I am 99% sure I am going bald and no one will help me.

[sdsurfin]

I just looked at your pics again. Seriously man, your hair is thick as ****. If you do have any thinning in the front (which I don't see at all), its probably just your hairline maturing a bit , everyones moves up a cm or two. You have no thinning in the back that I can see, and you clearly have some anxiety messing with your head. anxiety can make you believe things that aren't there, Ive been in the same place. Almost all mens hair changes as they get older, like the rest of our faces and bodies, just don't stress about it. No one is going to notice a tiny change in your hairline, don't listen to the crazies on here, lots of people with BDD. If you're worried go see a hair specialist, but I can almost guarantee this is not something you should be stressed about. If I were you I'd think about the guys on here who are actually losing their hair at a premature rate, or are already pretty bald or totally bald, and think about chilling out.

[sdsurfin]

oh and also everyone can see through their hair in bright light, or light that is angled right. You just don't notice it until you get paranoid about it. I have friends with no hair loss or history of hair loss in their families, and their hair is thinner and more see through than mine is. You just have very straight and not-coarse hair, thats why your whorl in the back looks like its bare when its not. its just the way you're lighting it. If you had active balding your dermatologist would have told you.

[efedrez]

I appreciate all your guys' input a lot.

@Plan C: Honestly I agree with you. I'm tempted to try monox once I get my hair cut this week. I can't go to the gym anymore because of how thin my hair is now. I can't hide how thin my hairline looks at all. I can't even part my hair on the side now it's so thin.

@Illusion: Did you check out my previous thread? My hair has thinned considerably since those pictures were taken. I can't tell if it's slowing down or not. I know it looks fine to most, but my hair was absolutely nothing like this 4-6 months ago. I was fairly secure with my hairline and now I can almost count the hairs in the front and the hairfall that I experience look like all kinked and damaged hairs. Like my hair is losing its body and "dying." I agree with the stress thing, as I didn't suffer a significant trauma, but I know I had a few panic attacks and those definitely aren't fun. I'm starting to think I have Chronic TE. I fear I won't be able to get my hair back to anywhere near it was 6 months ago.

@efedrez: I've been told by many people they don't see what's happening to me, but it's more than obvious to me. My hair can absolutely not be under light otherwise you see directly through to the scalp. I'll probably pick up some Rogaine when I get this haircut depending on how it looks.

@fitnessisgood4u: I appreciate it, but this is absolutely destroying my confidence. I can't tell if I'm just having some weird dysmorphia thing or what, but my hair looks terrible in comparison to only a few months ago. It's killing me inside, haha.

Buddy, the felling of loosing hair is for sure a hard one to digest and even though I honestly believe you have nothing to worry about, the anxiety is there and you need to do something soon.

I would try to keep an open mind in terms of how to deal with the stress and depression generated by hair loss so 2 things are very important at this point if you ask me:

1) Understand objectively if you are experiencing hair loss, you mentioned that your hair looks worst now in comparison to the pictures, can you upload new pictures so we can help you putting things into perspective?
2) See a therapist and not only a dermatologist as well...when I started loosing my hair (at 17 yo) my fist visit was to a dermatologist and I can't explain how bad that made me fell, my second one was to a therapist and it help me a lot for sure. There is no shame into looking at any possible option that can help you deal with depression

[Illusion]

@Illusion: Did you check out my previous thread? My hair has thinned considerably since those pictures were taken. I can't tell if it's slowing down or not. I know it looks fine to most, but my hair was absolutely nothing like this 4-6 months ago. I was fairly secure with my hairline and now I can almost count the hairs in the front and the hairfall that I experience look like all kinked and damaged hairs. Like my hair is losing its body and "dying." I agree with the stress thing, as I didn't suffer a significant trauma, but I know I had a few panic attacks and those definitely aren't fun. I'm starting to think I have Chronic TE. I fear I won't be able to get my hair back to anywhere near it was 6 months ago.

