Hello everyone and happy holidays. So my hair loss story is a bit peculiar. I first noticed a change in my hair’s density around the age of 17. It wasn’t noticeable then, it is barely noticeable now, four years later (I am 21 years old). So the area that is affected the most is the hairline and the frontal half of the top of me four five inches behind the hairline area). My temples are creeping backwards and the whole area is thinning out. If I part my hair I can see many gaps, either completely empty or the gaps have miniaturized translucent follicles. About a year ago I decided to start using minoxidil on my affected areas. I had already been using it for facial hair growth and I had gotten satisfying results, that gave me hopes that it would work for my hair but the scalp and that beard follicles are a completely different story (only one area is affected by dht as we all know). I had read that the first months of applying minoxidil could cause shedding due to the synchronizing of the hair cycle. But that didn’t happen in my case. I had shaved my hair because I didn’t want the shedding to be obvious, but I noticed no change in the density of my hair (obviushort ones are more hard to detect but I am kind of ocd so that’s not an issue for me). 9-10 months later of pretty consistent use (once a day or at worst every two days, usually once a day) and I have gotten no gains, still shedding a ton of dead (translucent) hairs and my hair has receded and thinned out more. I am not planning to use finasteride and I don’t have a problem with shaving it off, I just want to grow out my hair long one more time and want to maintain a respectable density for some more years (2-3). So my question is, since there was NO shedding and NO added density as a result of using minoxidil for almost ten months, can I safely say that it didn’t work on my scalp and stop using it without the fear of a big shed? I started applying minoxidil in March 2020. I have drawn the dates on the pics below so that you can see the progression.
21 Years Old slow but steady diffuse hairloss. Minoxidil hasn’t added density.
- Thread starter Jack Burt
- Start date
Not sure if it is noticeable in the pictures, but the miniaturization of the hairline and the inches behind it definitely have progressed. I still see many miniaturized strands and my temples have gone back further since I started the minoxidil. Also it looks thinner than ever when wet. I will start dermarolling consistently maybe that boosts the minoxidil absorption as you said, but I didn’t need to dermaroll my face to see gains there, so that doesn’t give me hopes. From what I understand the criterium for minoxidil success is at least maintenance, and I don’t think I have achieved that. The only thing I noticed was some peach fuzz that never progressed from that stage and the follicles around the peach fuzz continued miniaturizing. Who knows, maybe without minoxidil my hairloss would have progressed even quicker, but that would be strange since it has been very slow so far. So my main question is, if we consider that I haven’t experienced any benefits from minoxidil, meaning that it hasn’t affected my hair cycle considering the continuation of the miniaturization at the same rate as before, should I just quit it? Here are two more recent pics. Thanks for the response and I will add dermarolling to my regimen.
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I'd stay on it and see if it improves with dermarolling. If it does, then likely you are a good responder to it. If you are, then you may consider 10 or 15% concentrations, or oral if you so choose to go that route. Are you against other treatments like finasteride or RU?
I don’t want to risk getting side effects from anti androgens. But yeah I will wait and see what happens after some consistent dermarolling.