The Psychological/Emotional Toll Of Hair Loss

[JDreamer]

I literally left the house angry today.

Now it's not unusual for me to battle with my hair every morning, but this time I really felt hostile about it. It's crazy that something which used to be a source of confidence and personal growth for me is now a source of so much self-doubt and anxiety.

I'm sure I'm not alone. This thread is for those suffering from the mental aspects of hair loss and need a quick vent.

 

[General Orange]

How do you wear the hair that's left is important for:

1. testing reactions of people to your baldness
2. dealing with the condition in a confronting way
3. accepting your condition

So how do you wear it? Or you hide it?

 

[Herbie]

Regret, sadness, compassion for not taking care of myself when I was younger which lead to stress, to some receding hair.

 

[Aleeri]

I'm Norwood 5 at age 30 so you guys older than this, be happy you got a few extra years.

Personally, after researching and battling baldness for 7 years, I've come to the following conclusions:

You have 2 options:

1. Get a hair transplant and call it a day for another decade or two at least.
2. Shave it.

Don't waste your time trying a million different expensive products or libido killing medications if your hair loss is already fairly progressed and you have actually bald patches. There are no miracles out there.

There are close to zero situations that it was actually possible to regrow bald areas, and even fewer cases where we can actually get ahold of the chemicals used ourselves. If this, in fact, was possible at this point there would be a cure out there earning billions.


My take is that once hair loss is progressed far, there is no way going back, the sooner you accept it the better.

Read this paper and you'll understand why it's so complex to cure: A hypothetical pathogenesis model for androgenic alopecia: clarifying the dihydrotestosterone paradox and rate-limiting recovery factors - ScienceDirect

Also sure you can be pissed that this happened but life happens guys, be glad you were not born in a third world country losing a leg from stepping on a landmine or ***t like that. I doubt you would care about your hair without food on your plate.

Today's modern lifestyles and densely populated cities make it very hard to avoid stress, which personally I think is the core trigger and driver. Some people's bodies just go into energy conservation mode easier than others and it neglects the hair. Is it better or worse? Hard to tell, maybe it's an important evolutionary adaptation, maybe it's a sign of ill health. Whatever it is, just take some action and don't let it control your wellbeing.

 

[opethfeldt]

I think being heavily mentally affected by hair loss is a symptom of your health not being optimized. When I was unhealthy, I could look amazing and still find flaws in myself. Now, with better mental health, my self confidence is high enough where I don't analyze myself so heavily. With this bring said, I've gotten quite a bit of regrowth the past few months, so it is possible for improvements to be made. These improvements come with better health, though. You may find that in the quest to get your hair back, you find you don't care about it anymore.

 

[lampofred]

Prostaglandins are what directly cause destruction of the hair follicle so you can take high dose aspirin and a moderate amount of vitamin D/K in the short-term to wipe out prostaglandin production so that you stop losing any more hair. And in the meanwhile you can continue working on raising metabolism via coffee, sugar, calcium, protein, coconut oil, etc. so that PUFA is detoxed and regeneration can start.