shedding hair fast

[brunobald]

I know its always going to be different from person to person but how many hairs do you normally shed when washing your hair. In the last 6 months my hair shedding has really ramped up from barely noticing any extra hairs when I wash my hair to now hundreds per wash. My hands look like I've dipped them wet into a bag of hairs after I have massaged in the shampoo. The rate at which im losing hair is scary and I reckon if it keeps up I will be bald in months not years. Is this common with mpb?

[BigThinker]

Mine was very aggressive as well. One year ago I was nw1.5 with above average density. I'm now pushing NW3 and thinning horribly up top. It's so hard to adjust.

[Notcoolanymore]

Damn man, losing that much hair at one time would scare the hell out of me. Hopefully you guys start growing that lost hair back soon. My shed wasn't as bad as you describe, but I didn't have much hair to shed when I started treating it.

[BigThinker]

Yeah, it's legit messed with every facet of my life to some degree. It comes in waves.

My dad was slick NW7 by like 26-27, so I know I potentially inherited some aggressive hair loss genes.

[brunobald]

Im not treating my hair so the shed is natural. Just washed my hair through a sheet of muslin to catch the hair to get a better idea of how many im losing. Not a good idea morally but I am shedding so many so fast I have a feeling it could be somthing other than just MPB.

Anyway I counted over 550!. Took me half an hour lol. I hadn't washed my hair in a couple of days so it wouldn't be fair to say this was one days loss. But add in the hair that has fallen to the floor, pillow or desk and I can easliy see 300 per day.

Family history: Both grandads have hair in their 80's, dad has excellent hair as do his brothers. Mothers brother has some thinning which came later in life. All in all pretty good genes in my close family. If I start to look further up the family tree there are some bald men so I could easliy have the gene. In my age group all cousins have good hair so far..

Most people on this forum have had their fair share of stress and im no exception. In the last two years I have gone through extreme stress and only now feel like im emerging out of that period of my life. You could make the connection of TE, but why has it only reared its head now after two years of continual stress. Also I appers to be mainly on the top of my head ie the classic mpb zones

Anyway just wondered what your thought were on excessive shedding in relation to MBP.

[BigThinker]

Well, I'd love to console you and tell you it's just TE, but MPB is just so damn common. Look into it sooner than later. The longer you wait, the less hair you may be able to save.

[Notcoolanymore]

Don't waste any more time. The sooner you get to treating it the better off you will be. Especially losing that much hair in a day holy s#!t.

[brunobald]

I went to a tricologist a few weeks back. She performed an indepth examination of my hair took about an hour and a half. I was expecting her to confirm MPB but she said the majourity of my hair loss was a combo of stress and poor diet.

She attributed 15 to 20% of my hair loss down to MPB and I was not to consider taking any dht blocker as my case was very mild? She had prescribed finastieride to over 500 men with only one reporting sides. Intrestingly there were also a few on RU who were doing well on it.

Here is a little info on how the diagnosis was done.

1. Check scalp with video microscope, mild dandruff and no infections.
2. Perform hair pull test
3. Pull out two groups of about 20 hairs from two different sites on the scalp. This hair was viewed under a microscope with a video display and a polarizing light. Viewing the hair shaft under polarized light shows up the minerals and hair condtion. Healthy hair looks transparent with a colour palette similer to tortiouse shell, unhealthy hair is black and the light does not shine through. I had a lot of black hair. Next she looked at the roots/bulbs of the hair and this is where I get confused. Apparently larger hair bulbs are an indication of MPB I though the complete opposite was true becasue of the follicular miniturisation? Also the hair without bulbs im guessing these are the growing angen hairs looked like they had been pinched at the end and this was an indication of stress and low water intake?

Another intresting point she raised was even though the majourity of hair was lost on the MPB areas this does not necessarily mean it was lost via MPB as in men the MPB area will typically have less blood flow and therefore get hit the hardest.

So hard to know what to belive, there are so few documented cases of Male TE espically in the MPB yet the tricologist arguements made sense and if she belived it was MPB why did she not say so. Was she looking to string me along and hopefully book some more appointents to sell me some "product" along the way. I guess over her career she must have seen 1000's of MPB case under the microscope and like anything you do that many times you must gain a kind of instinct for these things.

Anyway I don't know what im trying to prove other than convice myself its not MPB which I know in the back of my mind it is. But I though I would let you know a little insight into the tricology methods as there is not a lot on the forum about these methods with the microscope and polarized light.