This is my first video discussing male androgenic hairloss / male pattern baldness caused by DHT, my experience with using treatments such as minoxidil, finasteride, dutasteride as well as progesterone. My approach to managing side-effects, long term hair loss prevention strategy and my opinion on hair transplants.
Hey there people uh i just wanted to share my uh i guess my experience so far with uh dealing with and treating uh hair loss um so just so others can maybe um i guess take some of what i’ve learned and all my research um over the last sort of two and a half three years and sort of apply that to themselves without reading all the stuff you might hear on forums
Or or things like that actual sort of anecdotal uh sort of evidence and feedback um and that’s just my sort of experience so as you can tell i’ve not majorly sort of um lost a ton of hair but um back in uh june 2019 i’ve always had a fairly decent hairline but i just i was combing my hair one day and i just noticed a giant just a giant divot it looked like a um
It looked like someone had literally just torn a chunk out of my hair i wasn’t sure what it was but i was sort of in denial i wasn’t sure if it was my hair ties when training jujitsu whether it was getting torn out when i was training but it was a shock to see that amount of hair just gone within i mean i really hadn’t noticed it at all um it had always been
Sort of straight there um so yeah so i went and booked in with a particular one of these generic sort of hair loss clinics which do charge quite a lot of money i was quite inexperienced so i did a google search and i found the first thing uh in london and it was uh i came up with this particular clinic and they said you know come in for a consultation and we
Can give you advice so i went into this place and yeah had a nice lady took photos of my head and then just kind of explained how i had you know hair loss around the temples and the hairline so it’s pretty common sort of hair loss um and they provided me some options i really wasn’t aware that i was experiencing this hair loss until they pointed out the actual
Thinning so yeah they offered me a solution of progesterone and minoxidil which i then went home the same day and applied to my scalp for the first time um now this stuff uh you had a very strange reaction i felt i felt very spaced out and quite heavy-headed um and i’ve heard that from a lot of people with minotaur but i haven’t heard of many people using
Topical progesterone but um i know that’s used at different places but yeah i had uh felt quite spaced out and um some very odd kind of nightmares for about sort of four nights and uh um i kind of decided against this stuff as you know i saw that it was it’s also uh used in higher doses for things like sort of hermaphrodite uh some kind of hematite treatment
Or i think i think sex change uh treatment so i initially got freaked out and then um i stopped taking the stuff um and then i basically sort of uh stalled for a while and didn’t really take anything and then um i slowly kind of uh decided okay i’m going to take minoxidil so i did i probably did minoxidil um on and off for maybe like the the next sort of six
Months or so um and yeah i mean i just again it was quite uh for a while i think it takes a while to build up your tolerance but um you do get you know maybe i was applying too much but getting those kind of headaches and i don’t know it felt a bit light-headed um i think it’s partly due to the blood flow it’s a vasodilator um so it kind of expands the blood
Vessels um uh that’s the way i’ve heard it described um the the blood vessels as well as you know the hair follicles and the hairs so it gives the appearance of thicker hair and it seems to sort of create these you know baby hairs but the thing i was finding with minoxidil was that it didn’t really seem like you’re actually generating real uh hair or you know
Preserving the actual natural hair you’re getting this kind of you’re getting this kind of fluffy sort of fill in here and you can actually notice it when you can see people who are using heavy amounts of you know regain or or topical minoxidil it’s it doesn’t look you know it’s maybe not that natural but it’s um it’s probably better than you know being stark
Bald in certain spots but um that was right so i was doing the minoxidil thing for a while and uh it kind of gave the appearance that it was retaining thickness but um yeah i wasn’t really convinced when you know looking into the science behind you know dht and you really need to if you want to seriously tackle hair loss um the the science and the data is there
It’s you you have to block dht um so i began sort of i was freaked out i had you know a friend who had been on finasteride he told me he’s got super depressed and all that kind of stuff so i was a bit i was a bit freaked out about finasteride and you know doctors had warned me all this stuff is very strong you gotta you know realize there are side effects of low
Libido erectile dysfunction and depression and i was yeah i was a bit i was a bit afraid of that stuff so um yeah i began um micro dosing at 0.25 milligrams um i did initially it you know i can’t it’s hard to tell how much of this is placebo but um and how much of it is you know actual but um i did feel uh i just felt a bit a bit weird a bit foggy for yeah the
First sort of couple of days and i felt like my i felt like i lost a lot of feeling uh downstairs so um it just felt smaller and less aroused um so yeah that was um kind of i took that for sort of about four days and i also had i also noticed ball legs as well and i know this is a commonly reported sort of symptom uh or side effect as you will um so after
About four days i stopped it and then i i didn’t touch it for another sort of three weeks or month and then i was like okay i’ve got to keep trying this so again just a 0.25 milligrams and this is just a broken pill sort of i use a pill cutter um and then i sort of use this consistently i still have the i still have the ball legs but i didn’t have the foggy head
I think yeah i i think some people they feel quite strong side effects when they take these things um for the very first time because your system is taking quite a drastic uh kind of hormonal change uh in the body and in the brain so it’s kind of it’s quite immediately it goes from you know this level of dht to you know 65 immediately reduced um or say maybe 60