Looking at the old pictures in your previous thread, I can honestly say that I don't see a lot of (if any) differences between the two. However, if you say so I'm going to take your word on it. But do remember that, like has been said, your hair will get a bit thinner as you age. And, like also has been said before in this thread, you have really thick hair for a 30 y/o

[Illusion]

2) See a therapist and not only a dermatologist as well...when I started loosing my hair (at 17 yo) my fist visit was to a dermatologist and I can't explain how bad that made me fell, my second one was to a therapist and it help me a lot for sure. There is no shame into looking at any possible option that can help you deal with depression

Mind telling me how your experience with a therapist was? I'm at the same age you were when you visited that therapist for the first time (17 y/o) and I'm going to start CBT in a few weeks as I'm pretty depressed about hair loss (and some other reasons but HL plays a pretty big role in my depression)...

[efedrez]

Mind telling me how your experience with a therapist was? I'm at the same age you were when you visited that therapist for the first time (17 y/o) and I'm going to start CBT in a few weeks as I'm pretty depressed about hair loss (and some other reasons but HL plays a pretty big role in my depression)...

Sure, my experience was very positive! as you can also tell, loosing your hair at such a young age was killing me and my family helped me finding the right doctor.

I started a group therapy and assisted for a period of a year once a week...at the beginning all I could think about was hair loss but after a while I just kept going for other personal reasons and overall it helped me a lot with my depression and self confidence (and I can also tell you that my hair loss improved a bit since over stressing can cause a vice circle for HL)

I would love to tell you that it was enough to help me get 100% over baldness but if that was the case I wouldn't be here, however it really helped and I have managed to deal with HL and have a fairly successful and happy live despite of it

[Illusion]

Sure, my experience was very positive! as you can also tell, loosing your hair at such a young age was killing me and my family helped me finding the right doctor.

I started a group therapy and assisted for a period of a year once a week...at the beginning all I could think about was hair loss but after a while I just kept going for other personal reasons and overall it helped me a lot with my depression and self confidence (and I can also tell you that my hair loss improved a bit since over stressing can cause a vice circle for HL)

I would love to tell you that it was enough to help me get 100% over baldness but if that was the case I wouldn't be here, however it really helped and I have managed to deal with HL and have a fairly successful and happy live despite of it

Thanks for responding! I'm glad to hear that you can now cope with HL pretty well, it gives me a little bit of hope as well. Even though HL is still on your mind (I guess it's hard to get over it 100% if you start stressing about it like most of us on here do) it seems like therapy really helped you indeed.

Regarding the bolded part, that's what I'm scared of right now, that I'll waste a big part of my life worrying about HL and won't have anything good (no happiness, achievements, memories, etc) to look back on when I'm older. I hope therapy will help me to find happiness once again or at least will help me to ease my mind a bit more. Obviously it has to come from me but everytime I try to make changes on my own it just doesn't seem to work out.

By the way, I don't know how long ago you underwent group therapy but how do you feel about things now? Do you sometimes feel it would be beneficial for you to go back or is your mental state still pretty steady? I might have the wrong idea when I think of therapy but I sort of assume that it's easy to fall back in old patterns a long time after you've finished treatment...

[efedrez]

Thanks for responding! I'm glad to hear that you can now cope with HL pretty well, it gives me a little bit of hope as well. Even though HL is still on your mind (I guess it's hard to get over it 100% if you start stressing about it like most of us on here do) it seems like therapy really helped you indeed.

Regarding the bolded part, that's what I'm scared of right now, that I'll waste a big part of my life worrying about HL and won't have anything good (no happiness, achievements, memories, etc) to look back on when I'm older. I hope therapy will help me to find happiness once again or at least will help me to ease my mind a bit more. Obviously it has to come from me but everytime I try to make changes on my own it just doesn't seem to work out.

By the way, I don't know how long ago you underwent group therapy but how do you feel about things now? Do you sometimes feel it would be beneficial for you to go back or is your mental state still pretty steady? I might have the wrong idea when I think of therapy but I sort of assume that it's easy to fall back in old patterns a long time after you've finished treatment...

I have considered it a few times of course but you also need to remember that even though baldness can always be a big concerns in our minds it also gets easier with time, I'm 33 now and not the only one of my friends with some degree of HL so it's easier to cope with it now than back when I was 17.

