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  1. #1
    Junior Member
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    Oct 2015
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    Default TE or MPB? I just can't figure it out - Unusual circumstances, long-ish story

    Hi there, I'm 24 and my hair is falling out, but I don't know why and I'd like to share my story and just get some opinions as to what might be going on.

    First of all, I should say now - I have no pictures. Because if anyone saw them, they wouldn't believe at all that I'm going bald. I also haven't seen a derm...yet.

    Recently, in the last few months I've been shedding like crazy. I used to shed a normal amount but recently it's gotten particularly bad and the worst it gets - the worse I get, my stress and anxiety has been so bad that I've skipped days without eating and nearly quit my job. It's honestly been the worst few months of my life. I feel 'ghost hairs' on my hands (Keep thinking hairs are falling on them) and when I look at a blank surface, close my eyes and then re-open them, I see outlines of shed hairs everywhere before disappearing. It's really playing on my mind.

    In summer 2015, my hair just appeared to stop growing (It normally grows very fast) and shortly afterwards, my hair began to thin all over as my shedding raged out of control. In all honesty, it was only on hair washing days I was losing 350-400 hairs, every other day seemed to be about 70-100 if I was to guess, which is 'normal' according to the internet but very unusual for me.

    The hair loss is annoying, I brush my hair in the dark and I can feel them falling onto my chest and arms. I can be sat anywhere and feel them fall onto my shoulders or watch them fall into the keyboard/dinner. I run my hand through my hair and more come out on my fingers.

    My hair quality is THICK, very thick. There's no trace of baldness on either side of the family (and my mother's side has REALLY mapped out the family tree). My temples and hairline aren't receding either. My hair length is about 3 and a half inches long too.

    However, within the past 3 weeks my crown has really thinned and it's worrying the hell out of me, I also feel like my head, particularly 1 part of the crown, is slightly itchier than normal but honestly I don't know if that's just the anxiety. I've got a big line that looks like a weird parting down the back of my head and I can feel my scalp when I touch it.

    I don't know if this is caused by the itching, but I can feel slight lumps in certain places on my head too; they're tender and sometimes itch

    Also, a few months ago I noticed a completely smooth bald patch behind my left ear, which I thought might have something to do with the telephone headset I wear for work rubbing constantly, but nobody else seems to have it - and I've only been there a year.

    But it gets stranger and stupider:

    Since I was 16, I've dyed my hair black. My natural hair colour is blonde. I've used the same permanent, peroxide & ammonia based dye for 8 years nearly non-stop. It was around this time, I noticed that I shed slightly more hairs in the shower but I can explain that fairly easily - Firstly, they were black hairs and more noticeable and secondly - it's a bit gross but I didn't wash my hair for weeks on end. I was partly scared that the dye would wash out (even though it wouldn't) and my hair is so thick and poofy that it took days of sweat to make it flatter and more normal looking, a weekly hair wash just undid all my hard work. Pretty gross, and I did this right up until I was...24, actually. My hair thickness stayed pretty much the same in all this time too.

    Another thing about the dye is that I think I might actually be allergic to it. My scalp would always burn slightly when I put it on, but I didn't want to accept that it wasn't good for me because I liked how it looked, so I just...ignored it.

    That's disgusting and you're an idiot, but what's it like now?

    The last time I dyed my hair was in May/June and I've since stopped for good, the sudden shedding a few weeks after my last dye really scared me. It has allowed me to map out my shed hairs though - firstly, the ones I've shed have almost entirely been black hairs. Some are completely black, almost as though they stopped growing at some random point while others are black with about of inch of blonde at the bottom, as they've grown since the last dye and got my natural hair colour underneath. None of them really look miniaturized.

    As you can probably imagine, I look like a horrible mess with my black hair and blonde roots (especially on the crown, which makes it look much thinner than it probably is) - but seeing the black hairs has given me some peace of mind when I pull them off my shoulders/desk/pillow/chest/food/hands/anything. It feels like it's been so long since my last dye that I don't feel so bad seeing them.

    No miniaturization, no family history, no receding hairline? It's got to be TE right? Have you had any triggers?

    Well, I want to believe. But my crown is so thin and it really worries me and I'm told that MPB has 'the itch' which I've definitely been experiencing in the past 7 days. I've also got quite bad dandruff.

    As for triggers...well, here's where it gets even weirder.

    When my hair started really falling, I noticed I got some tiny red blood dots on my arms that spread down to my hands and even on my face slightly. Everywhere on the internet said it was cherry angiomas; virtually unremovable broken red blood vessels of which science basically has no real idea of why they even appear at all. Great. It didn't help my already poor self-image and threw me into even more anxiety but I never connected the two.

    Then I showed my mum who initially dismissed it before she started to get more and more red dots herself...what else had also been happening to her? Her hair had been thinning considerably throughout the summer too.

    Aside from that, I feel like I've had some kind of allergy for a while and I felt traumatized when a sheet of glass literally exploded next to me pretty much at about the time the shedding started, but I can't imagine that being TE trigger. I was also diagnosed with Vitamin D deficiency, which I started taking prescribed supplements for last week, maybe that hasn't helped my hair either.

    Anyway, I feel like I've rambled on so if anyone has read this far then thank you for listening. Everyone I ask says it looks normal on the crown and that it's just a weird parting but it feels thinner in one patch to me - once again, maybe that's just because I've scratched some hair out of it. I feel like if it were to be this thin already, there'd be noticable balding elsewhere too, but there just doesn't seem to be.

    Maybe it's DUPA MPB, maybe it's TE or maybe it's just a seasonal shed that I'm worrying about too much. All I can say is roll on Shiseido, I hope it's available before it's too late. Even if I get out of this alive with a full head of hair I can at least say I'll never see a balding person in the same light again, the sheer struggle I've experienced has completely changed my outlook on balding people and what society cruelly dismisses as some sort of joke. You guys are treated like 2nd class citizens and you really shouldn't be.

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