MikeT

Funny. I presented some observations I made. I was not expecting someone to get so upset as to post challenges. If you do not have something nice to say, it is usually better not to say anything. You and I are not medical professionals, but we all make observations. I am only one lay person who made the observations. You can follow scientific methods of experimentation on a sufficiently large sample and then come up with scientific evidence. You are challenging a single human being, in the same boat as you are, trying to get some hair. So, my question still stands. Is frontal hair loss due to testosterone alone or due to the DHT that is formed from the conversion of testosterone? I am proposing the hypothesis that it could be the former - due to testosterone alone. I do not have the resources to test this hypothesis on the general population, but it appears to be true in my individual case. Hence I posted to a community in which some people may have the resources to test it out. And if someone has already proven using scientific methods that this hypothesis is incorrect, please point me to the peer reviewed research paper. I hope you understand the context of my question now. Thanks so much! All absolutes are dangerous, including this one. The non-surgical methods tried so far have neither blocked testosterone completely at the hair follicles, nor have they prevented completely the conversion of testosterone to DHT. I agree that we have not been able to find a non-surgical method yet. And yes, it is adventurous to try new methods and it is easier to just accept whatever works so far and stick with it. However, I believe we, as human beings, have the innate ability to explore and that makes us who we are today, instead of remaining as hairy apes sitting on trees in some forest in Africa munching on fruits. So try to be kind to people who propose new hypotheses. Some new hypotheses will be wrong, but dismissing new ideas based on your own limited knowledge about the world is not healthy for us as a species. Best wishes to you! Yes, please do not try to be my doctor. I am well aware of the consequences of using spironolactone. I was under medical supervision when I took the medication for a specific purpose. I do not need you to become my doctor. Also, the medicine I am taking now, dutasteride, has helped me grow hair even more since my last posting. What was once a bald crown is now full of hair and I am at Norwood II now. All the hair I had shed initially on dutasteride are growing back, now that I am in my 5th month on it. I am very happy with its effects. Dutasteride is not "intended" to combat baldness, but it works, without any side effects in my particular case. Similarly, spironolactone works too, in my particular case. The primary issue I had with spironolactone was due to its diuretic effects and my busy schedule. I was unable to drink enough fluids due to my excessively busy work schedule. The risk of dehydration, along with the reproductive concern, made me stop it. Every medication must be taken with proper supervision. Just because a medicine is "intended" for a particular purpose, it does not make the medication safe, for you. The latest HPV vaccine recently caused the sudden death of a girl in my neighborhood due to vaccine complications. The vaccine was both intended to cure HPV and supposedly safe. And just because a medicine is not intended for a particular purpose, it does not make it unsafe for you. If you believe in that logic, stop using Minoxidil and Propecia/finasteride. Those drugs were not intended to stop hair loss. Every medication is suspect, and must be taken only after considering your genetics, lifestyle, health, etc and your situation must be monitored. So, yes, I understand the point. That was a digression from the topic here. Please stay on topic. If you have found research that definitively proves or disproves that testosterone alone can or cannot cause frontal hair loss, please point that out to me. I am looking for answers, not arguments or debates or personal attacks here. Please, decent responses only. Thank you!

Is hair loss on the temple region and forehead not caused by DHT but rather by Testosterone? I ask this question due to many reasons. First, the DHT blockers we take are not "supposed" to regrow hair in these areas. If DHT were the cause of this hair loss in the frontal region, why wouldn't a DHT blocker work to stop/reduce hair loss the same way in the front as it stops/reduces in the crown area? Secondly, men who do not go bald on the top even through their 90s lose hair on the forehead and temples by their late teens or early 20s. Third, several people on DHT blockers observe hair loss in the forehead and temple regions although they grow hair on the top of their scalp, perhaps because the DHT blockers raise testosterone levels. Finally, I have personally observed something similar. I was at Norwood category VI about 2 years ago, despite using saw palmetto for 7 years and minoxidil for 5 years. So starting early last year, I desperately tried a lot of medications. Finasteride helped restore a few hair in about 9 months, but the new hair were too few. While my scalp looked better than it did before finasteride, it was probably down from Norwood VI to V. Next, I began taking Spironolactone (while continuing Finasteride). I took it for 4 months, which grew hair in my forehead and temple region. I had more hair after 4 months on spironolactone than I had 12 years ago. I was quickly at Norwood category 2 or even at 1, although all of my new hair were thin and small. I had hundreds of thousands of hair, even in areas where I had a shiny bald scalp before taking sprionolactone! My baby hair hairline was the same as my hair line at age 14 or 15. I was very happy with my hair regrowth. However, spironolactone results in chemical castration. I was not ready for that. I was also having serious side-effects from spironolactone. I gradually reduced and then stopped spironolactone. All of my hundreds of thousands of baby hairs fell away, including those in my forehead and temple region. I started using minoxidil hoping it would hold on to the hair, but it was of no use. Note that I was still on finasteride, and it was of no use either. All the baby hair fell away while I waited for my sperm count to return to normal so I could bank sperm before trying my next medication - dutasteride. I finally stopped finasteride, banked sperm, then started taking dutasteride. When I started dutasteride, I was at Norwood V. In 4 months on dutasteride, I am at Norwood III Vertex. However, no baby hairs in my forehead or temple region. Dutasteride increases testosterone. If forehead and temple hair are sensitive to only DHT, they would have shown at least some improvement, the way I saw with spironolactone. I have begun to believe that it is testosterone, not DHT, that is responsible for frontal hair loss. Spironolactone had restored (sort of) my frontal hair that were gone for 12 years! Finasteride and dutasteride are unable to do the same. Anyone have similar experiences or results? How about the opposite? Or do you have an explanation that invalidates my observations by thinking about the evidence from a different perspective? Maybe I am missing a logic somewhere.