Rogaine / regaine help please. How do I know if it has lost effectiveness?

[farsanUK]

Ok so i have been using Rogaine (Regaine in UK) for best part of 7 years now. I didn't have a lot of hair loss but enough on the crown for people to notice. I'm now touching 34 years old.

So the first 8 months it worked wonders to the point where people couldn't even see my scalp any more. But after about 12 months I noticed hair very gradually starting to thin again on the crown and slowly but surely over the years hairs have continued to fall out up until 2 years ago since when the shed has stabilised and not much more has come out. However i now have a bald patch on the crown which slightly has made its way to the front but not much. The hairs on the crown I like thin , dead tangy type hairs of no use.

So the question ...has Rogaine for me lost its effectiveness .. I continue to use it and spend money every month on it .. am I just wasting money?

And very importantly and my main concern - how do I know that the hair I do have is there because of Rogaine? Because if it isn't than well I should stop using it. I've attached a pic of my crown in case it is of any use to experts.

I would really like it if some experts in the field would answer this for me as it has been bugging me for a few years now.

[Ahab]

Ok so i have been using Rogaine (Regaine in UK) for best part of 7 years now. I didn't have a lot of hair loss but enough on the crown for people to notice. I'm now touching 34 years old.

So the first 8 months it worked wonders to the point where people couldn't even see my scalp any more. But after about 12 months I noticed hair very gradually starting to thin again on the crown and slowly but surely over the years hairs have continued to fall out up until 2 years ago since when the shed has stabilised and not much more has come out. However i now have a bald patch on the crown which slightly has made its way to the front but not much. The hairs on the crown I like thin , dead tangy type hairs of no use.

So the question ...has Rogaine for me lost its effectiveness .. I continue to use it and spend money every month on it .. am I just wasting money?

And very importantly and my main concern - how do I know that the hair I do have is there because of Rogaine? Because if it isn't than well I should stop using it. I've attached a pic of my crown in case it is of any use to experts.

I would really like it if some experts in the field would answer this for me as it has been bugging me for a few years now.

That's been my experience with minoxidil (Rogaine) over 30 years. I suspect Rogaine does nothing to halt the advance of male pattern baldness. I believe what rogaine does is to keep follicles out of the resting phase of hair loss. But such follicles have to be unaffected by male pattern baldness. In addition to not halting the advance of male pattern baldness, I strongly suspect that Rogaine loses its effectivness because the body adjusts to it. I continue to use Rogaine even though I doubt it's doing anything for me, because I'm a stubborn SOB.

[farsanUK]

Yes im the same but its so hard to tell if the hair i do have is because of it or not. Clearly on the crown you can see its lost the effectiveness and although there are some dead looking threads of hair .. if thats what rogaine has maintained then well its of no real use.

Eventually i will get a transplant but people say you should stay on rogaine but what's the point? Why not stop rogaine let the dht effected hairs fall out and replace them with transplanted hair and at least those will likely not fall out as they are immune to dht. And if like we all know rogaine often looses its effectivness over time then well if those areas arent addressed by transplanted hair they will fall out leading you to get another possible transplant.

I guess we never know just how much more hair will fall out but maybe my father's hairloss is a good indication. His is more or less the same as mine accept of course being 80 years old and alot greyer.

[Ahab]

Yes im the same but its so hard to tell if the hair i do have is because of it or not. Clearly on the crown you can see its lost the effectiveness and although there are some dead looking threads of hair .. if thats what rogaine has maintained then well its of no real use.

Eventually i will get a transplant but people say you should stay on rogaine but what's the point? Why not stop rogaine let the dht effected hairs fall out and replace them with transplanted hair and at least those will likely not fall out as they are immune to dht. And if like we all know rogaine often looses its effectivness over time then well if those areas arent addressed by transplanted hair they will fall out leading you to get another possible transplant.

I guess we never know just how much more hair will fall out but maybe my father's hairloss is a good indication. His is more or less the same as mine accept of course being 80 years old and alot greyer.

There is no guarantee that transplanted hair will not fall out eventually. I had transplants 40 years ago. I am now experiencing senescent alopecia. Look it up on Google. If a transplant doctor tells you transplanted hair will never fall out, he is flat out lying to you.

See for yourself: look around at old bald guys--take a close look at what would be their donor area had they had transplants, and you will see that for many of them their donor area is see through, even though they never had transplants. Also in my case, after my transplants grew in they looked OK for a couple of years. But after that I lost more and more hair, so every year things got worse and worse. Although I still technically had some donor area left and could have gotten more transplants, I wasn't happy with what my donor area was like after the transplants I had, so I didn't get any more transplants. And now that senescent alopecia has set in, it's a wreck.