I am a 27 year old male with the beginning signs of male pattern baldness--hairline receding moderately at the temples and slightly at the front. My hairline has been changing since I was about 24, with a noticeable beginning spurt and then a couple years of apparent dormancy. As of the last few months, I've been experiencing fairly chronic discomfort in my scalp: itinerant itching and burning along my hairline and occasionally at my crown. These symptoms seemed to settle down after persisting for about two months at the end of this summer, however as of the last week, they have started back up again. As the discomfort seems to be only happening around the target areas of male alopecia, I am worried that this is symptomatic of imminent hair loss. I am curious if other people find this to be present/true?
It's hard to say if I am actually actively losing hair in these areas--I'm so paranoid about losing my hair and the seemingly correlated scalp discofort that it is hard to be objective about what is actively happening (at any rate it seems hair is not falling out at a great pace/in a great quantity, or I'd probably notice). I can't really correlate other things in my life to the onset of this scalp discomfort--late in the summer, in consort with the first episode of scalp discomfort, I was under a lot of stress and my otherwise occasional cigarette use briefly became much more frequent, however my scalp discomfort started weeks after beginning to smoke more, and persisted for several weeks after I cut out smoking entirely, in fear that the smokes were a cause. This latest episode has started soon after arriving in South East Asia, where I will be travelling for a while. I wish I could identify something in my life/behaviour that could be directly affecting my scalp and/or continued hair loss; while it is stressful in and of itself to discover changes in one's hairline, it is far more stressful to think that this scalp discomfort is a direct indication that things are actively changing...
Other than suffering from Celiac desiase and persistant eczema (I have not experienced what I would consider to be eczema symptoms in my scalp in the past), I am a generally healthy guy. Again, if anyone could share any similar experiences of scalp discomfort, I'd really appreciate it.
It's hard to say if I am actually actively losing hair in these areas--I'm so paranoid about losing my hair and the seemingly correlated scalp discofort that it is hard to be objective about what is actively happening (at any rate it seems hair is not falling out at a great pace/in a great quantity, or I'd probably notice). I can't really correlate other things in my life to the onset of this scalp discomfort--late in the summer, in consort with the first episode of scalp discomfort, I was under a lot of stress and my otherwise occasional cigarette use briefly became much more frequent, however my scalp discomfort started weeks after beginning to smoke more, and persisted for several weeks after I cut out smoking entirely, in fear that the smokes were a cause. This latest episode has started soon after arriving in South East Asia, where I will be travelling for a while. I wish I could identify something in my life/behaviour that could be directly affecting my scalp and/or continued hair loss; while it is stressful in and of itself to discover changes in one's hairline, it is far more stressful to think that this scalp discomfort is a direct indication that things are actively changing...
Other than suffering from Celiac desiase and persistant eczema (I have not experienced what I would consider to be eczema symptoms in my scalp in the past), I am a generally healthy guy. Again, if anyone could share any similar experiences of scalp discomfort, I'd really appreciate it.