i took my first hairloss pill today
Damn. My mortality is catching up to me already. Today I took my first (prescribed) hairloss pill, and it's weird coming to terms with the idea of using a pill for the rest of my life.
Almost 1 and 3/4 years ago, I went through a rough breakup and 3 months later, I lost a bunch of hair in the span of 2 weeks. Some hair from both my hairline and temples fell out in my brush, and I was freaking out. But then the shedding abruptly stopped after those 2 weeks. My hair honestly looks completely normal, since it is naturally very thick, so unless you were looking for it, you wouldn't notice any of my hair thinned.
The problem is regardless, I spent the next year worrying about it. I was constantly checking Reddit posts about baldness, I decided to get bloodwork done to rule out a deficiency or Thyroid issue, I started taking vitamins, installed a water filter for my showerhead, changed to silk pillowcases, started using rosemary oil on my hair, and did scalp massages. I was turning fully insane.
I read a lot about stress-related hairloss and learned that it could take anywhere from 3 months - 1 year for the hair to return to normal after a traumatic event like a breakup. All these methods I was trying were to keep my hair as healthy as possible, so it might return.
Now a year and half later, I've come to terms with the fact that my breakup probably triggered genetic hairloss that was always going to happen at some point in my life. So I did some research on treatment.
For men, there's 2 hairloss pill options: Finasteride and Minoxidil (AKA "Rogaine"). In the simplest terms, Finasteride blocks Dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a hormone which causes hairloss. Minoxdil works by forcing more bloodflow to your hair follicles. So in other words, the former is supposed to be preventative, and the later is used to brute-force more growth.
But the thing is, Finasteride is objectively the more effective option since it's addressing the underlying cause, plus plenty of people grow hair from just that 1 pill alone. Like this mf on Reddit who had amazing results on just Finasteride.
So anyway, I started taking Finasteride yesterday. My doctor prescribed me both pills, but I know taking both is overkill and my goal is to take as little medication as possible. I feel bad reading about people who immediately take both pills because their doctor told them to, when again there's plenty of Reddit posts about people seeing amazing results with just the 1 pill. I feel like some doctors are trying to push both pills because the horrible pharmaceutical companies want that.
So I am officially a guy who takes a pill daily. God damn what a weird feeling.