About To Shave, I Need An Honest, No Bs Assessment

[countjulian]

I've been on oral minnox, 20 mg, in addition to oral fina 1.1 mg, latanaprost, retinA, topical fina, topical minoxidil, and ketacozonole for more than a year now. You can see my last thread here
https://www.hairlosstalk.com/intera...-with-diffuse-thinning-to-show-for-it.122719/
With the closure of local barbers due to the Wu Flu I was forced to cut my own hair, I made a mess of it and had to shave the whole thing down to a 1 guard. This has forced me confront the ugly truth. I am a bald guy. A bald guy with alot of hair, but still a bald guy. At this point, with the apparent failure of every new treatment that was in the pipeline, I am faced with a few options:

1. Grow it back out and dump Toppik in it and pretend that this is normal.
2. Leave fina and jump on duta
3. Add topical RU
4. Add in a concerted and high intensity derma wounding routine
5. Some combination of the above
6. Just shave it bro.

Honestly I am leaning towards #6, but esteemed brethren of hairlosstalk.com , what do you think? Like the title of the thread says, I need an honest, no BS assessment here. I've recently made a major life decision based on the fact that taking part in a certain program would cut me off from my hairline meds for a prolonged period of time, so if I am going to make sacrifices for my hair I need to be sure of getting something for it. Pictures below.

 

[crikey1980]

Hi mate, you're lucky in 1 sense you got a good head shape, have you any pictures what it looks like grown out, sometimes shaving can make hair look worse than it is.
However you don't need me to tell you that the Norwood 6 pattern is evident to see.
Still think there is hope for you hair wise.
Good luck mate

 

[countjulian]

Hi mate, you're lucky in 1 sense you got a good head shape, have you any pictures what it looks like grown out, sometimes shaving can make hair look worse than it is.
However you don't need me to tell you that the Norwood 6 pattern is evident to see.
Still think there is hope for you hair wise.
Good luck mate

If I was just coming to this forum, I could see hope. My first post was back in 2017. I've been on meds for 2 going on 3 years now. If I don't change up my routine there is no hope, this is worse than being bald, this is being a bald guy who looks like he's too much of a slob to shave his head on the reg.

 

[countjulian]

These pics are from 2015. Two years later I would join HairLossTalk.com and it would already be too late. I ended up on finsteride for years anyway. The scaremongering about finasteride is crap. Please, if anyone reads this, please don't do what I did. Please get on finasteride as soon as you're 23 or older. Don't wait. I've only ever told this to one other person, but I had problems with performance-based erectile dysfunction at this time and that's why I didn't get on finasteride. Initially getting on finasteride made it worse. I eventually got a script from a urologist for cialis, and 2 years later I don't need it even tho I am on a relatively high dose of finasteride now. It was in my head the whole time, I was too proud to go to the doctor and get help tho. Now I realize the folly of my ways, but it's too late. My hair is gone. I could throw all my pills away tomorrow or I could keep taking finasteride and nothing else until I die and my dick would be fine. But my hair won't. To anyone reading this, don't end up like me. I was so f*****g handsome, and now I'll never be so again. Go get your finasteride script. If you're afraid of ED, just get a cialis script and work out. You'll be fine. Don't go down the road to perdition like me. Don't damn yourself to be an ugly baldie forever like me.

 

[Hswb]

To be honest: with your hair status, in my opinion the battle (for a decent result) is already lost. The good news is, you indeed have got a great head shape. The buzzcut suits you better than the thin few hairs you had before. If I were in your shoes, this is what I (after lockdown) would do:

Go to Turkey and get a transplant with maximum possible grafts. Make sure to draw a good hairline, and fill up the total nw6 area with the highest possible (but still low) density. Afterwards, go for extra density with a solid SMP. Then rock the 3-6mm look for the rest of your life and go for a touch up SMP every few years.

 

[countjulian]

To be honest: with your hair status, in my opinion the battle (for a decent result) is already lost. The good news is, you indeed have got a great head shape. The buzzcut suits you better than the thin few hairs you had before. If I were in your shoes, this is what I (after lockdown) would do:

Go to Turkey and get a transplant with maximum possible grafts. Make sure to draw a good hairline, and fill up the total nw6 area with the highest possible (but still low) density. Afterwards, go for extra density with a solid SMP. Then rock the 3-6mm look for the rest of your life and go for a touch up SMP every few years.

Could I really get a good result this way? I just doubt there's enough donor hair to fill in the whole NW6 area AND bring me from a NW3 to a NW2. Do you think I could benefit from duta, ru or a good derma wounding regime?

 

[countjulian]

To be honest: with your hair status, in my opinion the battle (for a decent result) is already lost. The good news is, you indeed have got a great head shape. The buzzcut suits you better than the thin few hairs you had before. If I were in your shoes, this is what I (after lockdown) would do:

Go to Turkey and get a transplant with maximum possible grafts. Make sure to draw a good hairline, and fill up the total nw6 area with the highest possible (but still low) density. Afterwards, go for extra density with a solid SMP. Then rock the 3-6mm look for the rest of your life and go for a touch up SMP every few years.

