Hi! my introduction and story

[TMLviper]

Hi everyone,

Well my story begins with the fact that I started going bald around the age of 17 but it wasn't anything major..a few hair here and there but you could say it was just a little over the normal amount a person would lose on a daily basis..but I was always worried about baldness because my older brother lost his hair at a pretty young age!

Flash forward 6 years...I am now 23 and although I have hair it is thinning and pretty noticeable. I just got a haircut and cut it has short as possible with scissors so it's not a buzzcut or "fade"...but the thing i noticed is that it is very VERY noticeable now and I just felt very very depressed looking at it in the mirror! I always had confidence issues because of the fact that I am also short and now balding so it makes me feel like god is out to get me lol.

But after reading some threads on this forum I feel a little better knowing that i'm not the only one..and that i'm not being "punished" for something..which is what i feel like most of the time because of my current life situation in both physical appearance and also emotionally...I don't know why i'm even writing this but I guess it just feels good to let someone know how i feel anonymously.

But like i said reading the threads have made me feel better and makes me realize that there are worst things than going bald! So thanks to everyone who gave helpful advice on these forums since they helped me out as well

[Winston]

Welcome to the forum TMLviper. You are right, as Spencer Kobren always says, “you are not alone”. This is the very best hair loss forum on the internet, filled with compassionate , caring and knowledgeable people. It’s helped me a great deal just like it helped you.

[Havok]

hair loss sucks period. some people don't mind it as much as others but i suspect most men on bald truth are very bothered by it. hair can make all the difference in the world to someone's face. one can go from handsome/sharp to looking like ****ing smeagol. look at Ne-Yo with and without hat. even though i have mild thinning in front and temple area, i hate meeting new people and talking to girls because i'm always self conscious about my hair. i'm not one of those people who can 'look at the bright side' unfortunately. i hate the fact that we have donor limitations for hair transplant. i don't want to create an 'illusion' of having full head of hair. i just want a full head of hair whether i comb it, buzz it, go running, swimming, to be able to wake up in the morning and go out and have a bad hair day every now and then. now every waking moment is a 'bad hair day' unfortunately lol. i guess i can work on other aspects of my life in preparation for a miracle cure in near future. not holding my breath though.

[VictimOfDHT]

TMLviper, welcome to the forum where people share the misery (of losing their hair). Talking about it might help you feel better for a moment but I know the moment you look in the mirror or as soon as you wake up in the morning and realize you're losing your hair it all hits you again like a ton of bricks and the despair you feel is immeasurable. I've been battling this god damn CURSE for over a decade and it's never gotten any easier with time. On the contrary it's gotten much much worse and I can honestly say my life has been completely ruined by it.

Yeah, there may be things worse than going bald BUT, unless those things actually happen to us, we will always feel like baldness IS the worst thing. The simple fact is we can NEVER feel something that's not happening to us. Sure I know someone who's lost a leg or an arm is a million times worse than losing hair, but at the end of the day I'm still losing my hair and I will only feel MY pain and suffering. Like I said above, my life has been competely ruined. I could never achieve anything because of the psychological and emotional effects of the this ****ing curse and now I see my life slipping away. I don't know what things are worse than that. Having to go through mental torture every god damn second of your life for over 12 years and god knows how many more years to come is as bad a thing as it can get IMO. I've had a very hard life and have seen hell and still living it but hair loss has had the worst effect on me by far out of everything else. I'm at the point where if a doctor were to tell me I have cancer I'd actually thank him because I don't want to live another ****ing minute of this misery any more.

[DepressedByHairLoss]

I totally hear you, VictimofDHT. I've only been suffering from hair loss for about a year now, but it has been the worst year of my life. I went from being the life of the party to a virtual recluse in my own home. Make no mistake about it, the effects of hair loss are psychologically and emotionally devastating. I wish scientists would stop testing shit on mice until the cows come home and start testing on humans. There may be risks involved but I think many of us would gladly accept the risks if there was any chance that we could regrow our hair. I too feel that my life is being ruined by hair loss. I can't stand it either when people tell me that I should just "accept it". I cannot and will not accept it. I will not live life with something that I hate so much. I have been researching potential hair loss remedies (some of which I listed in the Cutting Edge Treatments section), and I've been looking into them. I can't believe there has been no effective remedy for hair loss yet. I mean, scientists are cloning kidneys and lungs, yet they cannot or will not clone hair. It really seems ridiculous to me.

