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Here's a bit of a backstory. I am currently 19 years old.
I've always had very thick hair my whole life. My father is balding and my grandfather has no front hair. My dad said this started around the time he was in his late thirties. My grandpa said around his forties.
I've had very thick hair all throughout high school. In May of my senior year, right around the end, I dealt with a very traumatic breakup that shook me a lot. In past years, I had eating problems and a bit of cocaine substance control issues.Side note: I have been on retinoids since my junior year of high school for acne and doxycycline.
Needless to say, once my breakup happened, my eating patterns became irregular. Towards the end of the summer, I noticed a tiny bit of thinning, but nothing severe at all to worry about. Then I went to college and became a vegan.
Over the year, my hair thinned a little bit, but nothing too drastic. I wore a beanie every day for the most part, and when I took it off it was noticeable, but after I ran my hands through my hair, it would be fine. It looked like this in February of 2012:
Then I decided to end my veganism and started binge eating. I gained about 20 pounds. During that time period, while still on retinoids and doxycycline, my hair shedding became a bit excessive, but still, not very noticeable.
In June, I went to a moronic dermatologist that was covered under my insurance for acne and for hair loss. For acne, they prescribed me a higher dose of my retinoid, and I personally decided to stop taking doryx doxycycline because of reviews of hair loss I saw online. For the record, I only started taking doryx the summer right before college.
That being said, without really even looking at my hair, she prescribed propecia and rogaine. The propecia seemed to be working fine, but when I started romaine a bit later in the month, the shedding became excessive with bald spots.
After a month of propecia and two weeks of rogaine, I stopped taking the balding treatments. I also decided to eliminate my retinoid treatment completely as well. I hoped that by stopping everything, my body would stabilize and my hair would grow back.
I stopped treatments mid July. Now it is the first day of October, and not much seems to have changed, except that my hair has gotten longer, but still thin.
The shedding is still happening. I did a scalp test--pulling a large group of hair--every single day for the past 2 weeks. About 4-5 hairs come out every single time I do it. Every time I shake my head, hair is falling out. I am losing hair.
This is what it looks like when fully parted and patted down:
This is what it looks like normally:
I do not know what type of hair loss I have. I wish I could know whether or not it was male pattern baldness (which I thought it was at one point) or this telogeun effluvium thing I am reading about online. I am too afraid to go to a dermatologist given that they handed out medication that seemed to make it significantly worse. Do you think that it is possible that stress + eating irregularities are doing this? I have had an immense amount of family and personal stress the past 4 or 5 months, but I am permanently stressed out for the most part. Also, do you think my obsession with my hair loss could be making it worse? It seems to be diffuse hair loss, from what I have researched, but I do not know much about this. Any advice/suggestions/similar stories?
I've always had very thick hair my whole life. My father is balding and my grandfather has no front hair. My dad said this started around the time he was in his late thirties. My grandpa said around his forties.
I've had very thick hair all throughout high school. In May of my senior year, right around the end, I dealt with a very traumatic breakup that shook me a lot. In past years, I had eating problems and a bit of cocaine substance control issues.Side note: I have been on retinoids since my junior year of high school for acne and doxycycline.
Needless to say, once my breakup happened, my eating patterns became irregular. Towards the end of the summer, I noticed a tiny bit of thinning, but nothing severe at all to worry about. Then I went to college and became a vegan.
Over the year, my hair thinned a little bit, but nothing too drastic. I wore a beanie every day for the most part, and when I took it off it was noticeable, but after I ran my hands through my hair, it would be fine. It looked like this in February of 2012:
Then I decided to end my veganism and started binge eating. I gained about 20 pounds. During that time period, while still on retinoids and doxycycline, my hair shedding became a bit excessive, but still, not very noticeable.
In June, I went to a moronic dermatologist that was covered under my insurance for acne and for hair loss. For acne, they prescribed me a higher dose of my retinoid, and I personally decided to stop taking doryx doxycycline because of reviews of hair loss I saw online. For the record, I only started taking doryx the summer right before college.
That being said, without really even looking at my hair, she prescribed propecia and rogaine. The propecia seemed to be working fine, but when I started romaine a bit later in the month, the shedding became excessive with bald spots.
After a month of propecia and two weeks of rogaine, I stopped taking the balding treatments. I also decided to eliminate my retinoid treatment completely as well. I hoped that by stopping everything, my body would stabilize and my hair would grow back.
I stopped treatments mid July. Now it is the first day of October, and not much seems to have changed, except that my hair has gotten longer, but still thin.
The shedding is still happening. I did a scalp test--pulling a large group of hair--every single day for the past 2 weeks. About 4-5 hairs come out every single time I do it. Every time I shake my head, hair is falling out. I am losing hair.
This is what it looks like when fully parted and patted down:
This is what it looks like normally:
I do not know what type of hair loss I have. I wish I could know whether or not it was male pattern baldness (which I thought it was at one point) or this telogeun effluvium thing I am reading about online. I am too afraid to go to a dermatologist given that they handed out medication that seemed to make it significantly worse. Do you think that it is possible that stress + eating irregularities are doing this? I have had an immense amount of family and personal stress the past 4 or 5 months, but I am permanently stressed out for the most part. Also, do you think my obsession with my hair loss could be making it worse? It seems to be diffuse hair loss, from what I have researched, but I do not know much about this. Any advice/suggestions/similar stories?
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