Hey @Bluelilac , its probably best you speak to @Georgie .
Rapid Norwood Progression In Female
- Thread starter Bluelilac
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We’ve actually chatted before! We have a similar issue with elevated cortisol.
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Wheres all the beta males that screech "wrong thread section"? Oh I get it, its the cuck-out hour in its finest hours.
I suppose this doesn't really matter anymore. We're all compassed for doom.
MEN'S HAIR LOSS DISCUSSIONS
Testosterone-ridden Sausagefest. Men only.
I suppose this doesn't really matter anymore. We're all compassed for doom.
MEN'S HAIR LOSS DISCUSSIONS
Testosterone-ridden Sausagefest. Men only.
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I posted on the women’s forum and got zero replies. Also most women I find are balding in a completely different pattern from me. I don’t have classic FPHL. I’ve lurked around these forums and have seen women posting before so I didn’t think it would be an issue. If it is, mods can delete my post. I know doctors claim Androgenetic Alopecia is very common amongst females, but sure doesn’t seem like it. I think that’s why most of society holds the false belief that women don’t go bald, because most women who are struggling with hair loss don’t talk about. Even the FPHL subreddit is dead.
I eat mostly a low carb / low GI diet. I was thinking it could be alopecia areata incognita but there’s hardly any information about it, at least not much that I have been able to find. It looks similar to some photos I’ve seen. That or DUPA, which I’ve seen talked about before in this forum.
There is a possibility it could be alopecia areata, mainly because it can occur in any shape and form. From what I have seen, it doesn't respond to minoxidil or other treatments such as spironolactone which could explain why they weren't working.
How many calories do you consume?
I honestly don’t know, I don’t count them. I eat a pretty well balanced diet though due to the fluctuating blood sugars I get. I also get episodes of hypoglycemia so I always have to make sure I never skip a meal. I’m pretty small and I’ve always been since I’m only 5’0, but it’s mostly because I don’t eat a lot of sugars or heavy carbs.
Do you know much about DUPA? I’ve read that type of loss also doesn’t respond well to treatments like minoxidil. I’ve also read theories that DUPA may not even be the same thing as male pattern baldness/FPHL since there is no donor area that is safe. I think it’s strange I don’t respond to either spironolactone or minoxidil, I’ve read women tend to have a better response with minoxidil than men. I should push for a biopsy. When it first started it was pretty confined to my sides and then the temples. I thought it was frontal fibrosing alopecia but I was told no after being examined. Yesterday I lost two hairs that had a black hooked bulb instead of a white, which seems like an alopecia areata sign. But I also have vellus hairs and hairs of all different diameters. I don’t know if that’s a feature of diffuse areata.
I agree, women should be able to post here. The mens section is more populated which means you will most likely get a response (I've peered in the womens section and I don't see much activity there).
I just hate how hair loss exists, I wish there was an actual cure to hair loss. For men, the current cure where the best results are shown, without the use of topicals, is male-to-female regimens. But it seems even worse for women because it's not common, and dermatologists will jump to the conclusion that it's Telogen Effluvium. I'm currently trying to help my mother with her post-menopausal hair loss, which has triggered female pattern hair loss. I do believe the only thing which will help her is HRT, but she is quite weary of it due to the potential of breast cancer. I do try to ease her from that because it doesn't run in our family and I do hope she gives it a try because I know how much hair loss has destroyed her confidence.
You really should push for a biopsy, it would give you a proper diagnoses and you can then take steps forward to cure your hair loss.
The reason why I was asking about your calorie intake is because that could trigger Telogen Effluvium if you're not consuming enough. Along with the symptoms you were expressing, it did sound similar to the symptoms I was having due to consuming insufficient calories, and hair loss is one of those symptoms. You should keep an eye on that, because sometimes you might not be eating enough without realising - it is a habit among many, including me!
There's such a huge lack of information when it comes to DUPA, so it's hard to self diagnose when it comes to that. From what I've seen, it does affect older people. On one particular website, it mentioned that it has the possibly to affect women more than men and that it's the most common type of hair loss in women - which I don't believe at all (the most common form of hair loss in women is definitely telogen effluvium and patterned hair loss from what I have seen).
