paradoxbox

update.. guys, i've decided that i'm not going bald. i'm sure of it. shortly after i created this thread, i cut my hair very very short to see if i could see any difference and reduce the balding effect. when i cut it, i noticed that there was absolutely no thinning/hair loss happening, even though it had previously looked like my hair was thinning. i have been letting it grow out ever since then. when it got to about 1/4 - 1/2 inch in length, i started to see that balding look appear again. but i wasn't quite as convinced.. i have been letting it grow out more and more, and it's a bit longer now and i definitely do not feel like i'm balding. the hair on my crown is still very thick. i'm chalking this up to a very nasty whorl/cowlick pattern on the crown of my head that has either always been there or has been made worse by previous hairstyles. while it's a relief that i'm not experiencing thinning hair or hair loss, it's still a problem since i will appear bald if i keep my hair at the length that i normally do. i'll have to keep it growing out to avoid the balding look.

but i have looked at hairs that i pulled out of my head and compared them, they look the same, and i also used a webcamera with close focus and strong magnification to see right down at the follicle level and the hair doesn't look appreciably different from other areas on my head. also nobody in my family has MPB or any baldness whatsoever, why is this happening? i'd like to try some kind of treatment but i live in japan and there are laws against importing hair medications (foreign strengths not approved for use here) and the locally available stuff is apparently more than double the cost

unfortunately i have absolutely no money for medications does anyone have any advice on diet? my diet is what you might call severely lacking in greens. i do eat a lot of tomatoes (2 cans of tomatoes every few days, along with an onion and garlic, i make curry and pasta sauces a lot) and a moderate amount of lettuce. but besides that i generally haven't eaten greens in the last few months. i heard that this may be a contributing cause of thinning hair? any truth to it? considering there's no hair loss in my family and i don't use any chemicals in my hair.. this really sucks. guess it's time to shave it real short. if it still looks bad i'll have to razor it all off. also why am i balding but not shedding hair? i can yank as hard as i want on the crown of my head and nothing comes out. also when i do pluck hairs from that area they appear to be the same thickness as the rest of the hairs on my head.

sorry if this doesn't make any sense but, i think i'm going bald, probably extremely bald, but i can't be 100% sure. i do know that i have an extremely strong whorl/cowlick on the back of my head and the hairs in that area seem to lay flat compared to the hairs outside of it. the cowlick area is quite large and my hair is quite strong so it cannot be brushed into another direction. it can't even be held with a hard hair wax. i am not sure if that's what this is or if i'm actually going bald. 2 things to note: #1) nobody in my family has a history of balding. nobody. #2) as far as i can tell, i'm not shedding hair. i do not find hair on my pillow, i do not lose hair when i shower, and i can vigorously scrub and rub my scalp over a bright white table and only 4 or 5 hairs will fall out, regardless of whether i rub my crown or any other part of my head. fyi i'm 24 years old, and my skin is extremely white (think casper the ghost) here are a bunch of pics, most with wet hair. i pushed the hair around so you can see where the whorl/cowlick is, the bald looking area turned into a sort of S shape when i did that. am i balding or do i have a horrible cowlick? http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/6405/photo8wu.jpg http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/628/photo7q.jpg http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/1096/photo6n.jpg http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/6795/photo5wh.jpg http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/7234/photo9k.jpg