I dont think DHT is the cause of hairloss

I dont think you can directly blame dht, I think it is part of the link but there is more to the puzzle. DHT doesn't just decide to attack your follicles at some point in time. I really think its some sort of inflammation or something (pgd2) that starts first then triggers the process. There is a link to the puzzle thats missing out there.

REALLY!?

Can't tell if your being sarcastic or not O.o

As new discoveries are made this is very possible and I wouldn't doubt it one bit.

Whatever saw paetto and fnastetide act upon is a component, be it DHT or whatever.

I really believe poor circulation triggered by stress and a tight scalp is the main thing.

All sorts of funky stuff can happen when there is a deficiency of nutrients, blood etc. I just think the lack of blood creates an environment where inflammation and toxin overload can take place.

Just my opinion

I always thought DHT was the primary reason for mpb until I discovered this site!

Yep it's part it but there are so many other factors!

My advice, is to read as many of the posts in this forum as you can.

hellwig, I see no reason to be so snarky with a new person. You're quite a little jerk sometimes (actually, a good deal of the time, IMO). Calm down a bit, eh? You make good contributions when you're not trying so hard to be a wise-ass.

blueman, this has been discussed A LOT on this forum. Please do a google search (top left) of the forum to see what the general consensus is of the knowledgeable posters on this forum. Pretty interesting.

What are some of your thoughts here in regards to those susceptible to mpb having more dht/androgen interacting receptors on their scalps? If that idea's true it means even if you have normal dht levels it can still cause hair loss if a very powerful diet is not in place to curtail the inflammation (thus improved circulation), and sustain perfect hormonal balance.. There has to be some truth to this androgen receptor idea or else you wouldn't have so many "of age" people that have plenty of signs of dht ( body/face hair) have had horrible toxic exposure (poisons,chemicals,cigs) ,alcoholism,extremely inflammatory diets (90% processed foods daily) + bad lifestyle habits their entire lives and also whom have never touched a single supplement and still have FULL heads of hair... What gives their hair this type of protection while our bodies needs to run on ''super premium'' everything to have our scalp hairs survive an appreciable amount of time?

Id love to hear a response to this, but Ill pitch in my current explanation. Obviously genetics is huge, but I personally feel like genetics only predetermines a predisposition to something, but does not mean its guaranteed if your lifestyle habits 'overrides' your weak points in your body, with epi-genetics in mind.. Plus I am definitely with you guys in the belief that the mainstream dht theory is only one piece to a bigger picture. So I tend to lean towards what CS says about it being more of a downstream problem for "US" whom susceptible.. Can we elaborate on the validity of Androgen receptors only dominant in some scalps? If so how does these receptors kill our hair in contact with ''hostile hormones''? Does lack there of Androgen receptors in the galea explain the example of people who are never, or barely affected by mpb no matter their lifestyles or internal and external environments?

You see when I think of IH top 6 and diet, i look at all of these efforts as simply maintaining the youthful, BALANCED, mineral dense body most of us had as healthy teenagers that allowed us to look young, ( hair specifically) and that by maintaining that youth through aggressive implementations through diet and supplements is how we are lessening dht/androgenic influence to our genetic susceptibility.

So in trusting that its true that mpb suffers have more androgen scalp (*galea) receptors causing faster reaction to hair loss, I'm thinking that its only agitated when there are hormonal imbalances; namely reduced testosterone (:See mpb males having low SHBG &T levels studies:) allowing DHT to exhibit a more potent accumulative effect. I also think excessive estrogen exposure increases the bodies Alpha reductase response making more dht since it cannot be aromatised like testosterone..
But we are really just talking about dramatically slowing down the aging process for us here to keep our hair, since obviously at one point of time all of us had full heads of hair with no thinning or hair worries even while we were teenagers with plenty of androgen's... What changed since then? What increased and/or decreased? Shouldn't it be obvious to believe in keeping testosterone high and other hormones in balance so that the amount of dht present in our system is out weighed and becomes moot to our hair growth...

Yes I do believe genetics play a big part that is obvious. Some people no matter what they do no matter what they eat keep all their hair into old age ( like Ozzy Osbourne).

This is just a theory but I think the people with certain mpb genes there is an event that triggers the dht to attack the follicles, whether its an auto immune response, lack of vitamin d possibly??? , inflammation of some sort, or other factors, then the process starts rolling.

im incerasingly starting to believe, mpb has 0 to with dht, even though the science available states otherwise. If you target the root cause of mpb (and keep it under control), even a 1000% DHT increase, should not be an issue at all.

remember androgens infuence hair growth, and in my opinon, this remains the same in mpb, but the secondary, negative effect they have on scalp health is what actually causes baldness.