A feature of alopecia areata has to be inspected through trichoscopy; the main feature which will give an accurate diagnosis is yellow dots, that's the general indicator of it.
Hey BlueLilac. I have seen your posts around. I think you also post on the female pattern hairloss page on FB. Anyways
I am sorry that you are still having a hard time with your hair.
I, too, am having such a difficult time with my hairloss. I have had hairloss since I was 17/18. 32 now and used minoxidil since aged 20/21. Minoxidil worked beautifully until I had a hormonal shift and its become ineffective. I think I have some sort autoimmune type diffuse hairloss going on. My loss is very similar to yours. Plus I am noticing my eyebrows are shedding. I also have noticed less body hair growth whereas before I would grow hair like a gorilla.
I have seen a derm but he appears to think its just Androgenetic Alopecia. I worry its something else due to eyebrows and slow/patchy body hair growth.
I think a biopsy is your best bet? how did u find spironolactone? Did it give you a dread shed?
I am sorry that you are still having a hard time with your hair.
I, too, am having such a difficult time with my hairloss. I have had hairloss since I was 17/18. 32 now and used minoxidil since aged 20/21. Minoxidil worked beautifully until I had a hormonal shift and its become ineffective. I think I have some sort autoimmune type diffuse hairloss going on. My loss is very similar to yours. Plus I am noticing my eyebrows are shedding. I also have noticed less body hair growth whereas before I would grow hair like a gorilla.
I have seen a derm but he appears to think its just Androgenetic Alopecia. I worry its something else due to eyebrows and slow/patchy body hair growth.
I think a biopsy is your best bet? how did u find spironolactone? Did it give you a dread shed?
Thanks! Hair loss is hard for men and women. I don’t like when women say that hair loss is more difficult for them because society accepts bald men, I get where these women are coming from but I think we should all just come together and admit that it sucks regardless of the gender. I’ve read enough in men’s hair loss forums to see how traumatizing this can be for them. I honestly never even thought about it before my hair started to go, and while I consider myself too young to be dealing with this (31) I can’t imagine being an 18, 19 year old man losing his hair and having society tell me to just suck it up and shave it off. Men are even pushed away from using hair systems because of the stigma whereas women can wear wigs and weaves and extensions and it’s totally viewed as normal. Sometimes women will even comment that their hair looks better than ever since adopting a weave/wig, whatever. That’s not me though haha, I started out with really nice hair and always wore it very long down to my butt, no wig could ever compare to it.
There’s that site Heralopecia but it’s not as active as of late, not like it was in the past before my hair loss started. I always read old posts from there. One thing I prefer about the men’s forums is reading all of the theories on hair loss and that there is more focus on research. A lot of women’s hair loss groups talk about supplements that literally do nothing for most women, toppers, and their obsession with Dr. Jeff Donovan, who literally just diagnoses every single woman with Telogen Effluvium and Androgenetic Alopecia and then charges them an arm and a leg for it after you’ve traveled to Canada to see him. I also prefer the unabashed honesty and realism. Hair loss sucks, your quality of life is going to drop significantly, not many people can pull off baldness, less people will want to date you, it makes you look older, etc. I mean I’m a pretty self deprecating person and obviously a bit screwed up so maybe I’m not of the right mindset, but it’s kind of hard to choke down all the positivity and “we’re more than our hair” attitudes in the women’s groups. I’m devastated. I need to grieve, I don’t want to hear bald is beautiful and wigs are fun. Wigs are itchy and hot and not sexy when men know there’s nothing but sad Gollum-esque wisps under there. God, I hope I don’t ever hit that point. My hair looks great still with the extensions, really hoping I can just ride this out for as long as possible if I can’t fix it and regrow.
The scary thing with women’s hair loss is many of us have other issues and symptoms going on and we just get told it’s stress or pcos. I hate the pcos answer so much. First it’s just an umbrella term diagnosis and second they made the criteria as broad as possible, probably to just shoo women away with just a prescription to birth control and spironolactone haha. You can have polycystic ovaries but you also don’t have to, you can have hyperandrogenism but you also don’t have to, you can have irregular periods but you don’t have to. It’s like they just lump all women’s hormonal issues into two categories. If you’re premenopausal with no pituitary or adrenal tumor then you probably “just” have pcos, even if you’re lean, then you have “lean pcos” or “adrenal pcos”. If you’re in your 40s then you’re peri menopausal or post menopausal.
