20 years old and receding

[xantheose]

Hello I registered on this forum with the hope that I'll find information of how to keep hold of my hair. Atm I think I am NW2, I started noticing that I lose hairs like 2-3 years ago but I didn't give it that much attention. Lately, it started becoming worse for me because I HAVE TO keep hold of my hair, no matter what and I am already self-conscious and low self-esteem and losing all my hair will be a crime because I'm also a twink prettyboy and I have sticked out ears, so shaving it will make me look like shit most definitely.
I will drop a few pictures to let you see what stage it is.
I can say that my dad is bald, my dad's father was also bald (my grandfather), but my mom's dad had hair as far as I know (I never talked/met him, that's what my mom said but I don't know if she said that just to make me feel a little bit more comfortable).
I haven't tried any treatment so far because I heard Finasteride has some nasty side-effects. I was thinking of getting Minoxidil, but I've heard some stories about it, not really the best experience either. Of course, my body might react well to these treatments, but I wouldn't risk. I know there's no other confirmed treatments for hair, but I don't know, maybe there's a hope I can keep my hair with oils or diet. I am ready to do everything for it.
There is no chance for hair transplant, I do not have the money for it.

Here are the pictures I took like 2 years ago.

http://i.imgur.com/284T7WD.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/4tVtRkm.jpg

Here's the picture I took a few days ago.

http://www.upload.ee/image/4633964/lina.png

[WanderingOracle]

You're probably an advanced NWII. Your hairline is almost exactly like mine. I waited around for two years. The first six months I did literally nothing. The next eighteen months, I messed around with "natural" stuff, and my hair made it to your point, and possibly a bit beyond it.

There is a lot of misinformation about hair loss. Almost all of it is wrong.
The reason you are losing your hair is simple. You have a lot of DHT in your system. It's attaching to your hair follicles and killing them. There is only ONE way to prevent your hair loss, long-term. You have to either reduce the amount of DHT in your system, or keep it from binding to your hairs. Anything that fails to address DHT, will not prevent your hair loss.

Minoxodril does not address DHT. It just wakes your dying hair follicles up. Think of it as like life support for hair. You can take dead and near-dead hair and hook it up to Minox, and it will keep it alive. But all the while, your healthy hair is being killed by DHT.
This is why Minox is a life-long product. You can never stop. Say Minox saves 500 hairs, that are dead or near dead. Well, while on Minox another 1,500 hairs die and need Minox to keep going. You decide to go to a trp to Asia and your luggage gets lost. You buy something local, but it's fake. So you used no real Minox for 2 months.
Guess what happens? All 2,000 of those hairs are going to fall out. And when they do, it's over. They will never come back. You'll go from a decent head of hair, to be being flat out bald in a matter of weeks.

How can this be prevented? You have to prevent the hairs from dying in the first place. The only way to do this, is to take care of DHT. Propecia handles DHT. It reduces your DHT levels by about %75 and keeps your hairs from dying.

If you used Propecia for years and had the same thing happen in Asia, only the 500 hairs that Minox resurrected would fall out. Those 1,500 other hairs, never would have died.

So if you take something like Propecia, and then stack other things, like Minox and even "natural" stuff(which is mostly junk), you can keep your hair from dying, and artificially boost your hair a bit beyond what Propecia saves.

Don't be scared of Propecia. I was. I listened to the Propecia fearmongers, and I lost 2/3s of my hair. I'm now between an NW2 and NW3. Had I taken Propecia right from the start, I would still have more hair than most 15 year olds. Don't repeat my mistake.
I have had ZERO sexual sides(I actually became slightly hornier). And the thing is, outside of balding forums, I cannot meet anyone who has these sides. These people are rare, but LOUD.
There is also a way to curb sides. I take Fin at 0.25mg, every other day. The way fin works, you don't even need to take it every day. And taking it at 1/4 the normal dose of Propecia, still gives you %90 of the DHT blocking effects. So I take it about 1/8 the strength prescribed. It has completely arrested my hair loss. My hairline is basically exactly where it was, two months after starting it.

Do not waste time, letting your hair be killed by DHT. If you're that 1/30 man who gets bad sides from Fin(and if you take it like I do... I doubt you will). Then go off it, and hope you respond to Minox. Minox can be used on top of Fin. But nothing replaces Fin for hairloss.
Not even RU.

[xantheose]

Thanks for the info.

I am both angry and depressed seeing my hair fall off. It is just painful. It kills me inside. Do you have any idea if I can find Finasteride in pharmas in Romania?

[xantheose]

Btw is there any possibility of blocking DHT through diet?

[WanderingOracle]

Not really. There are things that will boost amount of DHT, like Creatine.

Understand that all Propecia side-effects, are the result of lowering DHT a lot. If you actually managed to lower DHT via a natural source, you would experience every side-effect you do on Propecia.

What I suggest you do, is go on Propecia/Finestercide as quickly as possible. If you can't get it in Romania(which I have no idea about), you can order it from AllDayChemist. That's where I get all of my prescription stuff. Once it's working to prevent hair loss, go ahead and mess around with all the other stuff. See if they help you. Some people get a little or moderate boost from natural stuff. But most people don't get anything from it. And you don't want to be losing hair while these things fail you(as they did me).

The things outside of Propecia(I actually use Finesteracide), that help most people are Nizoral shampoo and Piroctone Olamine shampoo(do each one, 2x per week). These help with anti-inflamation and sebum, which can both aggravate hair loss.

