Exploring The Hormonal Route. Hair=life.
- Thread starter bridgeburn
- Start date
- Reaction score
- 2,040
Well. Remember, I made my first order of Life Flo Estrogen from Amazon in October of 2013. By summer of 2019, I had made essentially no progress with my hair at all and then I had my massive spironolactone shed. I still knew that this was going to work somehow so I just shaved my head and started removing my beard so I could hide under a wig because first my hair grew back in patches and only maybe by last summer had all of the bald places filled in. I lost fringe hair, everything. It's been about 15 months with the wig and I always get great reactions to it but less and less and less am I wearing it. I am not great at predicting future time for completion but it finally happened and when it happened, boy did it happen. And all of a sudden, every single treatment that I tried seemed to work spectacularly from retin-A to oral min.
So, if it took me six plus years at age 50, then you can win this battle at your age. As you and I both note, a lot of this relates to how much you want it and whether you are going to ever give up. I never gave up and you enjoy the intellectual challenge of all of this just like I do. It's always easier not to worry about someone's hair loss but you will be successful because this is the focus of your life and you have the knowledge. It's just dealing with the opportunity costs but no, I couldn't be a hair system person. Wigs are like hats and they stay on but tape? No. Glue? No. Hair coming out in my date's hands? <Shudders>
The effects of HRT are noticeable after 3 months, and after 6 months they completely restore the hair. But this is if you respond to treatment.
I’m willing to use HRT for hair, but I don’t want to sacrifice so much for hair. Bicalutamide is my main hope. HRT will change my life 180 degrees, I would not want it, but if I have no choice ...
- Reaction score
- 2,040
it depends on the dose. When I started formal HRT, I was on nothing but .30mg Premarin and my hair got worse until I started using Life Flo in conjunction with it. I don't know where you are getting the six months figure and I don't know if you are talking about someone completely bald on top or who has more so diffuse thinning everywhere. There are people who have been on HRT for years with no results. I still post frequently on Reddit because so many people on there believe that HRT only arrests hair loss and that significant regrowth is impossible. Many of them are getting transplants. But six months sounds quite a bit too fast for most people and situations.
The other thing is that HRT hair grows back differently from how it was lost so that makes stating a specific time period challenging. The entire head of hair seems to thicken up while male treatments appear to only work in target areas for the most part. I am curious about it but virtually no one ever mentions that their hair got nicer and more manageable from male treatments. It is always counts, counts, counts. Even if I denote last June as my starting point when I switched to high dose well, that is still 11 months. Remember, there are two types on here, those on full HRT and those mostly seeking topical solutions that hopefully don't change hormone levels too drastically. The latter was me for a long time, more or less but it didn't work, at least at my age, it didn't and trying to coax hair out that way was a failure.
That was essentially why I started posting because it was hard to understand why say, topical Estrogel worked for @bridgeburn but not for people not using HRT. I think that it can help jump start hair regrowth under HRT still and there are localized effects but they aren't enough. If a person ends up using huge amounts of Estrogel on the scalp, as I have, then it works but it also reaches limits and feminizes.
I'm talking about high doses of E, starting at 4mg. If you do not go bald for too long and you Norwood 1-2 half a year will be enough. I haven't decided how much I will use yet. Or 2 or 4.
- Reaction score
- 2,040
I have noticed that young people can achieve a lot in six to nine months but those are still just the ones who post. Most people have middling results and some none, at least under current protocols. The other issue is whether wpath levels are high enough. It seems that I see a lot of good hair results from parenteral E, such as patches and syringes and it might be that half-lives matter much more for hair than they do for breasts. I think I have shown that just haphazard use of OTC meds and low-dose E2 can grow big boobs without much hair. My previous thinking was also that hair might simply take years and years and for some, there is an aspect to that. But yes, now I think that sustained levels of E2 can work right away as long as the person isn't seeking breast growth.
So that is the second reason why I felt obliged to post since I had had uncommonly good breast results and most MtF's are more interested in that since I suppose the younger ones don't have to fight hair loss so much. We mostly hear about the extreme cases but if I had started HRT at age 20, it was plenty early enough and I would have always had hair and probably obsessed instead about my small breasts, assuming I was more so female inclined.
- Reaction score
- 2,040
I hope I am. I try to present the good and bad aspects and also discuss the psychological difficulties for any XY to use HRT to present differently. Almost all hair loss solutions have their head elements that we have to work around whether HRT or transplants or hair pieces and it can be perceived societal disapproval that stops many of us from doing what the folks on this thread are attempting. To some, HRT constitutes a sin.