[VictimOfDHT]

Depressedbyhairloss, if you've only been losing your hair for a year then I'm going to assume you're still young, and IF, IF a cure finally comes out in the next couple of years or so, you might still have a chance at starting your life. As for me, while I'm not over the hill or close, I still think it's too late for me. I'm not bald, YET, but the ****ing curse is picking up speed now like never before. But I have had HTs done to my hairline and temples. 5 GOD DAMN HTS, and now I'm losing my transplanted hairs. I mean, how more cruel can life be ???
But yeah, I know the feeling. Being in a virtual prison. I've been living that life for a long time. I literally feel like a prisoner watching out of my small cell window. Only thing, I'm not watching people go by. I'm watching my whole ****ing life go by while being totally helpless to do anything about it. I've actually started living like this even before I started losing my hair. That's how much I feared hair loss. To me, it's worse than losing an arm or a leg.

Yeah, it is a joke that we, in 2011 STILL DONT have a cure for this curse. I don't even know if we're close. I've heard this crap before. In fact, I've been hearing it for the past 15 years. And every time we think we're getting closer to a cure, the mother ****ers come out and tell us "in the next 5-10 years".
I'm afraid I'm going to die waiting.

I think there's hardly an effort being put into finding a cure for this debilitating disease. Yeah, it is a disease IMO because it can totally **** up a person's life in more ways than one. I know it's ****ed up my life and now it's even affecting my nervous system. But yeah, 7 billion people and 10's of thousands of scientists, researchers and labs around the world and no one has been able to figure out something, well, because they don't bother with hair loss research. 4 companies !! 4 god damn companies that are TRYING to do something. That's it ! Of course there's a research lab at every street corner for breast cancer research. And I don't want to hear the arguement "well it's cancer". No. There are a 1000 other cancers that hardly get any ****ing attention, ESPECIALLY if they have to do with men.

So yeah. That's life. Aint life beautiful ?? If my father were alive I would've sued him for the pain and suffering and the hell I'm going through. The only thing I inherited from him is a shity life and hair loss.

[DepressedByHairLoss]

Yeah, I hear you man, living with hair loss is total hell, esp. when your father and brother both have full heads of hair. My life has gone from "great" to "depressed", "angry", and "suicidal" in this past year. I don't what I have done to deserve this baldness curse.
What really kills me with a lot of these scientists is that they'll experiment with hair growth chemicals on mice, yet they'll never work to try anything on humans. I have seen so many scientists say they have grown hair on mice using a variety of chemicals like WNT, Noggin, BMP, and TB-4, yet they'll never perform any clinical trials on humans. I mean, what the hell good is it to keep experimenting on mice, then say that these findings "could" or "may" "provide insight into the complex process of baldness", yet never perform any human trials. I've heard the argument before that many scientists are working hard to create a cure for baldness because of the huge amount of money involved. Yet if this was true, then how come there are only 4 friggin companies out there trying to develop a cure. It just pisses me off so much man.
I've thought about trying a hair transplant but that process is so imperfect, IMO. A person is left with permanent scars and the risk of the donor hair not holding. Instead of making money off of such an imperfect procedure, these doctors should work on developing a way to regenerate hair as opposed to pluck it from one place and move it to another.
And BTW, you are totally right, hair loss IS a disease. You said it has ****ed up your life and it's currently and majorly ****ing up my life. Anyone who says that hair loss is a purely cosmetic issue has never lived through the pain and despair of losing hair in the first place.

[VictimOfDHT]

I don't know what to say, man. I feel really sad for myself but at the same time I feel sad for all those who are suffering because of this god damn curse because I can understand what they're going through. Life is not fair and it's very cruel. Yeah, it really sucks when you're the only one losing hair out of a bunch of men around you. You just look at their hair and think, why can't I have that ? It's just ****ing hair, god. Why couldn't you let me have it ? Why ? What good does me losing my hair serve in this ****ing life ???

