Has Anyone Cured Their Hair Loss

[mrchibbs]

I had lost a bit more then half an inch of hairline in classic MPB and I've 80% recovered it over two years.

Diet interventions beyond not under-eating were mostly irrelevant, as best I can tell. I was probably tending to under-eat for some years. Quantity of food (and stoking the furnace via exercise) dwarfs any neuroticism about PUFA and so-forth. I eat high quality Maine sardines all the time, for example. I am confident they make me feel better, PUFA and all.

The single most effective thing for general health and hair for me has been sunbathing. I think I have an especially high requirement for sun. I am of northern european extraction and live at ~39°N but still find I need as much midday sun as I can possibly get. If it's above 50F and a clear sunny day I will blow off a meeting to skip out to a park and take my shirt and shoes off and lay on a picnic table for 45m around noon. In summer if the sun is blasting on a Saturday or Sunday I will religiously spend the whole day outside walking, bicycling, sailing, drinking beer by a pool, whatever, wearing as little clothing as possible. Non-negotiable. Plans will be changed to take in sun. Even when visiting down around ~25°N I never wear sunscreen, walk around shirtless, never wear sunglasses.

Prioritizing physical fitness over other concerns. A lot of the takes on exercise in these parts are bollocks. The hormetic theory of exercise is correct. Power law training is correct: mostly go very easy, but very occasionally you need to force yourself to go very hard. With adequate recovery time, every now and then, it is very good to repeatedly sprint up a hill for half an hour until you puke, or force yourself to walk 20+ miles in a day even though everything hurts, or spend an hour doing as many pull-ups as you can possibly do. People telling you to avoid this sort of thing are wrong. In order to build health you need to force yourself to do physical activity you might not instinctively want to do, both daily easy stuff like walking and occasional puke sessions. I am very confident that people telling you to never force yourself to exercise unless you feel like it are wrong. Even a cancer patient needs to exercise.

Massage and derma-needling work to break up scar tissue. Derminator once a week is as effective as daily massage, in my opinion, and worth the investment. Neither are probably strictly necessary, but it certainly can accelerate things. Really big solid chunks of skin would flake off my scalp a couple days after needling while the tissue was remodeling.

Wholly agreed except the part about exercising till you puke. I think for many athletic people that’s a sort of wishful association with the teenage years where “going all out” would leave you feeling satisfied at a primal level. Going into adulthood most people “around these parts” are experiencing significant amount of stress and there are very tangible reasons to avoid intense exercise. A cancer patient absolutely should not be gearing up to do an iron man. Yes exercise is part of the recovery and building muscle helps shift the body into an anabolic state, but going to failure, despite the psychological boost it may provide for the really motivated people, is deleterious in every way, activating the entirety of the stress response, and sending shockwave throughout the body emanating from the injured tissues. Ultimately, if you enjoy the physical activity it’s gonna activate massively different physiological responses which can be super beneficial. Bouldering, walking on trails, playing tennis, exercising the power lifts or sprinting etc. are all going to be positive, in a low stress situation with a good metabolic rate. Flipping tires till you puke when your body temperature is 96.5 for the sake of an hormetic adaptation isn’t gonna end well.

 

[tygertgr]

Wholly agreed except the part about exercising till you puke. I think for many athletic people that’s a sort of wishful association with the teenage years

I am no spring chicken and am speaking from experience of having gone from feeling run down to feeling very good. The idea that I needed time without appropriately dosed difficult exercise delayed my recovery substantially. I was harmed by advice against difficult exercise that is commonly parroted in these circles.

 

[brix]

Buzzing my head and keeping sebum to a minimum stops my hair loss. Not the best look for me but it beats the stress of seeing hair everywhere.

 

[sappinatree]

Around 12 to 20 cups a day pretty consistently for about 6 months, 20 cups on days that I could eat a lot and handle the increase in stress hormones, 12 cups for days I didn't have that much food or couldn't handle it anymore, probably 16 cups a day on average.

After 6 months I couldn't handle it anymore and went down to 7-8 cups a day and I'm trying to maintain those levels currently. But I skip several days and drink only 1-2 on each of those days if I feel it building up too much in my system and I start getting jittery.

Peat apparently drank 40-50 cups a day regularly for a while, so looks like as long as you have enough food, it's not bad for you. The lower your aromatase is, the better you can handle coffee without jitters. So his aromatase must have been absolutely nonexistent.

2 aspirins a day along with vitamin K were also very important for me.



Was an absolute must for me as well. Congrats on the amazing results.

