What Are My Chances Of Success? 31. Receding Tide.

[pr_kvn]

Hiya. Short story I'm 31, started losing hair at 21.

Had one temple recede quite rapidly into NW2 and it stayed the same for 6 years (no loss on the other temple).
Roughly at age 27 it picked back up again I noticed my other temple and middle starting to thin out and the bad one also started progressing further quite gradually.
Age 31 now my bad temple is NW3 with thinning in NW4 area and 'good' temple NW2 with thinning in the NW3 area (so it looks like NW3 and 4 basically).

Never had any vertex loss.

2 months ago decided to do something about it.

Regimen so far has been 1mg finasteride, 5% minoxidil twice a day, nizoral 2x a week, 1.5mm dermaroller x 3 times a fortnight, 10000mcg biotin, multivitamins.

I've started seeing some improvement thickening/vellus hairs week 6 but as expected there's not much really visual improvement yet(if there will be lol).

so far trying to strengthen what i have left, see if i can halt it.
trying to quit smoking as well.

next step H.T? gonna try to save up some money and prob. get it next year (if i qualify).

keeping this thread to keep track of my progress if i get any.

Ta!

 

[pr_kvn]

3 months in, no cosmetic effect still. but i'm seeing a difference in the mirror. a lot of new vellus hairs.

good temple NW2+ temple - few new spouted hairs in NW1.5-2 area + all NW1.5-2 area covered with vellus
bad temple NW3+ baseline - looks like NW3 now, long 1cm+ vellus covering NW3 area, finer tiny vellus hairs that don't really grow much in nw2/nw1.5 area

 

[pr_kvn]

one thing i realized after looking into hair treatments is that i always had a large forehead and natural NW1.5-ish hairline.
funny how i never paid any attention to this till i started losing ground. makes me envy guys that can pull off NW2 as non balding with their lower baseline hairlines and good thickness.
once my first temple took a hit and went up > 0.5 inch a few people pointed out that im balding...

my bad temple at start of treatment

bad temple now


i hope i continue improving a bit more, shave save some money off from hair transplant funds

 

[pr_kvn]

4 Months Accountability Post

Not much progress but I think I'm on the verge of slight cosmetic impovement

i noticed my hairs on the forelock (the ones i thought weren't affected), went from colourless thin to thicker and darker
Hair on the top looks less wispy, same thickness all the way through and grows at the same rate as the hair on the sides (before treatment sides would always grow faster and i'd end up with a crazy professor look)

before treatment

now

I've got random comments from few friends that my hair looks really dark somehow (none know i'm using any treatments), that felt reassuring

The progress on my temples is happening, but it is super super slow, i see few new hairs sprouted. vellus getting longer but not thickening or getting darker. My good temple is close to the stage where it might be acceptable as a high hairline if i get more regrowth and few new hairs get a bit longer. Bad ones kinda same but the area around it is getting healthier.

Also got some of my tax back for last year so can possibly afford an hair transplant now, just don't know whether i should wait it out a bit longer and see if i get anymore improvement before jumping under the needle.

Thank you for your time.

 

[pr_kvn]

MONTH 5 Accountability Post

No new hairs on the temples but darkening of a few longer velluses.
Quite a bit new hairs in the middle of the forelock.

I'm considerably happy with the treatment so far and I think I've shaved off 2 years out of my 10 year long hairloss.
I'm back at the point before it really started to bother me. Not too sure if I'm going to get anymore improvement but I think I'll stick to treatments till 1 year mark, see if any of those velluses recover, then go for an h.t.