All the factors involved can not be looked at individually, they are weave in and out of eachother and affect the entire process often in dozens of ways, for instance a certain cytokines effect on circulation can exponentially increase that said cytokine by the other dozen factors affecting and affected by the circulation compromise. It's like that with everything in the body, androgens and estrogens are as much Immune involved depending on the situation as they are involved in sexual metabolic actions. DHT is a "result of", as much as a "cause of", and frankly can be completely ignored in the long run when looking at this from a purely pathological perspective. They said DHT caused prostate cancer, turns out its a murine virus that actually has sex hormone receptors that can live in the prostate which is one of the main causes along with estrogen, I feel that when we finally can break hairloss down to a direct abstract in purely digestable terms, it'll be similar to that story.

Another theory I've tried to toy with is that some people naturally have a much more robust capillary network laced throughout their scalps, so any hormonal shifts, excess, damage etc that lead to inflammation (inflammation=reduced/constricted blood flow) is not as significant in those heads since they began with a much better follicular blood network to begin with, so all the nutrients are still flowing strong to offset the damages... Hair loss aside, what physically is different in the scalp of someone with thick hair vs someone with thin hair? Is it simply more total follicles count and/or thicker diameter of shafts, thicker scalp skin, less androgen receptors? I tend to notice people who naturally have low child like hair lines even when they are in their 20s don't tend to go bald. The guys who naturally have bigger fore heads, higher natural hairlines tend to recede bad or bald, and maybe their skull shape or something also makes it harder to have strong blood flow through certain bodily circumstances..
Out of all the angles I've thoroughly researched on potential causes to mpb I am coming to believe they are all tied into each other, which is why some people halt their hair loss by successfully attacking every angle possible, but maybe there is a doomed point of no return? Fortunately it appears humanity is on a fast pace towards ending this mpb crap though for most of us soon enough, as we are all progressing in understanding.. Would be great if C/S chimed in this thread even though im sure a lot of this has been covered before.

I found this to be a good article from NaturalNews btw
http://www.naturalnews.com/031027_hair_loss_hormones.html

blueman99 wrote:I dont think you can directly blame dht, I think it is part of the link but there is more to the puzzle. DHT doesn't just decide to attack your follicles at some point in time. I really think its some sort of inflammation or something (pgd2) that starts first then triggers the process. There is a link to the puzzle thats missing out there.

but how come then only men get the baldness and not women?

Some women go bald.

I think the bigger question is why do castrated men never go bald?

DHT seems to attack something, maybe instead of trying to lower DHT we need to find out what it's attacking and improve on that.

Yes some women do go bald.

Can you explain why the dht blockers like finastride and dut show zero results on some people though? There has to be something causing other then dht.

Women also tend to show their hair a lot more attention; brushing, playing with it ect.

What you don't see much of is women with vertex thinning.
I think circulation plays a big part but DHT does play a role in weakening the papilla when it isn't getting enough nutrients and can't remove the toxins fast enough.

zeroes wrote:

I think the bigger question is why do castrated men never go bald?

in my opinion, excess dht triggers the growth of uncontrolloble pathogens in the scalp, by what ever mechanism, (increase in sebum/sebcaceous gland hyperplasia.)

personally i think it is pathogens that interrupt the hair cycle, (infecting the cells (follcilular, sebcaceous gland cells?) and the body having to disinfect/kill those cells on a continuous basis, eventually deciding to shutting down production of a terminal hair into a vellus hair)

the reason why castrated men never go bald is possibly because getting rid of androgens, automatically causes a reduction in scalp pathogens, hence no pathogens are present to cause any damage...but they are still susceptible to balding, as there are other growth factors that can have an infulence on the sebcaceous gland activity such as igf1 BUT possibly to a very minor degree, not as much as dht, so they are still prone to balding if thier diet is loaded with foods that influence the activity of this gland...its the same for women too.

it really is diet that plays the big role in baldness...if your diet is full of crap then you should be balancing this with some good food/supplements to counteract the negatives.

for those that have a "genetic tendancy" to NOT bald its possibly because they are blessed with having less sensitive androgen receptors and/or a lower concentrated, distribution of the sebcaceous glands on thier scalps (compared to balding scalps), having said this though, i think baldness can still be initiated in them artificially.

Maybe DHT isn't the cause...but reversing MPB is so hard.
There are so many ways to explore : anxiety disorders, lack of emotional support, a sedentary lifestyle, childhood traumas etc.
It's not just about swallowing supplements and vitamins.
People only focus on candida, lyme diseases etc. but nobody has been able to stop/regrow hair that way. Among >1000 members, it seems, only a few ones have been able to slow down, get some regrowth. But stopping the loss for a few months doesn't mean you have MPB beat. It's such a slow progression.
It really looks like when MPB kicks in, there's nothing you can do about it.

niff1250 wrote: Among >1000 members, it seems, only a few ones have been able to slow down, get some regrowth. But stopping the loss for a few months doesn't mean you have MPB beat. It's such a slow progression.
It really looks like when MPB kicks in, there's nothing you can do about it.