Minoxodril helps 2/3 of men. 1/3 don't respond, unfortunately. I chose not to take it, because once you start, you're committed for life. I don't think I'm patient enough to apply that 2x per day, until I die. I would only use it as a last resort, personally. But if you're good with keeping routines, it can definitely boost the amount of hair in your head. Some people see pretty significant regorwth on it. Some people seem to think it can prematurely age skin, but I'm skeptical of these claims. I think it's more likely what's causing the sudden loss of hair in your body, is also manifesting in your skin.

[xantheose]

The reason why I am not taking Finasteride is because I'm anxious I might be allergic to it. Then there might be complications. I am suffering from anxiety and depression. If this drug affects my mood also, it's pretty hard for me to cope already.

Btw, does Fin interact with alcohol/cigarettes/marijuana? I am just wondering.

[WanderingOracle]

No, it doesn't to my knowledge. I don't smoke cigarettes, but I've never had an issue with the other two.

You'll lose enough hair, you will end up taking it. And much like me, you'll regret not doing it sooner. Nothing else is going to stop it. Some things can slow it down, but if you're approaching NW2.5 at 20, you'd have a natural shiner by early 30s. Only Fin can stop that.

About the only people who have side effects from Fin, are people who read online horror stories about it(reverse placebo effect). Talking with people IRL who never read a hair loss forum, NONE of them have had sides. None. But a good chunk of forum users do. There's a reason for that. If you freak yourself out about it, you may have some. But if you don't worry, you shouldn't. The incidence is actually quite rare. Especially in men as young as you.

[Trenblastoise]

Don't be scared of Propecia. I was. I listened to the Propecia fearmongers, and I lost 2/3s of my hair. I'm now between an NW2 and NW3. Had I taken Propecia right from the start, I would still have more hair than most 15 year olds. Don't repeat my mistake.
I have had ZERO sexual sides(I actually became slightly hornier). And the thing is, outside of balding forums, I cannot meet anyone who has these sides. These people are rare, but LOUD.
There is also a way to curb sides.

http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/...&utm_content=2

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24708055

http://link.springer.com/article/10....257-014-0077-5

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24848508

Whether you have meet someone personally or not that are willing to admit this to you doesn't mean it wont happen. I doubt I would tell my friends and family that I had gotten permanently impotent(Or significantly reduced libido/sexual pleasure) by taking a hair loss drug.

Thanks for the info.

I just wanted to add that the sexual side effects isn't just talk. Scientific peer reviewed articles have been published on the subject, and they had to add in sexual side effects on their information that goes along with the medication.

Finasteride is a drug for MPB and benign prostatic hyperplasia, which is enlargement of the prostate.

It has various functions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostate#Function

"However, it is dihydrotestosterone that regulates the prostate."

Tho, this lacks a source on wikipedias part, but it should be easy to dig up a scientific peer reviewed article on finasteride and prostate.




People react different to hormones. For some people they feel no difference, while for others it can be dramatic and permanent (irreversible). I think everyone is to make up their mind on what to do, and to really read about it before you make a choice. If anyone of you got more numbers or evidence I'd like to look at it. I am not saying take it, or not take it, I am not saying you will get side effects or you will have no side effects, the entire purpose of this comment is simply to post some information.

[Herbaliser]

No, it doesn't to my knowledge. I don't smoke cigarettes, but I've never had an issue with the other two.

You'll lose enough hair, you will end up taking it. And much like me, you'll regret not doing it sooner. Nothing else is going to stop it. Some things can slow it down, but if you're approaching NW2.5 at 20, you'd have a natural shiner by early 30s. Only Fin can stop that.

About the only people who have side effects from Fin, are people who read online horror stories about it(reverse placebo effect). Talking with people IRL who never read a hair loss forum, NONE of them have had sides. None. But a good chunk of forum users do. There's a reason for that. If you freak yourself out about it, you may have some. But if you don't worry, you shouldn't. The incidence is actually quite rare. Especially in men as young as you.

Are you serious Oracle: (If you freak yourself out about it, you may have some. But if you don't worry, you shouldn't.)
Please explain for me as i´m lost, or the whole post actually?
Lucky you have IRL people that tells you the truth, and not those internet trolls.

[WanderingOracle]

If you're familiar with the placebo effect, then you're already familiar with it(but in reverse).
There have already been studies done on this. Give someone a placebo, tell them it comes with horrible side-effectshttp://harvardmagazine.com/2013/01/t...ebo-phenomenon and lo and behold, most patients experience these horrible sides.
So if you convince yourself that Trenblastoise is right and your dick will fall off if you so much as sit in the same room as Fin, guess what? Trenblastoise's doomsaying will come true for you when you believe it.

That's the interesting thing about medicine as far as how you feel. How you feel is %90 mental. And erections are ultimately all in control of your mind.
Guy's who are not aware of Tren's fearmongering, don't have these problems. Meanwhile, most guys who read it - do.

Note that fearmongering can have no impact on actual results. As in, if you think Fin will work, it will have no impact on whether it does or not. So if you think it will work, you may still be one of the unlucky ones who don't respond and you'll lose hair. And if you think it won't work, it will probably work to preserve your hair anyway.

But if you think your dick will fall off, you'll convince yourself you're sick. And you'll then feel sick, even though there is nothing medically wrong with you.

This is similar to accutaine for skin care. People took it for ages with basically no sides, then some feartards emerge on the internet, and whole slews of people become convinced that accutaine is killing them. Some people even managed to freak themselves out to point of organ failure.
People who are not told "ZOMG Accutaine is gonna kill you!" have basically no sides whatsoever. People who are afraid to take it, but do so reluctantly, have over 20x as many sides.

The impact on skin? Exactly the same, regardless of what they expect.

[Herbaliser]

Regarding placebo effect , what about those that suddenly gets side effects after a really long time use?
Does it stay in their mind during the whole process, or is it all the horror stories that pops more frequently?