Bald spot on fin.. Do I quit?

[mic28]

Will do Ziggy, il keep small dosing fin as well for now. I reckon shedding occurred over the holiday also due to poor diet.

[Ziggyz123]

Quick update.. My hair is decently long and I'm shedding short hairs.. About an inch. Guess they are cycling rapidly and for some reason not staying planted.. Not sure if I have telogen effluvium from finasteride or not, but dutasteride is looking like an option.

When my hair is wet, if I just run down my scalp lightly without going through it, I'll have hair on my hands.. When blow drying they just fly right out of my scalp.. It's maddening! It seems as though I'm cornered since on fin, my hairline receded and my hair seems to now be minaturizing. It could be however, that fin is a trigger to telogen effluvium, but I just don't know.i guess if I tried dutasteride and got more scalp pain and was still shedding then I'm just doomed. This is a damn shame.

Edit: just combed my hair and like twenty or so came out.

[mic28]

Hey Ziggy, what's weird is that the hairs I shed have usually been 1 inch long exactly. Rarely do I shed anything longer and sometimes shorter but weird that these 1 inch hairs are the ones that fall

[jamesst11]

I felt the same damn way! For me, however, I noticed the longer hairs fall out easier... probably due to the weight of the hair and force applied while shampooing and conditioning. I notice a bunch of shorter hairs falling out afterwards, when I am combing and styling it. Are you certain you're not losing the longer ones through out the day, by the wind and running your fingers through it and other factors... and that those shorter hairs that are better shielded from these factors come out when you are thoroughly brushing?
Here's one experiment I did. I washed my hair thoroughly, combed and styled it at night... I then covered it in hairspray, so it was stiff and not a single hair could move. Exactly one day later, I washed and washed it over the sink, with a hair catcher placed in the drain... I then removed the hair catcher, allowed it to dry and separated all the hairs in the sink (I know this sounds crazy OCD, but I was trying to figure sh*t out! ) What I noticed was about 60 hairs or so, of all different sizes.

[Ziggyz123]

Update,

I started trying to cut in half the quartered pieces of 5mg proscar this past week. I haven't really had inflammation at the hairline, but taking a look over my scalp, it is EXTREMELY DIFFUSE. Unbelievably diffuse actually.. I am 100% a believer that fin can cause the body to over power slow progression hair loss and make it go into over drive. At this point, I don't see any options. Even a transplant won't help so much because I'm no diffuse and it isn't just my hairline..

Also, my hair texture changed and doesn't get as greasy, however it now feels lifeless and thin.. Hope a cure comes soon because current pharmaceuticals are not cutting it..

[Artista]

HI Ziggy !! Hope you are well!

[jamesst11]

I am a 100% believer in that, with time, your hair will DEFINITELY grow back. You need to be patient, f*ck all the medications (maybe just use minoxidil) and let it be. You see, you lost hair RAPIDLY, which means that the anagen and telogen phases got out of wack, and your hair growth COULD NOT keep up with your hair loss. This happens in the case of telogen effluvium and I am pretty certain, based on your pictures and descriptions, that this what you had. Even WOMEN become diffuse after TE, for example after giving birth this is a very common occurance. This is primarily due to the TRAUMA and drastic HORMONAL imbalance that occurs through such a process... In some cases, fin can drastically alter your hormones, so this is possible.... WHAT IS THE CURE? time... TE is self correcting. TRUST ME - The MORE you STRESS, the worst it gets. The MORE MEDICATIONS you try right now, the worst it gets. The MORE YOU F*CK WITH YOU HAIR... THE WORST IT GETS. This is excruciating for you, I know. Devastating, especially at such a young age. I will tell you first hand though, the ONLY THING that corrected my TE was time, patience and putting it out of my mind. If fin f*cks with me, like it did you, then my hair is done for. This is my last attempt. For YOU, there is a strong chance that those hairs WERE NOT on their last legs so to speak (in their last cycle before becoming miniaturized)... hang in there brother.

[Ziggyz123]

Hey James,

I really believed I had TE, but it's been going on since October.. TE is usually only 6 months and this will not let up man. My brother who has a receding hairline has good density besides the recession.. I always looked at him and told my self I will never get like that and went on fin. I just don't understand this.

How long did your TE last James? It's crazy because when I pull my hair back and let it fall, it will sort of part into lines down my scalp it does match TE, but I'm shedding hair of all different lengths so I'm guessing that I'm miniaturizing.. My hair was amazing I'm not even kidding.. Now it's worse than my 61yr old fathers in the matter of 9 months. I wish prp actually thickened hair.. I'd try that, but it's just a waste. I'm scared shitless to get my hair cut lol it's sad..

[jamesst11]

Oh man, you sound exactly like me. I really need to stop being lazy and post some before and after pics. A couple things to note:

1) TE lasting 3-6 months - BULLSH*T... That is only in regards to a situation where there was ONE trigger at ONE point that caused enough physiological stress to trigger ONE episode. What if the inciting factor is NOT removed? i.e. you being on fin perhaps? Once again, I am not a doctor, but it makes perfect sense that IF finasteride is causing a drastic imbalance in your body it is the trigger for the TE. If it is the trigger and you don't remove it, then TE will come and go. A lot of people say this is impossible, or very unlikely... I call complete BULLSH*T on that... A VARIETY of medications can cause TE, so why can't finasteride? It can. If you are one of the few unlucky ones and your hormones fluctuate rapidly, this can put stress on multiple systems AND that my friend is a physiological insult.