^ I disagree, and that line of thinking definitely wont help. There are scores of people who have stopped or significantly slowed down their mpb for years, even decades, and I'm sure many of us would be very grateful to even do that much to prevent hair loss in our most prime and important years. Many people who feel its impossible to stop are also likely compartmentalized people who dont have all areas covered in its cause, and everyone is different. But we all just need to reestablish and maintain an environment in our bodies to where the hair can survive, and I can see how it can be a long process to undue a life time of unnatural damage that we have given our bodies due to modern diet/lifestyles... And on a lighter note, consider that nobody alive has hair loss beat as anyone can loose all their hair at any given time. Hell you could have the best hair genes in the world and could've taken some acid or something to the head and now your permanently bald too lol.. Something I have been using just for life in general, "Do your best and dont worry about the rest" If your hairs destined to fall, and you cant live with that right now then stall it for as long as possible and give it a hell of a fight on the way out, you never know whats around the corner, even simply buying time could be useful...

niff1250 wrote:Maybe DHT isn't the cause...but reversing MPB is so hard.
There are so many ways to explore : anxiety disorders, lack of emotional support, a sedentary lifestyle, childhood traumas etc.
It's not just about swallowing supplements and vitamins.
People only focus on candida, lyme diseases etc. but nobody has been able to stop/regrow hair that way. Among >1000 members, it seems, only a few ones have been able to slow down, get some regrowth. But stopping the loss for a few months doesn't mean you have MPB beat. It's such a slow progression.
It really looks like when MPB kicks in, there's nothing you can do about it.

I've been on this forum for a couple of years now, and this needs to be said.

Every year at about this time there is a wave of new users here on this forum, and almost every year its been the same.

A third of the new users, with little to no justification or knowledge to back them up, will say "Hair loss is unbeatable because ___________ and I've never ever seen anybody get any results using ____________, _____________, or ______________".

A third of the users will be absolutely upbeat, positive, aggressively determined, and will have a kickass attitude that says "Hey, I don't care whether or not anybody has ever gotten any results, I'm going to be the first". These users also often move beyond the previous group by digging through old threads here on this forum, and seeing what hairloss actually is and isn't on a purely pathological level, without any media or enterprise based influence.

The last third will be unopinionated, and will follow and be objective until they find something that works for them or lose interest.

Now ... who do you think the users who eventually get success fall into? Group 3? Group 2? or group 1?

a
I've been on this forum for a couple of years now, and this needs to be said.

Despite I haven't posted that much, I too have been immersed on hairloss forums for the last 2 years.

a
Every year at about this time there is a wave of new users here on this forum, and almost every year its been the same.

A third of the new users, with little to no justification or knowledge to back them up, will say "Hair loss is unbeatable because ___________ and I've never ever seen anybody get any results using ____________, _____________, or ______________".

I must confess : I've never seen anybody getting regrowth after using a natural approach. And that statement doesn't make me a newbie, it's quite the opposite : in my years of being involved I've seen no truly convincing pictures of regrowth. And if you think I'm wrong, please show me some sucess stories or at least just one, ideally documented with photos. Yes, some members, for example The Natural, have been able to stabilize hairloss and get some regrowth. But this isn't the kind of regrowth you can expect from propecia.

a
A third of the users will be absolutely upbeat, positive, aggressively determined, and will have a kickass attitude that says "Hey, I don't care whether or not anybody has ever gotten any results, I'm going to be the first". These users also often move beyond the previous group by digging through old threads here on this forum, and seeing what hairloss actually is and isn't on a purely pathological level, without any media or enterprise based influence.

Trust me : this was really my line of thinking. And I had good reasons to think that way : First there's no history of baldness in my family and 2nd my lifestyle was EXTREMELY bad (smoking pot all day, junk food, no exercising for the last 10 years etc).
My thought process was : stop crying over your hairloss, just do the best you can, this unexpected premature hairloss is a warining sign, it's time to take care of yourself etc
"Hey, I don't care whether or not anybody has ever gotten any results, I'm going to be the first." -> This was exactly my line of thinking especially considering my background (no hairloss from both sides of my family).

