So Many Products, So Little Results

Hello. I’ve been experiencing hair loss since the age of 17, I am 20 now. Being in the National Guard and full-time in college, it’s a given I’m under alot of stress. I first noticed my hair started receding at the temples. I began using Rogaine 5% with some success as well as Procerin tablets. Some of the hair began to grow back. I stopped using both products in September of 2005 until December 2005. In December, my hair started to fall out in mass amounts in the shower. I began to use a solution called “Nutrifolica” and Procerin again. Since then, the temples have recovered, but I now have a very distinct patch of scalp showing almost dead center down the the top of my head. It starts from my part in the back, straight forward. It’s weird because the “crown” isn’t really receding (yet, I guess). But it’s fading all the while I’m applying Nutrifolica and taking Procerin twice a day, and using Rogaine after the shower. Oh, and I also tried the Nisim system to no avail. It seems there’s something new on the TV every week on infomercials but it costs $90 for a month supply. That adds up quick.

What are my options? (if any). I’m just completing my freshman year of college and have multiple to go, I’d like to keep my self-esteem in tact, I’m very conscious about my hair.

You sound like a bright young man, so I must ask why you are not being smart when it comes to your hair problem? You are selling yourself ‘things’ that you see on TV which are promoted to cure problems with hair loss where the promoters are all profiting from the ‘buy’. Ask a fertilizer salesman what will make your flowers grow, and he will show you his fertilizer products. Ask a vacuum salesmen why you have allergies, and he will tell you that dust in your house is causing it, because the vacuum cleaner you are using is missing the allergens. But what you need to know in the second case is: Are your really allergic to dust? If not, then the $500 vacuum cleaner that this fellow is selling will only serve to make your $500 more foolish and reinforce the idea that maybe you were taken to the cleaners.

I always tell my patients on this blog to first find out if your are losing your hair to genetic balding by seeing an expert who can make a firm diagnosis by mapping out your scalp for miniaturization to determine what is happening to your scalp and hair. If you do have genetic balding, there is a wonderful treatment that really works in young men called Propecia. You could approach this scientifically and know what is happening or you can call that fertilizer salesman for some potion or lotion that will meet his needs and take some of your hard-earned cash.