That sucks about your mom. My mom is the same about HRT, worries about it causing cancers. Luckily my mom has a nice thick head of hair still and she’s 62. I’m jealous. Me and her are very similar and look alike, I always felt so lucky that I would age with her kind of hair. Guess I was wrong. Your mom should try bioidentical HRT, I think research is still out if it’s truly safer than the FDA approved HRT, but it makes people feel better lol.
Losing hair is such a blow to your confidence, for me since my hair was always such a loved feature of mine, I feel like I’m losing who I am and am slowly transforming into a new person. It’s a horrible feeling and amplified by already having body dysmorphic disorder. I wasted years thinking I wasn’t good looking enough and kind of isolating myself because of it and now I’ll probably be spending out the rest of my years on this planet like a balding freak of a woman. It’s like my comeuppance for whining over nothing most of my teen and young adult life. Oh well. Lesson learned. I’m just trying to enjoy my hair as much as possible now.
I agree that it sounds like something else is going on with you, either that or researchers and doctors simply don’t understand the driving force behind female hair loss. I mean I thought DHT was supposed to increase body hair, doesn’t seem right that you’re losing it. I’ve had the opposite. I don’t have hirsutism and I was always pretty hairless bodywise. But when this all started for me, I kid you not, my vellus hair all over my body increased and just grew super long literally within the span of a week. I noticed it because I was so paranoid about having pcos because I had an RE tell me that’s what I had (though that’s been taken away by three endos since then) and I was obsessively checking my body for hair worried I would grow like a beard or thick coarse hair lol. I have like a mild version of hypertrichosis, like long peach fuzz all over me that was never ever there before. I looked insane explaining it to doctors until I saw the neuroendo at a pituitary clinic when I was checked for a tumor. Since I have high cortisol, this is actually a symptom of it so I think that’s what it was honestly. It’s literally covering me. I had doctors ask me if I was anorexic because they assumed I was talking about lanugo and I’m thin. It’s not noticeable and I’m sure other people naturally have it but I never did. It was just suddenly there within one week.
Strange minoxidil would stop working, maybe we both have some type of diffuse areata. I think they refer to it as incognita.
I got the spironolactone when I saw that RE who said pcos without running any labs of his own. I’ve been on the spironolactone since April 2018. I was up to 200 mg for a while but I’m prone to low blood pressure and since my androgens were never technically out of range before starting, I lowered my dose recently down to 50mg. I could probably just stop it but I’m going to stay on it because I’m going to try oral minoxidil and I know that can sometimes cause water weight so the spironolactone will act as my diuretic. I didn’t have any increased shedding from the spironolactone but when I started it I was in the middle of a massive Telogen Effluvium shed so I can’t be certain.
I’m really sorry to hear you’re having such a hard time with this too. It’s really life altering. I just feel like I’m having a body part ripped away from me and am transforming into a new identity against my will.
It definitely is equally bad for both genders, people disregard hair loss with men because it can be pulled off and they normally throw examples of beautiful men who are bald - but not everyone can pull off the bald look. It honestly angers me when people throw out names like Johnny Sins or Vin Diesel; although they are beautiful men, I am pretty sure they would prefer not to be bald either. Within mens hair loss forums, it's great to see that I'm not alone in this situation. I'm currently 18 and I'm suffering with quite horrible hair loss and it truly is traumatising, it's just irritating when people tell me to go bald or get a hair transplant. My hair when I was younger was extremely thick, and was beautifully shiny.