I have had such unique experiences that I have been able to correspond with hundreds of folks on here and on Reddit and I read the entries so I know how much many MtF's struggle with both breasts and hair. My hope is that my experiences with low-dose at the beginning and then switching to high-dose when my breasts were done, is a path that might provide some clarity on future dosing schemes and protocols. We need breast and hair protocols at least, that vary in perspective and amount of time needed.
- Reaction score
- 35
Dupa suffers always end up at norwood 7 ? do you have any solutions to recover from it ? finasteride didnt work on me with dupa
- Reaction score
- 1,104
Hey, no, I have no clue, what to do.
Planning on Bicalutamide, but doubt I will get my hands on it. Maybe will jump on Dutasteride.
- Reaction score
- 1,104
I don't have AA. I have Androgenetic Alopecia. But it is very aggressive, my dad has even a thinned out horseshoe, nothing left.
You should immediately jump on HRT, Bicalutamide only preserves the hair, but does not grow it.
- Reaction score
- 1,104
I am only 17 lol, not fully grown out
I really don't want to experience dysphoria or permanent damage, honestly.Unfortunately, we have no choice ...I am only 17 lol, not fully grown out
- Reaction score
- 2,040
You are a genius, I have to say at 17. You should have a bright future regardless.I am only 17 lol, not fully grown out
- Reaction score
- 2,040
So wait now. That sounds like a change in your opinion towards my way of thinking.
- Reaction score
- 1,104
Oh wow, tyvm Janey, really appreciate that haha
look how hairloss forms us lol- Reaction score
- 2,040
I didn't find out that I was suffering from male pattern baldness until 20 and we didn't have the internet and I was holed up in the library looking at microfiche of Der Spigel for articles about Alfatradiol which I don't think males were using yet but you can imagine. I am thinking, well, l will roll up my sleeves and figure out how to get my hair back with my intellect. The more research I did, the more my stomach felt sick. I saw the dermatologist and he said no to any form of estrogen which wasn't unreasonable since I wasn't MtF and it could have hurt fertility they felt back then.Oh wow, tyvm Janey, really appreciate that haha
But there was nothing except systems out there and I was like 20 years old wearing a system and my father has a perfect head of hair. No, I can't even consider it. Then right about that time cable got big and there were hair loss infomercials and one of them was for the Helsinki Formula so I got it and it worked very similarly to the descriptions I hear now about Keto. I was able to plough again and I hadn't been able to in months and there was no finasteride then and minoxidil was five years away. If I hadn't found the one infomercial product that actually stopped hair loss, I might have gone into severe depression and not become a lawyer and there were a lot of great looking females in law school.
So a lot of this is good fortune and just hearing about things but in the olden days, it was a lot harder to get any info at all.
Unfortunately, knowledge may not be enough and it takes a miracle to grow hair. I have a tactic of combating baldness for the year ahead, but if all else fails, you can jump out the window
- Reaction score
- 2,040
You are a genius, too but you go back and forth between calling it a miracle and then saying six months, easy peasy. I think you are 19 iirc but the two of you popped up about the same time that I started my thread and you both began carrying this thread. But don't forget to go back and look at perhaps the first 300 pages because it does give a good rendering as to how many others failed and gave up, particularly due to sheds. I also sort of marveled at all of the switching of AA's every couple of months by some. It might not hurt progress but many of them seemed to shed and then give up.
I think this can be done without a shed but that might need to be part of your plan if this works. But it might be that younger guys shed less. Just saying, remember that for me, unlike @bridgeburn who was already completely bald, I had to make it through a massive shed depending upon how one looks at it, of 18 months. I am convinced that like @bridgeburn, consistent titration upwards at some point will win the race but on the other hand, those of us lucky enough to have full restoration might have some genetic aspect that helps us achieve this. I don't know because to me, it seems that restoration is now within reach for at least all MtF's but I am sure some of them feel as though they already tried everything. To the extent that balding scalp is similar to scarring, perhaps in some people the scars are just too entrenched to ever remove fully.
But we should watch carefully to see if others using extreme hormonal measures have success. I think to me, @bridgeburn's path was extreme for guys and MtF's and perhaps we forget that and only remember that he was on "HRT" but had to have been hitting very, very high estradiol levels but dude never tested. I am going in a little while to test today.