hey i understand-im gay so its all good--and were super finicky about our looks--so imagine how it is for me at 23 to be a norwood 3/4ish without toppik and a norwood 2 with it..thank you toppik, i still get laid lol when their pillows are black who cares done em did em lol ...heres the deal---i mean no offense at all--but to decide against minoxidil would be utterly stupid...especially if you want to see any regrowth---if no one can tell that youre balding maybe you should wait a couple of years for the propecia so its a lose in the beginning/slightly win in the end situation for any of these treatments-are you sure your hair loss isnt as bad as you think it is? im starting to get that "longer" hair style myself-you knwo the ashton kuchner whatever his name is style-on top...it does a really good job at hiding my norwood 3 hairline-the thing with male pattern baldness is your hair either needs to be very short or very long to mitigate your hair loss in order for it to look good-if you cut your hair tomorrow, you may see that its actually worse than it currently looks. the longer you wait or every time you go off minoxidil it will take that much longer to get back to being nearly close to your good ole hair days--and the longer you wait the more likely it will keep your nearly slick bald spots(i dont call myself shinyscalp 23 for nothing lol) from thickening up... and the worse the cosmetic damage from the sheds--since you already have alot of hair, the sheds wont do as much cosmetic damage--the thinner your hair, the worse it will look from the sheds--and if you wait too long, it may just thicken up your existing hair, without doing much to the noticeable ba(l)d areas-im personally seeing a combination of both, cosmetically what i had to begin with looks thicker, but those bad areas that still look bad are slightly smaller than they were 4 months ago. your expectations of these drugs should be seen in terms of maintenance and alittle regrowth at best--with all the sheds that you may go through, you have a 70 % chance of just maintaining what you have with alittle regrowth--but all that will be dependent on one or 2 of these drugs eventually---... if your hairs not bad now, better off getting it minoxidil dependent now-sooner or later its gonna go, and if you do get cocky and quit after 4 months, you will not have lost or mainatined that much to worry abou tto begin with..its subjective--and your expectations of these drugs must be realistic--most of us are in a situation where were maintaining not so great hair as it is--most of us already have noticeably, severe thinning that we want to keep from getting any worse---we either got cocky and stopped our minoxidil and or propecia in the past or listened to our mothers say that they cant see it they cant tell lol..youre in a good situation to go through temporary severe shedding but maintaining your current state 6 months to a year down the line--ive been losing my hair since im 16--if i let the genetic time clock do its thing id probably lose all my hair by 30--and i had my most severe hair loss this year at age 23--the dht animal is fighting a very good battle--if you dont use minoxidil a terrible shed could occur at any particular time, and you lose a 1/3 of it in a year--male pattern baldness is both gradual and sudden for many people--im losign my hair but before this year i only experienced bad shed when i was 18, 5 years later with that much less hair, it snuck up on me to catch up for lost time..youre better off shedding like a mofo now from minoxidil than possibly shedding like a mofo from nature--and looking the same as you do now a year later and keep yourself on minoxidil--and most dr's will probably recommend minoxidil to you over propecia--for some reason many drs prefer prescribing maintenance drugs like propecia when its too late to make much of a cosmetic difference..and any regrowth is best attained by minoxidil and not all minoxidil is messy--if you get it combined with retin-a it dries in 20 minutes as opposed to the greasy crap you get in the stores--then again if youre situation isnt that bad, you may just have to use minoxidil 2% which isnt greasy at all--and fyi--the first time i used minoxidil (5%)i had absolutely no shedding-as a matter of fact--not a single hair that was noticeable came out--first thing mom said was i dont see ANY hair on the bathroom floor--the second time i used minoxidil but with retin-a i was already severely shedding at the end of 04 and within 2 weeks of using it, it completely stopped my shedding, i stopped using it and started sheddign like a mofo 2 months later, and then restarted minoxidil/retin-a and then the sheddign didnt slow down for 2 months (it still hasnt completely stopped on month 5) --also keep in mind that many of us vain men worried about our hair freak out when we lose two hairs from the top after touching it--which is normal--we think that we dont even have enough to keep losing even that much--and for those of us that have and continue to shed from the treatments, sometimes we flip out, because we dont have that much on top--but heres the thing--most of us have more than we think..it looks bad but theres still hair up there--i wouldnt worry about it, if i were you id stay away from propecia and get on minoxdil 2%, which doesnt cause that much shedding--basically the stronger the minoxidil the worse the shedding from the treatments and the worse the sheddign when you get off the treatment but to not use minoxidil is stupid, just ridiculous--it has more promise in terms of regrowth and it will actually help you to grow your hair faster and is most appropriate for people who stil have alot of hair-and msot drs would probably tell you the same thing