The theories on mens hair loss forums are divine and has inspired me to take steps forward instead of being miserable. I will be taking spironolactone along with estradiol soon, and hopefully I will see the results others notice. I see Jeff Donovan everywhere! Before finding this forum, I saw him posting on RealSelf and his responses seemed bizarre. Supplements can work to some extent, but they can only go so far and don't show actual results. It's just irritating when the recommendation for women is to take biotin supplements, as if that will cure anything. Hair loss is disgusting, it can make so many men and women look almost disproportionate when it becomes severe. On YouTube, I was watching these men get toppers which are glued down to their scalp but before the toppers were applied, it just didn't look right because he looked like he was in his early twenties but his hair didn't match that. I felt so emotional and upset watching that, because I could see the pain in his eyes but he lit up once the hair was glued on. It just truly shows how important hair is to people, and it does dictate their self worth and confidence.
I do hope my mother does take HRT, or some sort of anti-androgen because I do feel like it will help her. She suffers with both adult acne and hair loss, which I believe is due to an overproduction of testosterone. I'm so jealous that women can get their hands on HRT medications so much easier
The results anti-androgens and estrogen gives with male hair loss is insane, unbelievably insane. I just wish doctors were more open to the concept, because it can save lives; many are suicidal due to their hair loss, and may even attempt it. I 100% agree, hair loss destroys confidence in many ways. A bad habit I have gotten myself into is staring at every mans hair when I'm out in public, and I look at these men with thick hair and I turn green with envy. I look at every single other 18 year old out there, and I can never spot any which is suffering with hair loss. It does make me feel like an unlucky sore thumb, because I feel like I'm 18 going on 50. I overheard a woman say 'my dad has more hair than him' which just made me feel like complete sh*t for many months, and for many more months to come. It just sticks in my head. And it's even worse when family members mention it every single day as if you can't notice, and recommend ridiculous 'cures' such as eating eggs or applying castor oil. I also suffer with BDD, and as soon as I began to start feeling better about my self I get bombarded with bad hair loss and severe acne. It's as if the planets aren't aligned for me, or as if I'm not good enough for this world. It's a horrible feeling to have, and I try to keep a positive spirit. But, sometimes it does feel like I'm not meant for this world and that I shouldn't be alive because of these instances. Hair loss is demonic, and I hate it so much! I just hope the regimen I will start soon will give me the results I desire.
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Absolutely hilarious! You allude to me being a troll, yet I am cleary bearing a consecutively used account; with postive like/dislike ratio. Rules are rules, you have no real argument; just obtuse statements. We need to focus on men absolutley first in this regard; this is all we have. Men and women are required to post in desinated sections; their section low-traffic isn't our issue.
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See a good hair transplant surgeon .
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Looks like traction alopecia
Male Pattern Baldness, or Norwood Hamilton scale, is...well it's in the the title...doesn't fit on women
Your pattern doesn't match any women hairloss known ones, except for traction alopecia, which is actually common.
Good news is, if it is traction alopecia, to stop progression you just have to stop (or someone else) pulling it off (no pun intended)
Careful with doggy
Also DUPA = Diffused Unpattern, but does not affect sides and/or donor area
You're mixing it with Retrograde Alopecia which affect sides and donor
Male Pattern Baldness, or Norwood Hamilton scale, is...well it's in the the title...doesn't fit on women
Your pattern doesn't match any women hairloss known ones, except for traction alopecia, which is actually common.
Good news is, if it is traction alopecia, to stop progression you just have to stop (or someone else) pulling it off (no pun intended)
Careful with doggy
Also DUPA = Diffused Unpattern, but does not affect sides and/or donor area
You're mixing it with Retrograde Alopecia which affect sides and donor
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You’re thinking of DPA, diffuse patterned alopecia. DUPA has no pattern so that means the entire head is susceptible to miniaturization, that is why you aren’t able to have a successful hair transplant with DUPA. I don’t have traction alopecia because I don’t wear my hair up or wear weaves which is how you get it. Some men can get Ludwig pattern although rare and some women can get Norwood, Google it. I have miniaturized vellus hairs throughout my sides when I look with a flashlight. There are no vellus hairs in traction alopecia. The back of my head is affected just like my sides, it’s just difficult to take a photo.
Here is a picture of a woman who clearly has male patterned hair loss, not female. It happens and it sucks, especially when as a woman you go to a doctor and they just tell you “women don’t go bald”.
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In that case why don't you delete her thread. Oh wait you can't, you're not a moderator