Advice Wanted Plz

[LesPaulZoSo]

Hello everyone,

My Name is Jonathan and I just found and joined this board today, or tonight rather.

I am 18 currently and have noticed a gradual thinning of my front hairline over the past year or so. My hairline has not receeded to a great extent or the like, I just have noticed my hair growing back around the temples and so forth gradually shorter and thiner in size. I do have rather long hair for a guy, I think my longest hairs are some 19 inches long or so, and I do have a thick head of hair in the back with mild thinning noted on the top of the head and no real dramatic change around the crown.
You could easily say I am paranoid about my hair so any flucuation in thickness or length is noted. I suppose the most notable change is that clumps of hair on my hairline have gootten much smaller over time than they were.
My family does have a history of baldness on my moters side with some of my uncles loosing dramaticly and others not so much at all or in between. My father's side, atleast those males living now, have all retained their hair with your typical age thinning occuring. My dad's father even passed away with a good head of hair at 87. Overall I would say male pattern baldness is not out of the question for me, less likely than some I would suspect, but my aim is to tackle this problem early and prevent it from progressing or atleast slow the process down.
As far as health goes I guess you could say I'm not too bad off, I'm not in the greatest of shape, but am around 135lbs @ 5'4. I eat a good amount of meat and try to keep my diet not overly awful, I guess you could say I eat normally for an 18 year old and probobly a bit less than most. I don't take any drugs or drink in any large amount, and the only real health issues I have are a hypersensative vegal nerve, and an under active thiroid, which I am aware stimulates hair loss, both have been treated with medication within the past two months with a little notice of regrowth, my hair generally grows rather quickly, so any new growth is usually easy to spot.
Concerning hair care, I wash and condition my hair everyday and keep it trimmed neatly as a general rule. I am still figuring out my hair chemistry to see what products work the best for my hair, so changes in products do occur often, though I do stay away from gels and hair spray. I do blowdry my hair, but I towel dry it first to cut down on the time needed to blow dry. This is mainly do to the length and that it takes some time for my hair to air dry, when I have the time I always let it air dry. I try not to be rough on my hair, I stay away from hats as much as possible and only put my hair up when needed to do so and never in an overly tight ponytail. I try to not be rough on my hair, though notes and the like do occur, but I do not notice any more than normal loss of hair.
Having listed all the hair info I can think of, I guess my purpose for posting is to ask any and everyone for what advice they are willing to give on the best course of action for me to take on preventing any furthur loss of hair. Some I'm sure would say cut it, but that defeats the purpose to me, I love my hair and that's the reason I want to act to save it. I have considerd Propecia, but can anyone tell me the general cost of this treatment and others that have been found effective? Really I'm just looking for any and all advice, so fire away and thank you for your help.

Jonathan.

[LesPaulZoSo]

OH, forgot to mention that I am around a II on the Norwood scale, maybe a little less, and have always had a higher hairline as they run in my Father's family.

Jonathan

[Tricia]

Your best option for treating your hair loss would be propecia and minoxidil. That's what the FDA says anyway.

If you think you are losing your hair, then you are. This was true in my case. I noticed my hair loss before a doctor could diagnose it.

In my opinion, it's best to start treating your hair loss with the FDA approved products first and as soon as your hair loss bothers you. This is just my opinion. Other people will tell you to try alternative medicines, etc...

Even with treatment, it's unlikely that you will be able to stop the thinning process...unless you are an excellent responder to these medicines. In my case, minoxidil is slowing the hair loss and regrowing some hair but not fixing everything.

[kakarot]

Hey, believe it or not, you may have MPB (male pattern baldness) which you inherit of course from your parents. But the last doctor I saw said that the main genes come from your mother. So if her brothers went dramatically bald. Then you need to start fighting your hairloss now before its too late. There are many regimes you can use. Just research a little more cause I could be wrong myself.

[Sumarian]

really? kakarot? Ur doctor said that most of the genes come from the mother's side of the family? What do you think of this Sam? I thought that it has equal chance of coming from either side of the family.

[HairLossFight.com]

You're right Sumarian,

You can get it from both sides and so far there doesn't seem to be any research to indicate otherwise.

There was some material on genetic inheritance of AGA in the following article...

Male Androgenetic Alopecia (PDF approximately 400k so be patient when downloading)

Regards,
Sam