Percent if i’m if i’m taking a lower dose but i think the body might just get in a little bit of a shock and then it kind of has to get used to the doses and then i think that for me at least those side effects uh very like mild side effects but still very worrying side effects because i’m a very health conscious person i work out i take vitamins i eat whole foods
I don’t smoke i drink very every so often um but yeah i’m very healthy and very sort of cognizant of my personal health so the with this i noticed you know okay these ball legs i did a bit of research looked around different places and some people were saying it kind of disappeared over time so i just trusted in the uh and the medication itself and i really
Just after about after about sort of between the sometime after around four months it the ball pain just went away so and then i i i just continue just i i up the dose to 0.5 um still no ball pain um and then that was for you know a couple of months and then upped it to one milligram because i believe you take the full dose if you can tolerate the full dose you
Are the maximum effectiveness so yeah got to um had been taking finasteride for around the 12-month mark and you can probably notice here but i was very thick here probably about you know say you know two years ago or so and i was noticing it was just ever so slightly getting thinner on this part here and i was like you know what i’m only blocking sits the five
Percent or it’s around 65 or 67 of dht and a lot of the you know the the research papers and you know what um other youtube channels you know with doctors and stuff have said and you know explained it as it is actually only slowing the hair loss it can give the appearance that you’re you’re not losing any further hair and it probably would regrow some hair if
It’s only being miniaturized for a short time but it’s only slowing the hair loss so i mean even a few hairs you know even losing a few hairs in a thin region like here or here is noticeable so i was like what you know i’d heard uh aston kutcher had been on you know dutasteride since he was about 25 i think and a few other people had reported you know going to
Test ride and feeling absolutely fine and i’d also kind of in my research found that um you know dht although it probably is important for or it probably is utilized and is beneficial to have that in your system um it’s not necessarily going to have uh you know the effects are not really noticeable if you’re blocking all of it so i’d already been blocking you
Know at 65 to 67 why don’t i block a hundred percent why don’t i but you know 99 of it um if i really if i’m really serious about fully halting hair loss and knowing that okay what what is this going to do for me if i can be confident that it’s blocking pretty much all of the dht so i’ve been on uh dutastride for about sort of uh four nearly four months now i
I haven’t noticed any further hair loss um um but i did notice like after about sort of two months i noticed these little see these little hairs yeah they’re about about an inch long i noticed a lot of these little hairs sort of just sprouting um not a lot but you know there’s it’s a noticeable number of new hairs just kind of sprouting and so that’s a good
Sign i don’t i don’t really i’m not really confident that this area here seeing that it was so badly um badly reduced uh from from previous uh baldness i i’m not really confident this will fully grow back so um what i’m doing if you know after say one year of dutastride um i will assess things you’re meant to see you know most of the effectiveness or results
Around after that 12-year period i mean such like 12-month period um to two years you should be able to know okay what are the results of this thing now if my hair if my hair stays identical if i haven’t noticed any kind of you know measurable hair loss after say one year one year and a half i may consider just a very minor minor hair transplant just uh just
To fill in these uh these gaps because it is when i take you know pictures from the side profile i just got this divot here um it’s a it’s a dec it’s a it’s a decent enough hairline a little bit receded but um i’ve been told i may need you know about a thousand grass to 1200 grass um if i get it and it’s going to be you know just a very subtle amount to get
Back to what that baseline was uh sort of about say four years ago um but i really um anyone who kind of is looking at getting a hair transplant i would strongly advise to you know take take the proper you know treatments whether whether you whether you want to do you know finasteride or do task drive and really just like test you know is more hair falling out
Or are you actually able to re retain where you were when you started because if you get a hair transplant you’re and you’re just gonna you know if you get a hair transplant you fill in the front and you’re not you know on a proper you know um hair loss regimen of actually stopping further hair loss if you’re continuing hair loss you’re really going to put your
Yourself in an awkward position and you’re going to need to need a lot of hair transplants ideally like they’re um so yeah you just want to be goddamn sure um because you know i don’t want to be you know i i don’t want to be you know 45 and you know i have half my hair you know back here and i’ve still got you know this bloody like you know half inch hairline
Of like transplanted hair like you really have to um you really have to make sure that the treatment is working unless you want to unleash you want to be getting hair transplants you know whatever every like six years or something like that which is it’s both expensive and like you know it’s a lot of trauma to the system as well and it’s just it’s not something
You want to be doing for the rest of your life er in my opinion um so so yeah that’s sort of my sort of current experience um regarding like hair loss my approach to it um what uh yeah so i’ll i’ll be posting more videos this is my first video but um i’ve yeah i’ve got sort of more knowledge to share i think i’m gonna do some you know in-depth uh sort of uh
Ones of photographs and some sort of some other tips um and also other areas outside of uh hair loss uh health lifestyle uh looks style um you know everything you know uh better in your life and just conversations about things which uh put value out there so if you have any questions or anything you want to ask if you’re a newbie or even if you have any words
Of advice post them down in the comments uh yeah thanks
Transcribed from video
My hairloss journey so far: Finasteride vs. Dutasteride By Shelvin Lifestyle
