Back in the day

VWdude

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When there were absolutely no treatments available for hairloss sufferers, how did people cope with baldness?
 

Cornholio

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How to deal

If you were a city-slicker or fancy-pants you bought a bottle or two of snake oil, which had zero chance of working. And got into fist-fights.

By 18 you were married and working on the farm, or in a mine or factory. Then you went off to a world war for a few years.

When you got back from the war balding and shell-shocked your wife didnt divorce you, take half of everything and move on because that wasnt done. She cooked, scrubbed things, and had lots of kids with her balding husband, and thats the way she liked it.

Then you died of exhaustion, dropsy or the consumption by age 45. And you were glad you did.
 

jfhawk06

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the feminization of masculinity and obsessions with vanity didn't exist to the current degree back then, so i'm guessing it was just an accepted part of being a "man". i'm sure it wasn't stressed over as much as it is today. although, i have heard that julius caesar was quite concerned about his balding head, which is apparently the reason he loved to wear things on his head (wigs, laurel branches, etc.) and brush his locks forwards (hence the nomenclature: "caesar style" hair).
 

thin=depressed

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Even with a full head of hair you were wierd to not wear a fadora of some style. Uncool indeed
 

gonna_win

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With a wig made form horse hair.
 

Cornholio

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I think life was harder back then, and people had more to worry about... also, media wasnt so prevalent and normal was determined more by what you saw in your town and neighborhood than what you saw in magazines and television (which have a hair bias). Now our stars often magically maintain hairlines in movies or disappear (except for kevin spacey and bruce willis, who rock)

I think that the desire to fight hair-loss is about our current desire to maintain an appearance of youth, which generally comes with a low hairline. While women have always struggled with crows-feet and gray hair, men are only now joining in this obsession. For women looks (an appearance of youth and fertility) have always meant power, while male power was more related to money/job. That is changing as women now work, have incomes, and have more freedom to choose mates based on appearance of youth and fertility rather than income and stability alone.

Also, people used to marry young, forever. Now guys are stressing about signs of aging at ages when, in the past, they would have been settled into stable relationships. We have to think about the dating scene later in life than before...

Maybe powdered wigs will come back.
 

md2002

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I actually bought something YEARS ago, I mean 12 years maybe, when I was about 20 year old. This was before Rogaine, Propecia, hair thickening shampoos, or anything else for that matter. Just goes to show how long I have been living with this curse..... Son of a b**ch!!!!

Anyway it was a shampoo, conditioner, and Massage brush that I bought. Total cost about $450 but I had to try it. The science behind it was that hair stops growing because your follicles get dirty and they clog up, once the follicles are clogged you cannot grow hair anymore. This shampoo was suppose to deep clean and OPEN up your follicles for new hair to grow. Well, I had to get me some of this. You applied it every other day and after shampoo and conditioner you use the massage brush for 20 minutes on each side of you head. The funny thing is, that my hair actually did look better, it got thicker and looked really full. I doubt it did anything for hair loss but my hair did look good.

I wish I remembered the name of the company because it did have a money back gaurentee when you bought the stuff. I used it for about 25 days and called the company and said I wasn't satisfied. They asked me to send back the un-used portions ( which I did ) and they refunded me my money.

This was a long story but you asked......
 

VWdude

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Any company years ago who tried to market a hairloss product could potentially become successful because there was a lack of hairloss products. Before finasteride/min and such there wasn't really anything but herendous looking hair pieces.
 

Thinning Sucks

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md2002 said:
I actually bought something YEARS ago, I mean 12 years maybe, when I was about 20 year old. This was before Rogaine, Propecia, hair thickening shampoos, or anything else for that matter. Just goes to show how long I have been living with this curse..... Son of a b**ch!!!!

Anyway it was a shampoo, conditioner, and Massage brush that I bought. Total cost about $450 but I had to try it. The science behind it was that hair stops growing because your follicles get dirty and they clog up, once the follicles are clogged you cannot grow hair anymore. This shampoo was suppose to deep clean and OPEN up your follicles for new hair to grow. Well, I had to get me some of this. You applied it every other day and after shampoo and conditioner you use the massage brush for 20 minutes on each side of you head. The funny thing is, that my hair actually did look better, it got thicker and looked really full. I doubt it did

anything for hair loss but my hair did look good.

I wish I remembered the name of the company because it did have a money back gaurentee when you bought the stuff. I used it for about 25 days and called the company and said I wasn't satisfied. They asked me to send back the un-used portions ( which I did ) and they refunded me my money.

This was a long story but you asked......

That was the place out of Texas right....a green shampoo? I used the same for a few months also.
 

The Gardener

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Back then, people had lower standards when it came to perfection in one's appearance.

Just look at the p**rn from back then.

I rest my case.
 

The Gardener

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Well, I was mainly referring to people's general conditioning. People were flabbier, guys had bellies, girls had 'meat', the 'six pack' abs were a rare phenomenon.

It was an age before commercial marketing started driving our society to worship youth and bodily perfection to the extent that it does now.
 

JayB

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why do you think that the drugs out now are such "super drugs"...we have rogaine which has been around since the 80's and which as far as i can tell and see, does nothing but make you look like youre balding and trying your heart out to do something...

and you have propecia which has been around for a decade which "keeps the hair you have" apparently, eventhough ive never seen a picture of anyone on here whose on propecia and has a nice thick full head of 18 year old hair...perhaps its the placebo effect where you think its working or maybe perhaps your hair loss halted and slowed down..which is an insane concept for me but docs say thats how it works just like they say its all "DHT" causing it..
 

Cornholio

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JayB said:
why do you think that the drugs out now are such "super drugs"...

well, they aren't great, but a few drugs today have controlled studies (with a placebo group) to show they do infact affect hair diameter and hair count in some people. That evidence is a new thing, as before minoxidil all you had was the word of the person who sold hair tonics (and made big bucks) that the people that bought it grew hair. Not a good system. Now you can sort out treatments that might actually work from snake oils... Will they work as well as you hope? That is still the question.
 
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