Detumescence Therapy- dedicated volunteers wanted

I've currently been doing this DT for a little over a month. My hair is thinning more (less density) and the scalp has a lot of pimples/acnes and dandruff. It's also very itchy. Is this normal / part of the process or am I doing it wrong?

Press the skin, pinch. press the skin, pinch. Wash, rinse repeat. Twice a day, 20 minutes each. Everyday.

The harder part to work on is the front crown. It's hard as rock. Is this normal / part of the process?

thisainteasy wrote:I've currently been doing this DT for a little over a month. My hair is thinning more (less density) and the scalp has a lot of pimples/acnes and dandruff. It's also very itchy. Is this normal / part of the process or am I doing it wrong?

Press the skin, pinch. press the skin, pinch. Wash, rinse repeat. Twice a day, 20 minutes each. Everyday.

The harder part to work on is the front crown. It's hard as rock. Is this normal / part of the process?

Hey easy

FWIW dandruff is a great sign in my opinion. I experienced much more shedding immediately within the first two weeks of starting DT properly. Some areas feel really hard for me too. Most notable is above my left temple. It feels like when I pinch it, I'm just pinching two ends of a piece of wood/something immobile. I work around this by trying to use two hands to pinch and bunch up the skin in this area, and to pay special attention to it with the massage/rubbing motions part of DT.

Also, I was wondering about Tom Hagerty's scalp exercises. What is a good amount of time to do them? I was just wondering because I don't want to end up gaining too much muscle on my head and unintentionally make DT harder. I used to do them a lot but cut back.

I'm sure the technique is important, does anyone else do Hagerty's scalp exercises? I raise my eyebrows (contracting my frontalis muscles in a kind of surprised look) for not even a second, then pull my ears back (contracting the occipital muscles) and sometimes hold them there for a few seconds, or just release them quickly to move my scalp more quickly than holding it, which would make the exercise basically look like I was flirting with someone in a creepy way (needless to say, I do the exercises in private )

Its been 2 months since I stopped doing dt, the vellus hairs that I thought came from Dt are still here. Im guessing those vellus was always there even before DT.

There's really an incredible amount of dead skin or whatever it is trapped in my scalp, and if it wasn't for DT I never would have noticed. I get the best release by pressing a boar bristle brush onto my scalp. It can look perfectly clean, and after as little as 5 seconds, it looks like I spilled powdered sugar on my scalp

It doesn't work.

Growdamnit wrote:It doesn't work.

I am still in the early stages of DT but I can assure you it works for dead skin release as I mentioned, for me at least.

hiilikeyourbeard seems to have the best result out of DT. If he can share his "techniques" to us that'd be great. We need all help we can get.

I'd rather do this therapy the right way immediately. I don't want to be in this for 9 months only to realize I'm doing it all wrong. That'd be a waste of time, waste of effort, waste of investment and not to mention waste of emotional ups and downs.

What is the conclusion of this therapy? Is this working or was it just another bs in the list of the hair loss treatments? Im not sure if its a good sign that no one is posting progress anymore. Maybe they moved on with their life after experiencing regrowth (I wish)......

I think we can safely say this is not a bs treatment as several people have shown some pretty compelling results - especially the pics hiilikeyourbeard i believe, showed of the hair regrowing where the massages would crease his skin. We also have many people who managed to maintain their hair using the method...even though some may not attribute it to the massage. The issue is people were promised a miracle by the study. Maintenance is not a victory in many people's heads because the bar was set so high. But we have had people with regrowth, and almost everyone reports a healthier scalp.

If we are to believe the reports of everyone who has gone in and submitted their results to this thread, this massage has a much higher success rate than most other options such as many supp regimens, topicals, and dietary changes. Worth a shot if you have little hair you need to regain, or just want to maintain what you've got. If you're pretty far gone well, you may need to look at other options.

Its been almost 2 years now, anyone has a fulll head of hair yet?

1 year in DT, things get worse at the begining, a lot of shedding, but now i am recovering all lost ground, its a slow process. Be constant and patient. THE GOAL IS TO SPREAD OUT ALL THAT GREASE TRAPPED UNDER THE SCALP. Try massaging hard in the shower with hot water, you can feel the grease in your fingertips..

i did it for 6 months solid, probably not enough time to say whether it could've helped, but in that time, did nothing for my hair. did give me a horrible wrinkled scalp though lol. switched to LLLT as a more sustainable long term method for scalp stimulation, in unison with topical scalp peels, polysorbate 80 and clays to unclog the follicles. way less hassle and hair and scalp is in better condition, so far.

'pretty compelling results - especially the pics hiilikeyourbeard i believe, showed of the hair regrowing where the massages would crease his skin.'


im sorry , but anyone who believes that hair regrew in the creases is an idiot.  anyonecan push their scalp together and it will go dark in the creases and stay that way for a bit afterwards.  it just forces the hairs to temporarily go on a different angle to the rest making it look darker and thicker.

SonofOdin wrote:I think we can safely say this is not a bs treatment as several people have shown some pretty compelling results - especially the pics hiilikeyourbeard i believe, showed of the hair regrowing where the massages would crease his skin. We also have many people who managed to maintain their hair using the method...even though some may not attribute it to the massage. The issue is people were promised a miracle by the study. Maintenance is not a victory in many people's heads because the bar was set so high. But we have had people with regrowth, and almost everyone reports a healthier scalp.

If we are to believe the reports of everyone who has gone in and submitted their results to this thread, this massage has a much higher success rate than most other options such as many supp regimens, topicals, and dietary changes. Worth a shot if you have little hair you need to regain, or just want to maintain what you've got. If you're pretty far gone well, you may need to look at other options.

