I just turned 52 and for all of my life I have had a full thick head of hair.
Probably 2 years ago I started to notice a thinning in the front but I
thought it was just normal age related thinning. I have fine/medium brown
hair and very thick. I have now progressed to a noticeable almost bald spot
on my vertex moving anteriorly. My hair loss has been so slow that I hardly
noticed it until this year. I started on Propecia last month but I think I
may be having some side effects with libido. Should I stay the course for a
while with the Propecia and hope the side effect diminishes over time ?
My Father passed away at 77 with thin hair but never went bald and my older
Brother who is 59 has some mild receding in the temple area but no vertex
thinning. I am already contemplating a future HT and have selected 2
to start seriously thinking about. Hasson and Wong or Dr. Shapiro's group.
I guess this is the start of my "journey" with hair loss and I am looking
for some advice on how I should manage this for the long term ? Appreciate
all the information I have read here and look forward to sharing my journey
with others.

O' you blessed, blessed man....

If you are going to stop the propecia, seriously consider rogaine foam 5% -- and 1 or 2% nizoral shampoo -- which, fortunately for you works best on the crown.

You mentioned two doctors who are among the best of the best also, so you are obviously really on the right track. If you consult w/ either of them, you will receive great, honest advice and analysis.

Have you looked into FUE, btw? You sound like you could be a steller HT candidate, as well; my first thought was: FUE the front, get on the rogaine 5% and nizoral and see what kind of results you get from those treatments.

Thanks for the advice. Since this is new to me
I will educate myself on FUE. The information I
am finding here is nothing sort of amazing. I'm
going to stay with the Propecia for at least 3 months and then I am sure I will know which direction to go. I will take your advice with regards to Rogaine and Nozoral. Many thanks !

your beginning your "hair-journey" at 52?...(sigh...) You lucky fuc$ing bast$rd!!! I feel absolutely no: pity, empathy, or remorse for you. You have lived decades in opulence, thousands of petite young silky fingers have past journey through your amazon animal head of hair... indeed many finely french manicured nails have gripped this scalp---for some of us it is a desolate, dry desert of a waste-land, but for you--for you ---oh man of hair!--- it is a fruitful field of blossoms!. Which neither feels the cold, callous pouring of rain drops in the winter nor the seething, stinging sun of the summer...such a head of hair has been admired for decades, centuries, and yes --even millenia... The earth has been scoured for such hair...Deserts have been crossed, oceans have been passed, the depths of the abyss were questioned...Wars have been fought, battles have been waged...Fortunes have been both won and lost, the lives of many women and children will forever be gone. ALL--- over just a chance of having such a head of hair...


get a couple hundred fue and be back to lookin' like David Hasselhoff in no time...

hasselhoff.jpg (68 Kb, 50 downloads)

Bottom line is you are going to be golden -- you actually already are. Keep on doing what you are doing, research like you seem to be and you'll be uber-golden.

As for FUE, which again I think could be something very well suited for you, is, in the right hands for the right people a great thing; not many doctors (competently) perform this, and with the current state of things proven FUE procedures can't be nearly as robust as a FUT, which, for you, may very well not be a factor; however, it is less invasive, which makes recovery and the whole experience more "mild" (which isn't to say that FUT is traumatizing, far from it), and the scarring is as such where you could cut your hair much shorter w/o obv signs.

FUE is also more expensive, mainly having to do with the "man-power" required to perform it. Personally, I was really keen on doing FUE myself, however, twas not meant to be...at least not now.

ng2gb > Your prose is exquisite. I dunno about
"thousands of petite young silky fingers" ,
maybe just a few and one golden girl, my great Wife. That Hasselhoff pic was just downright
painful. My eyes hurt now.

spinnup, you know you liked the Hasselhoff. At least you have a do to pull it off!!!

Thanatopsis,

..."uber-golden"...was that a Nietzsche reference? I've heard of the uber-man but not the uber-hair!

Oh yes, Nietzsche, indeed! And this fortunate fellow may very well be able to transcend us commen men and attain the status of uber-hair that you speak of; a position most notably reserved for folk such as the good Mr. Hasselhoff.

I see...I bet you studied philosophy for pre-law didn't you?

Guilty as charged; of course it was only later on in my scholastic life that I began to start realizing my great, follicular manifesto; rooted, of course, in the quasi-Nietzchian concept of uber-hair; a text, of course, filtered through the lens of Leibnizian ontology; which, of course, carries a degree of irony given Leibniz himself was cue-ball NW7 before he finished puberty.

Oh dear---I should not have opened this semantical scandal posed as a conversation. Remember Heidegger? He was the worst! I called him The Hyphen-ator as he would hyphen everything!!! I thought I was through with philosophy...sigh...Ok now were robbing poor Hasselhoff of his thread...

Though I always liked his notion of "thrownness", I chugged drano as opposed to reading Heidegger.

Back to Hasselhoff and another future inductee of uber-hair fame, Spinuup!