Lampofred,

Were you taking your coffee with milk and sugar like others seem to recommend? Or was it just plain black coffee? Also by cups of coffee per day, do you mean cups in terms of measurement?

 

[mrchibbs]

I am no spring chicken and am speaking from experience of having gone from feeling run down to feeling very good. The idea that I needed time without appropriately dosed difficult exercise delayed my recovery substantially. I was harmed by advice against difficult exercise that is commonly parroted in these circles.

There is a reason why this advice is “parroted in these circles”. You may have benefited from intense exercise but to dismiss all ideas against so condescendingly is not helpful to anyone “around these parts”.

 

[lampofred]

Lampofred,

Were you taking your coffee with milk and sugar like others seem to recommend? Or was it just plain black coffee? Also by cups of coffee per day, do you mean cups in terms of measurement?

I did at first but over time my glycogen stores got good enough that I didn't have to worry about running out of sugar and would just drink black. By cup I mean 1 full tablespoon of ground coffee. I use dark roast coffee which is bit lower in caffeine (60-80 mg per tablespoon) and richer in antioxidants and is better at raising blood levels of vitamin E, as opposed to light roast which is 80-100 mg caffeine per tablespoon.

 

[postman]

Peat apparently drank 40-50 cups a day regularly for a while, so looks like as long as you have enough food, it's not bad for you. The lower your aromatase is, the better you can handle coffee without jitters. So his aromatase must have been absolutely nonexistent./QUOTE]
Do you have a source for that please

 

[jondoeuk]

Has anyone tried topical finasteride and/or dutasteride?

 

[sappinatree]

I did at first but over time my glycogen stores got good enough that I didn't have to worry about running out of sugar and would just drink black. By cup I mean 1 full tablespoon of ground coffee. I use dark roast coffee which is bit lower in caffeine (60-80 mg per tablespoon) and richer in antioxidants and is better at raising blood levels of vitamin E, as opposed to light roast which is 80-100 mg caffeine per tablespoon.

Thanks for answering my question. I've been trying to figure out how to regrow my hair, and I love my coffee and I eat mostly organic, so your method sounds very do-able for me. Guess I should just start increasing the amount of coffee Intake. I probably get around 8 cups a day at the moment.

 

[chimdp]

Buzzing my head and keeping sebum to a minimum stops my hair loss. Not the best look for me but it beats the stress of seeing hair everywhere.

I agree with you on the reduced stress that shorter hairs brings because your not seeing it shed everywhere.

Could you please explain your process/methods for reducing sebum? What do you use to clean your hair/scalp? My hair is thin so I don't have the option of doing the whole nopoo thing as it looks unkept and thinner. My scalp and face have always been oily, but I can't figure it out why in the last several months I've had issues with acne popping up all over the top of my scalp. Not on the sides or anywhere else on my body tho.

 

[Inspired]

The one thing that can really work, is Rogaine/Minoxidil. I don't know why it gets a bad reputation or people believe it doesn't work or it isn't enough.

There's a reason why they sell it in every pharmacy and supermarket etc. People have been using it for for 30 years and don't post about it online.

I believe that if you start using it when you realize you may be losing hair, you will keep your hair. And you can regrow most of your hair too. It depends on how far gone you are.

If you can brush your teeth twice a day, you can apply Rogaine twice a day.

That is the cure to hairloss for now. So anyone who is losing hair.........should get on the Rogaine, and then figure out the nutrition part of it etc.

 

[lampofred]

I'm starting to think hair loss represents a depletion of calcium stores in the body. I think calcium is closely related to "kidney yin" and things that raise phosphate (which is the main calcium antagonist) tend to worsen hair loss.

 

[brix]

I agree with you on the reduced stress that shorter hairs brings because your not seeing it shed everywhere.

Could you please explain your process/methods for reducing sebum? What do you use to clean your hair/scalp? My hair is thin so I don't have the option of doing the whole nopoo thing as it looks unkept and thinner. My scalp and face have always been oily, but I can't figure it out why in the last several months I've had issues with acne popping up all over the top of my scalp. Not on the sides or anywhere else on my body tho.

Sunlight and natural shampoos. Condition once a week. I also tend to be oily and I feel like calcium/taurine/vit k have been helping with that.

 

[sappinatree]

Sunlight and natural shampoos. Condition once a week. I also tend to be oily and I feel like calcium/taurine/vit k have been helping with that.

This is gonna sound strange but there’s a bro-science statement that goes around involving getting some sun on your testicles and being extremely good for hormonal health as a male. There was a study done that found testosterone increased 200% more in subjects who “tanned their balls” in comparison to 120% to those who just got a regular shirtless tan. That’s where this idea stemmed from.