The biggest problem is the technique, we need a video or something.  Also, it's a LOT of work, so I wouldn't be surprised if people cheated.  I'd be surprised if they didn't And even if they don't cheat, they might be doing it wrong unfortunately.  I know that I was doing this totally wrong for at least two weeks, and I kept coming back here to check on peoples' progress otherwise I might have still been doing it wrong.

EDIT:  Also, I just noticed those brown scaly spots appearing, someone called it "cradle cap", so something is definitely coming out of my scalp, there's no denying that, and whatever it is, it can't be good stuck in there. Right now there's one on my left temple hairline, and two on my right temple, one on the hairline.

cradle cap is the name for seborraic dermititis when it occurs as a baby. in this circumstance its normal and goes away on its own. when u get it as an adult though it doesnt.

its a fungal infection, caused by most likely malezzia furfur. they think it feeds on the sebum, or something in the sebum. so if dt makes you release most of these oils, then you are more likely to get an fungi overgrowth, which results in thick yellow / brown scales.

so the brown spots are not some magical result of DT, there are an infection which you will now need anti fungals to remove. no doubt the extra amount of skin contact with dirty hands has played a role in spreading it.

rofl wrote:no doubt the extra amount of skin contact with dirty hands has played a role in spreading it.

think this is a solid point, if doing DT; of utmost importance to keep the scalp super clean else your potentially just spreading muck all across your scalp ... and I imagine DT oxidises a lot of the muck too ... so some sort of scalp cleaning regime before and/or after makes sense, to my mind at least.

Columbo wrote:

rofl wrote:no doubt the extra amount of skin contact with dirty hands has played a role in spreading it.

think this is a solid point, if doing DT; of utmost importance to keep the scalp super clean else your potentially just spreading muck all across your scalp ... and I imagine DT oxidises a lot of the muck too ... so some sort of scalp cleaning regime before and/or after makes sense, to my mind at least.

Yes that's definitely not it, I wash my hands before I do anything many times per day, shower every day (because I'm doing Sage's topical so I don't really have a choice), and spray my scalp with rosemary tea/ACV throughout the day.

it doesnt matter. i am uber clean and use constant alternating chemical anti fungals and anti bacterials, and i still get it. i said dirty hands may be contributing, but even if they're not, malezzia furfur lives on our skin, a certain percentage are susceptible to overgrowth. there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it, but perhaps its something in our diets that comes out in our sweat.

my point is, if you dont have dirty hands, then great, i take back what i said, but it still doesnt mean you dont have sebborraic dermititis. remembering that the causal fungi lives on our skin, clean hands can still spread it around. each time you touch your skin, your hands are then contaminated. no matter how much u sanitise your hands they will always carry normal flora (bacteria and fungi)

alot of conditions are caused by normal flora that simply gets overgrown for one reason or another. when IDing bacteria and fungi in the lab, you have to grow the organisms from the specimen, and determine whats normal flora, and whats overgrowth. you use different amount of contaminating strokes on a agar plate (a 16 streak test) and see how far the organism gets.

simple solution: don't use your hands, use a device. what device, I'm not sure. but i bet with a bit of ingenuity there's something that could be cobbled together.

Anyone else with closely buzzed hair notice wrinkled/stretch mark scalp from DT? I would imagine that would be a rather big deterrent . I want to start up again soon, but a scalp covered with stretch marks is rather disconcerting...

Maybe they are there during the first month but go away as the scalp becomes more relaxed??

I'll let you know soon, Sizzling. I've just quit my job and will be breaking contact with everyone there to start a new life as a balding man, versus the long messy mophead I had going on in attempts to conceal. So, going for a short clean cut and I'll finally see how things look.

Also, I plan on restarting DT so I will post occasional updates in this thread as need be. I stopped due to believing I'd be getting a transplant soon, and wanted to see if my hair could hold up without the massages. Anyway, HT doc told me he doesn't want to do anything to ruin my life in the future and that I'm too young, wait a year, etc. so, here I am.

SonofOdin wrote:I'll let you know soon, Sizzling. I've just quit my job and will be breaking contact with everyone there to start a new life as a balding man, versus the long messy mophead I had going on in attempts to conceal. So, going for a short clean cut and I'll finally see how things look.

Also, I plan on restarting DT so I will post occasional updates in this thread as need be. I stopped due to believing I'd be getting a transplant soon, and wanted to see if my hair could hold up without the massages. Anyway, HT doc told me he doesn't want to do anything to ruin my life in the future and that I'm too young, wait a year, etc. so, here I am.

Hi Odin

Did you by any chance mention DT to him, or at least discuss some sort of scalp laxity exercises?

Maybe you could use some sort of antiseptic oil when doing DT to kill any bacteria on the spot? Tea-tree oil comes to mind for me.

Odin, good luck on your fresh start to life. Hopefully you like the look of your head when it's shaved.

australian wrote:Maybe you could use some sort of antiseptic oil when doing DT to kill any bacteria on the spot? Tea-tree oil comes to mind for me.

Odin, good luck on your fresh start to life. Hopefully you like the look of your head when it's shaved.

I actually would like to do that, but I would think that since it makes everything slippery, wouldn't your fingers slide over your scalp and pull/break hairs? Without the oil is much easier I think, you just plant your fingers and press hard and they don't move.

John, if the weather permits, the HT doc will be flying down to my area to visit with me, and a few other patients in person and so I'll mention it to him then. I did a skype consult and in addition to the fact I'm really young, he was having difficulties seeing the density of my hair. It seemed important to him whether my hair follicles themselves were thick vs. fine. I have read that scalp elasticity is important for transplants and that you want an elastic scalp so, perhaps all my months of massage will help me get the biggest bang for my buck if I go through with a procedure.