2) I don't even know when my TE started and ended, as I am certain I had 3 bouts of it. 1) Hair transplant - HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE F*CKING TE. I would comb my hair over the sink every day and then count 200 hairs! that lasted for 3 months... then I tore my ACL and meniscus... MORE HUGE HAIRLOSS! THEN...I had ACL surgery... three months later, like clock work, BAM!! My hair lost 50% density in like 1.5 years...

3) Everything you are saying sounds characteristic of TE to me... Unfortunately for me, I thinned really, really bad in the MPB areas almost immediately and am still struggling to see regrowth...I pray to God fin will help. It was weird showing up to dinner 6 months post op HT and having the same hair as my brother who's three years older... yet it makes perfect sense. It aged my hair by 3-5 years. Hairs that WOULD have fallen out in 3 or so years to come back miniaturized were sent into telogen early... I would have been much less depressed if this just happened naturally, but knowing that I caused it by getting an HT and having these weird HT hairs, spaced too far apart in my left hairline and a scar to boot, really f*cked me up.

[jamesst11]

Shedding hairs of different sizes makes perfect sense if you have TE... Imagine your normal hair. Different hairs are in different stages, that's what's hard to recognize. You have some that are long, some that are short, some in anagen (85-90%) some in telogen (10-15%)... Now you have an incident which causes TE... Your body will send from 20+% into the telogen phase, in order to divert blood flow and essential nutrients from the follicle to the area of damage. Your body DOES NOT pick and choose which follicles are "shut down". They may be growing fibers that are small or long or thin or thick... either way the one's that are shut down release the hair 3-4 months after the inciting event.

[mic28]

I have diffuse all over due to finasteride James. Probably for about the same length of time as Ziggy. Nearly 9 months. If this turns out to be TE il be very happy as I assumed what I lost was gone. It did seem a bit weird how the hairs I lost due to diffuse just disappeared rather than miniaturising over time however. Maybe that could be TE

[Artista]

I looked up TE on the 'WebMD' site. Here is a link to this

http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/hair-loss/effluviums

[Ziggyz123]

Hey artista, thanks for the link! I've read that before and my description fit to a T because I had MASSIVE shedding at random one day in November. However, I had short bursts of scalp pain and burning before it started so I really don't know if I qualify for TE.

I mean, I could probably get away with getting a dense hairline where my existing hairline is and just brushing it over.. I just don't have any regrowth and I can see through my hair now..

[WanderingOracle]

I wouldn't "give up". Most guys have plenty of options beyond "Go bald". I'd say keep an eye on it, and be willing to adjust down to other things.

There are things like hair tattoos which, when used with existing hair, help mask the "see-through" effect. You still have hair, and it makes it look much thicker. Just be careful about getting it too near to your hairline, as a little recession could make it look very odd.

There are also hair clips and hair extensions. You can get these pretty short and they add a lot of volume to your hair(though again, can't assist much with hair lines).

A lot of people on these forums are suffering from massive psychological problems that run a lot deeper than just the hair loss itself. I'd say %90+ of balding men have options that keep their hair looking pretty good. But they're literally obsessed with having "perfect hair" and get fatalistic with anything that results in "Decent to above average hair for my age".

The question you should seek to answer is "How can I look as good as possible with what I have?" and proceed from there. You still have plenty of hair and a lot of options. If you ever hit a NW4, then you start finding yourself in a lot of trouble. But only a small percentage of men who start battling hair loss as soon as you have, ever reach an NW4. There are a lot of fixes to thinning hair. Though there is very little to be done with flat out bald patches.

There is a lot you can do to still look good. But there may be nothing to do in order to achieve "perfect hair". An NW1 is probably out of reach. Most guys can still make themselves look pretty good with up to a NW 3.5 or so. If they take outside steps to help mask it.

[Ziggyz123]

Hey oracle, thanks for the reply. A hair tattoo is really not smart in my eyes.. Especially when your 70 with a tattoo of dots on ones head lol. Hair piece is also not for most guys.. I was fine board wrong nw3, but this year and whatever made my hair die made my nw2 turn into a diffuse nw3.. I can't even make it look good like I used to because of how fast and how hard I lost hair. It doesn't even match how my brother is and family.. TE could be a possibility, but I have too many factors in my equation.. I used minox for 2.5 on my hairline at night before this massive shed and scalp pain so I dropped that first... Then I started trying to pin point why the shed happened and thought it was due to me doing p90x and restricting certain foods from my diet.. The scalp pain lasted so long though and only let up as I recently started low dosing fin. It could be a coincidence though as I have lost SO much hair already that maybe TE was letting up? It's impossible to know..

I was thinking of trying oral minox so that I didn't have to use topicals just in case. I just don't want to be on that and then if some cute comes about, I'd have to quit and my hair would go through TE from taking that away.. Just sucks when you're out of viable options. If I could just transplant to thicken up my hairline and what I have I'd be able to be happy, but I can't seem to stabilize this loss..

Also, I've been thinking that I may have something causing my hairloss because I was getting sensitive to certain foods and they were causing my scalp to itch when eating them.. Maybe celiac? Or gluten disorder? I read they can cause autoimmune related hairloss and since my scalp felt so bad and burned, it could have to do with something along those lines..