I did the best I can : I gave up smoking both cigarettes and marijuana (just doing that was very hard), started exercising (running, swimming x3/week), eating organic food, cutting out sugar and dairy, Tom Hagerty's scalp exercises to boost scalp circulation, all sort of natural oils for my scalp, the top6, resveratrol and curcumin (antagonists at the CB1 receptor to reverse marijuana damage and inflammation), meditation and sauna to reduce stress etc. I even tried other approaches like ericksonian hypnosis to feel better emotionally.
You can't imagine how self-motivated I was. Claiming I'm just an ignorant new user is just unfair. I really did my homework to understand the cause of my hairloss. I read studies about premature vertex baldness and other health problems (insulin resistance, prostate cancer, cardio vascular diseases)

I'm very proud of myself about theses changes, the information on this site is really great, during the last year I was feeling REALLY good both physically and emotionally. I don't regret it.
But when it comes to my hair, nothing has changed. My hairloss rate hasn't increased during that time but it hasn't decreased either. It's just getting worse and worse.

Obviously I haven't tried everything but at this point I don't think adopting free-gluten diet, considering LLLT or whatever is going to change that much.

I had a longer reply for you, but it really wasn't necessary. You're really still only hitting the tip of the iceberg of what this site has uncovered yet, keep learning and keep adding, sooner or later if you do this you'll hit something that will make a difference for you, and suddenly you'll have a much better idea of why other things didn't.

Think iodine/selenium, chelation, LLLT, swapping stressful exercises (running) for HIIT, increasing protien intake, apple cider vinegar, etc.

Hairloss is a state of inflammation, which on the most fundemental level is the result of the body responding to certain bacterial and environmental toxins, these things are chronic and can live in the body instigating more inflammation for quite some time, often until extreme measures are taken against them.

For me it took high doses of Iodine and chelation fasts.

Hope this gives you a little more hope. Also I'm pretty involved in the music scene across Canada, and I've seen quite a few chronic guys who had no indication of hairloss in their family go bald young. I was surprised, has something to do with lung and stomach bacteria from what I've gathered.

aI had a longer reply for you, but it really wasn't necessary. You're really still only hitting the tip of the iceberg of what this site has uncovered yet, keep learning and keep adding, sooner or later if you do this you'll hit something that will make a difference for you, and suddenly you'll have a much better idea of why other things didn't.

Think iodine/selenium, chelation, LLLT, swapping stressful exercises (running) for HIIT, increasing protien intake, apple cider vinegar, etc.

Hairloss is a state of inflammation, which on the most fundemental level is the result of the body responding to certain bacterial and environmental toxins, these things are chronic and can live in the body instigating more inflammation for quite some time, often until extreme measures are taken against them.

For me it took high doses of Iodine and chelation fasts.

Hope this gives you a little more hope. Also I'm pretty involved in the music scene across Canada, and I've seen quite a few chronic guys who had no indication of hairloss in their family go bald young. I was surprised, has something to do with lung and stomach bacteria from what I've gathered.

Thanks for your reply. Maybe my effort isn't enough, maybe one year isn't enough...But I still feel like after one year, I should have expected at least some results. I really feel good after running and I feel like giving up would be a mistake but I may be wrong.

As regards protein intakes : I rotate between tofu, tempeh, wild salmon, lentils, eggs and occasionally read meat. And I'm currently doing metal chelation.

Also I noticed my hairloss is really correlated with body hair growth (shoulder and chest). It really looks like each hair I lose on my scalp grows back on my shoulder. I researched excessive body hair but found nothing, I remember CS saying body hair is genetics and there's not a lot you can do about it (despite my father has 0 body hair). I don't think body hair has anything to do with inflammation. A more testable hypothesis is hormone imbalance/excessive DHT levels. This hairloss is still a major mystery for me.

I've also reduced masturbation. really don't know if it is necessary but who knows.

I think a lot of people are too impatient with results. Hair growth cycles take a LONG time, especially to re do the damage and inflammation. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes over a year in certain people.

Only Lazy people believe Genetics determine your fate and your doomed and can do nothing about it.

I 100 % believe baldness is a warning sing in your body going that is telling you something is wrong and you need to fix it. Balding is not natural ,period. It protects against the cold, the sun, etc.

When it comes down to what we're trying to do, effort doesn't always = results. Keep in mind the saying "work smart, not hard".

By no means stop excercising, but look into HIIT. I lost the most hair during the period when I ran, it's very stressful on the body. A lot of runners have some nasty, nasty problems later in life.

If you do some searches of this site on soy and legumes like lentils, you might reconsider eating them. I don't let the stuff touch my skin let alone my mouth.

It's excess androgens in my experience when it comes to body hair, but I've stopped worrying about directly cutting down the androgens, if you simply cut down estrogen all your testosterone can go directly to the Sex Hormone Binding Receptors without any competition and do no damage. Insulin Resistance also cuts down on those receptors, causing sex hormone imbalances, so yes it definitely does have everything to do with metabolism and inflammation. Personally when I lose weight and improve my insulin profile / metabolism, my body hair goes down.

What are you using to chelate and how much are you taking?

With masturbation, it's probably the stress that does the most "damage".