 

[chimdp]

Sunlight and natural shampoos. Condition once a week. I also tend to be oily and I feel like calcium/taurine/vit k have been helping with that.

Thanks. What natural shampoos have you found best?

 

[Aaron]

The one thing that can really work, is Rogaine/Minoxidil. I don't know why it gets a bad reputation or people believe it doesn't work or it isn't enough.

There's a reason why they sell it in every pharmacy and supermarket etc. People have been using it for for 30 years and don't post about it online.

I believe that if you start using it when you realize you may be losing hair, you will keep your hair. And you can regrow most of your hair too. It depends on how far gone you are.

If you can brush your teeth twice a day, you can apply Rogaine twice a day.

That is the cure to hairloss for now. So anyone who is losing hair.........should get on the Rogaine, and then figure out the nutrition part of it etc.

What a sad little post.

 

[nbznj]

MorrF (topical finasteride with minoxidil sans alcohol) is highly ranked in hairloss forums. And those are the most neurotic of all. Easy to grab from India’s eBay

Regarding exercise: people train like weaklings and have severe cases of fuckarounditis, whether they are 20 or 50 it’s everywhere the same. Just don’t do lower rep ranges as you get older. Do your compound movements, with barbells or dumbbells or machines, 5 exercises per muscle group per workout, push/pull/legs every other day, 1 hard heavy set and 1 backoff pump set per exercise, get stronger, leaner, and more muscular, become efficient and the hormones will follow suit. It’s not rocket science at all.

 

[tygertgr]

people train like weaklings

The thing people get wrong about exercise is the power law nature of appropriate training. Mostly it should be quite easy and not a stressor. It's a thing you do every day, like showering. But every now and then, you should go hard and puke.

People tend to get this exactly wrong and go for "jogging" or "I *lift* thrice weekly". It's this middle ground of chronically stressing your body that causes the problems.

Lift every day. Walk every day. I bicycle every day, everywhere. Just mostly go so easy it's not a stressor. Hasn't stopped my average speed from climbing up to 21 mph on the ten mile routes I go. Not stressful, because I've built tolerance over six years. Be in touch with your body and go hard when the moment comes, though. Sometimes I'll be doing the five mile commute to work and just decide to peel off and do hill repeats, or I'll cut out early and do 50 miles, and puke. That's where the hormetic adaptations come in. Anyone telling you that there's no payoff from going hard and then properly recovering is wrong. You feel better and better as you push up your limits. Atrophying to weakness and sloth is horrible.

Reiteration: What people get wrong is 90+% of the time exercise exertion should be trivially easy. Maybe once or twice or thrice a month depending on stress levels you should go very uncomfortably hard. You need both modes. Most people get it exactly wrong and chronically grind away at a stressful level week after week that isn't even hard enough to be useful.

 

[nbznj]

Couldn’t agree more

When it comes to lifting, my time under (insanely hard) tension is probably 5 minutes thrice weekly. 10 sets to failure per workout / 3 workouts per week. Going super hard should make you feel good, sleep like a baby, wake up diamond cutter.

 

[Davinci]

Most important things for me:

1. Consistency--Eat well. Get on a daily routine!! Get outside in the sun. Stimulate your brain with real activities instead of melting in front of a computer.
2. Having a clean scalp. I buzzed my head, and this helped me clean it much better. Drying my hair completely after a shower is important because the water is hard where I live which causes a scalp buildup. I use nizoral 1x/week also. I will be trying a topical of niacinamide and taurine in the near term. I sometimes use coconut or olive oil in my scalp with a drop of iodine after a shower.
2. Massaging/brushing about 15 min/day and a 10 min inversion/day.
3. Aspirin!!! 81-325mg/day. An absolute must.
4. Caffeine. Have 2/day. Each coffee will contain ample milk, sugar, and 1 tbs of gelatin.
5. Some sort of exercise everyday to get blood flowing and improve lymph flow. I like lifting or playing ball. Not to mention I've gotten much stronger and leaner in the last 3 months.
6. Liver and oysters every week. Vit A makes my skin perfect.
8. Temps and pulse (98+ and 70-90)
9.******* Trust & stick to a plan for months and stop worrying*******.

I've also begun to start thyroid now that I've read Broda Barnes' book. Too early to say if there have been benefits.

@rawmeat Curious if taking NDT (natural desiccated thyroid) helped at all, on top of your regimen above?