damn curse. I'd ****ing walk all the way to there. But for now, all we have is Fin and Minox. The rest is nothing but promises that might or might not come true.

As for HTs. Many people seem to be happy with them. But some people don't do their homework when they look for a doctor. And some -like me and your friend- just have some shitty bad ****ing luck and a special curse from god to make us even more miserable than usual, that would make us lose our transplanted hairs.

**mstymoon** · 05-19-2011, 09:25 AM

Wow! I feel like i just read my story lol, same 23 and people started saying hey whats going on with your hair man? At 15-17 in that age range, i took accutane which i think messed with my height so i feel you on the short thing! It stinks, I also started losing hair as well at 17 not much, but it started and its a side effect of accutane. But the good thing is you are deciding to do something about it! Keep me us up dated and good luck!

Also use Minox and Finasteride. I mean it hasn't done much for the front of my hair. A little bit though, better then nothing and my hair on top of my head filled in a bit. If anything at least it will hopefully keep you from becoming more bald until you figure out how you want to deal with the situation.

Hi! my introduction and story

Hi! my introduction and story

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