Also unfortunately in my financial position it's going to be a about 2 years till I can afford that :/ I don't know if I can go on living like this until then.......

 

[Hswb]

Ofu

Could I really get a good result this way? I just doubt there's enough donor hair to fill in the whole NW6 area AND bring me from a NW3 to a NW2. Do you think I could benefit from duta, ru or a good derma wounding regime?

Like I said, the density won’t be perfect. But it seems to me that your donor is at least capable of harvesting about 3000 grafts. Just do an online consult to be sure. A lot of them are free of charge. Go for a NW1,5 (or NW2) hairline to frame your face, and spread the remaining grafts over the mid scalp and crown. Do the smp a year later and you’re all set!

Of course, everything you mention will contribute to the quantity and quality of your hair. But you will never go back to a full NW2 with just meds. For a result to your satisfaction, you’ll need the transplant anyway sooner or later in my believe.

It won’t cost you a fortune. There are enough decent clinics that can do this job for about 2K. Meanwhile make the best of what you can have with the meds. Good luck!

 

[Hswb]

Also unfortunately in my financial position it's going to be a about 2 years till I can afford that :/ I don't know if I can go on living like this until then.......

Also unfortunately in my financial position it's going to be a about 2 years till I can afford that :/ I don't know if I can go on living like this until then.......

Sure you can. The buzzcut already looks good on you + you might improve a bit with the routine you’re mentioning. Take these 2 years to put money aside for the procedure and have something nice to look out for by the start of 2022. Stay positive man!

 

[countjulian]

Ofu


Like I said, the density won’t be perfect. But it seems to me that your donor is at least capable of harvesting about 3000 grafts. Just do an online consult to be sure. A lot of them are free of charge. Go for a NW1,5 (or NW2) hairline to frame your face, and spread the remaining grafts over the mid scalp and crown. Do the smp a year later and you’re all set!

Of course, everything you mention will contribute to the quantity and quality of your hair. But you will never go back to a full NW2 with just meds. For a result to your satisfaction, you’ll need the transplant anyway sooner or later in my believe.

It won’t cost you a fortune. There are enough decent clinics that can do this job for about 2K. Meanwhile make the best of what you can have with the meds. Good luck!

See I always understood the norwood would never go back to 2 without an hair transplant. If it was thick I would be fine with that, there are plenty of good hairstyles out there for a thick NW3 and the right face. But it all seems for nought without the density in rear to back it up. I am sick of Toppik

 

[whatintheworld]

OP, you lost all that ground while taking oral minoxidil, oral finasteride, and topical finasteride, plus those other things?

Can this be true? I would expect it if you were on no treatments, but it seems you had a pretty legit regimen.

 

[countjulian]

OP, you lost all that ground while taking oral minoxidil, oral finasteride, and topical finasteride, plus those other things?

Can this be true? I would expect it if you were on no treatments, but it seems you had a pretty legit regimen.

It looks like I've lost ground since last time? I thought I have improved

 

[whatintheworld]

It looks like I've lost ground since last time? I thought I have improved

Are those the most recent pictures in your first post?

 

[countjulian]

OP, you lost all that ground while taking oral minoxidil, oral finasteride, and topical finasteride, plus those other things?

Can this be true? I would expect it if you were on no treatments, but it seems you had a pretty legit regimen.

To be clear the pics of me in 2015 are when I was just on topical minoxidil. I did not add ket until a year later, fina until a year after that and all the rest shortly thereafter. So it was 2014-topical minnox 2017-ket 2018-topical and oral fina + the others. The good pics are from 2015.

 

[countjulian]

Are those the most recent pictures in your first post?

Yes

 

[whatintheworld]

The pictures from your 2019 thread look decent, like it's not a lost cause. It looks like you a lost a lot of ground from that thread, which is why I'm perplexed because your regimen should have at least stabilized the loss there.

 

[countjulian]

The pictures from your 2019 thread look decent, like it's not a lost cause. It looks like you a lost a lot of ground from that thread, which is why I'm perplexed because your regimen should have at least stabilized the loss there.

Really? It seems better to me. My hair is shorter now than in 2019, also I moved from a Google Pixel to a Samsung Galaxy, which is a better phone in most respects but the camera is a lot shittier. Let me do a layout

 

[whatintheworld]

I am asking because I have a similar destiny of hair loss to you (I'm 28 years old headed for Norwood 5/6), but I've been on finasteride and minoxidil for 4 years and it has slowed down if not stopped a lot of my loss since then. Of course everyone is different, but I would have thought that such a strong regimen would have helped stop yours down as well. I'm taking 1.25 mg finasteride daily and using minoxidil topical twice a day.

 

[countjulian]

It's hard to tell with how shitty this camera is, but you may be right. I have been slacking on my routine recently tbh. Fml, if it's getting worse I have to shave

 

[countjulian]

Holy sh*t dude you're right I have lost ground (left is then, right is now). It's game over for me