What is important at your age is take the right measures to don't let it control you life to a point were you will compromise your entire future (remember you wont be 17 forever and it will get easier as well)...we didn't choose to loss hair but we can certainly choose how to deal with it.

I'm also a pretty realistic guy and understand that simple getting a word of advice form someone online its not enough to deal with this so looking for the right help is key to get u in the right track.

And finally stay optimistic, it's extremely unlikely that you will get to my age with nothing else available in the market to give us a full head of hair; Just look at all the progress from Replicel, CB and Bimatoprost...someone is going to hit the market soon and baldness will be in the past, so if it helps look at this as a period of your life that will soon be in the past

[theEvergreen]

Buddy, the felling of loosing hair is for sure a hard one to digest and even though I honestly believe you have nothing to worry about, the anxiety is there and you need to do something soon.

I would try to keep an open mind in terms of how to deal with the stress and depression generated by hair loss so 2 things are very important at this point if you ask me:

1) Understand objectively if you are experiencing hair loss, you mentioned that your hair looks worst now in comparison to the pictures, can you upload new pictures so we can help you putting things into perspective?
2) See a therapist and not only a dermatologist as well...when I started loosing my hair (at 17 yo) my fist visit was to a dermatologist and I can't explain how bad that made me fell, my second one was to a therapist and it help me a lot for sure. There is no shame into looking at any possible option that can help you deal with depression

Sorry this is late. I responded to these posts in here but they were flagged for mentioning I guess another site? The pictures I uploaded in this thread are the "new" pictures. I linked my old post in the first post of the thread I think. I can no longer part my hair in the middle because it's just all invisible. I have to go with this weird moppy emo-dude hairstyle now, haha. On the bright side, I stopped using Ketoconozole 2% shampoo as I read deeper into it and found out that the study that says it "encourages regrowth" was done almost entirely by the people manufacturing it. If it did anything, it made my hair appear a lot thinner than it was. I've been using regular Head and Shoulders for a few weeks now and my hair appears to have more body again. It looks like the supposed "miniaturized" hairs that I thought were vellus hairs actually have some color to them and are slowly growing in, leading me to believe this is some form of either diffuse thinning or Telogen Effluvium even though it's a longshot. Many of the pictures I see online about it are mostly in females, but their "pattern" is almost the same as mine but more progressed. It's still very very thin in the center, and I guess it's been a slow going thing since I was 16 (wow almost double that age now), so I guess it's to be expected.

I've got a hold on my anxiety. I don't really get that anxious about it anymore. I just kind of figure it's going to happen eventually. My grandfather didn't go bald until he hit 60 and it all kind of went. I know genetics don't have a timestamp, so it could happen at any time if I'm susceptible. I also realize it could be a bit of dysmorphia issue as well. No one notices and everyone says my hair is really thick etc etc. I realize how kind of ignorant I was to post this one here when people are having real problems with hair loss as well. I really do appreciate you saying nothing is really wrong with my hair to try and calm me down. And after re-reading some things that people responded with on other sites, I'm realizing that they were probably completely sarcastic and busting my balls.

[theEvergreen]

Looking at the old pictures in your previous thread, I can honestly say that I don't see a lot of (if any) differences between the two. However, if you say so I'm going to take your word on it. But do remember that, like has been said, your hair will get a bit thinner as you age. And, like also has been said before in this thread, you have really thick hair for a 30 y/o

Yeah I'm starting to realize that I am probably viewing myself with blinders on. I became obsessed and couldn't stop looking and worrying, causing further hair loss due to anxiety. I can safely say that some of it is slowly growing back in. I realize I probably won't get all of it back, but I'm glad I can finally cope with what MIGHT come. My grandfather didn't go bald until around 60, so I'm hoping I can keep most of what I have until then if not forever. All I know is that the Keto shampoo that was supposedly supposed to help me definitely made my hair at least appear thinner and made it tangle a LOT more causing more fallout.

Be careful if you use that stuff guys. Sometimes its effects are not the ones you desire.