Those scientists/researchers have to keep working on mice so the money keeps rolling in. Never mind the FACT that mice actually DON'T suffer from Alopecia areata to begin with. They actually do something to the mice to make them lose their hair and then they -the scientists- try to regrow it. So, the cause of hair loss in those mice have NOTHING to do with what humans suffer from. They're totally unrelated. So, I don't even know what the point is of doing all the "research" on something that's NOT the same. But you see, if they stop working on those poor mice the funding will stop. And you know, those so-called researchers get billions and billions of dollars for their so-called research. I'm talking about all research not just in the hair loss field. They have "scientists/researchers" wasting millions of dollars "studying" the life of sharks !! Yeah, they wanna know why sharks attack people !!!! You see, that's very important for humanity because maybe one day we can play water volleyball with sharks and have them as pets once the "scientist" figure out how to stop them from attacking us.

Meanwhile, 100's of illnesses and disorders just continue to **** people's lives because there isn't enough funding or real researchers to bother to do something about them.
I just find it hard to believe that -with the exception of a handful of companies- there is any serious research going into the issue of hair loss.

And the silent suffering continues and more lives continue to be destroyed.
**** life. I Haven't seen any good thing about it.

[DepressedByHairLoss]

VictimOfDHT, I couldn't have said it better myself. I could literally name you a laundry list of people who have had all these "insightful hair loss discoveries" with mice, but never apply these discoveries to trying to cure hair loss in humans. I've even written to some of these scientists, pleading with them to conduct human trials based on their findings. Maybe there are some small risks involved, but I think that people like you and me (who have been so adversely affected by hair loss) would accept these risks and try anything to regrow our hair.
I often ask myself what I did to deserve this curse; I used to have such a full head of thick hair. I'm always pissed off about this and I can never just "accept" it. I really think that I may have to look outside of the U.S. for some sort of treatment for hair loss since Rogaine, Propecia, and hair transplants are such chickenshit and don't do much of anything. I mean, how can I just focus on FDA-approved treatments when they don't do a damn thing? I heard that in China they are using umbilical cord blood-derived stem cells to grow hair, but I'm skeptical.

[VictimOfDHT]

Yeah man. I remember hearing and reading about all the "success" in regrowing hair in mice since the 90's or even before. But we never see that applied to people. Reason : those so called researchers ARENT interested in regrowing hair in humans. It's totally about pretending that they're doing something to make them deserve all the money they're making. Pure and simple. So, the risk to humans isn't even a factor. I mean there are always trials on humans and that always involves some risks but that's part of the process. That's how all drugs are tested. So again, the risk factor is NO factor in why they won't apply their "discoveries" to humans.
I'm thinking maybe if researchers got paid depending on how much they produce or how much they progress into their research maybe then they'll be serious about finding all kinds of treatments and cures.

And yeah I hear you about being mad about losing your hair. I can't stop asking the same question. Not why me ? But why this whole hair loss shit at all. I still don't get what the purpose is of losing one's hair. I mean we get hit with all kind of shit in this miserable life. A million and one thing can go wrong with our bodies, so why the hell not at least let us keep our ****ing hair instead of adding to the misery? I won't ever accept it or get over it either not even if I turned 100. I have a shitty life as it is. Why do I have to accept more shit ?

Minox and Fin/Dut might not be a fix-it-all drug but at least they're better than nothing. I have two brothers, one completely bald and the other 1/2 bald. The first didn't use anything. The second uses minox occasionally. I still have a good coverage -though it's not as thick as it was even a few months back- but it's the front that's always been the problem and that's where all my HTs have gone. Of course if you've been following my posts you'd know that I'm losing my transplanted hairs now, and that's why I'm chocking. But you need to know that my case is a rare one. The vast majority of people who get HTs keep their hair. My bad luck is unmatched however.

I dont think there's any place on the planet that has a good answer to hair loss, yet. Not even China.