From dismissing early recession to finding a more settled approach: what happened with my hair, what I misunderstood, and what I would do differently.
In I started balding at 18. Here’s what I wish I knew, I talk through my own experience, the mistakes I made and what I would tell my younger self. You can watch the video or read the story below.
In the summer of 2019, when I was twenty, my mum told me that my temples were receding. I brushed it off. I had always thought of myself as someone with great hair, and the possibility of losing it did not fit that picture.
Later that year, the change became harder to dismiss. Looking back through photographs, I could see that it had been happening for longer than I had realised. Some pictures still looked reassuring. Others showed the recession quite clearly. I was much more willing to believe the reassuring ones.
For the next few months, I changed small things. I started using shampoo again after a period of avoiding it, tried cold water and looked into supplements. These were things that felt manageable while I postponed confronting what was probably happening.
I did not have a proper diagnosis or a clear way to assess whether anything was helping. Doing something gave me a temporary sense of control, but it was not the same as having a coherent plan.
By April 2020, I was looking more seriously at treatment. I had read about finasteride, but accounts of sexual side effects frightened me. Those risks deserved a balanced medical discussion. Instead, I was trying to understand their likelihood through forum posts.
I was a medical student at the time. Knowing something about evidence did not make me immune to fear when the decision was personal. A detailed story felt more immediate than a study, and I began treating a possible worst outcome as though it were the outcome I should expect.
I started topical minoxidil in April 2020. Around the same time, I contacted a transplant company, but withdrew when the consultation felt more like a sales conversation than the assessment I needed.
My hair looked stronger over the following months. Then, towards the end of 2020, I had a substantial shed. I interpreted it as minoxidil failing and changed direction while frightened, stopping it and starting finasteride in January 2021.
Looking back, I should have had the change assessed before deciding what it meant. A shed is an event to understand, not a diagnosis by itself.
During 2021, finasteride appeared to stabilise my hair, but I saw little obvious regrowth. At the time, stability felt disappointing because I was comparing everything with how my hair had looked a couple of years earlier.
I used fibres almost whenever I left the house and wore caps frequently. Wind, rain and bright light all became things to plan around. The fibres helped cosmetically, but I was still organising parts of my life around keeping the thinning hidden.
In 2022, I moved to dutasteride and later had scalp micropigmentation along my hairline. For me, the micropigmentation made a substantial cosmetic difference. I stopped relying on fibres and caps, and felt much less occupied by whether the weather would expose an area I was trying to conceal.
I added oral minoxidil in mid-2023. My hair improved compared with its weakest periods, although I did not regain my teenage hairline or density. The more meaningful change was that managing my hair took up less of my day.
This is my history, not a treatment sequence for anyone else to copy. These medicines and procedures have different risks and are not suitable for everyone.
I cannot know how much more hair I would have kept if I had sought a proper assessment earlier. I may have preserved more. What I can recognise is the time I spent confused, checking and making decisions without enough guidance.
If I could speak to the younger version of me, I would not tell him to jump straight to the treatments I eventually used. I would tell him to get assessed, understand his options and agree a sensible plan with a qualified professional. I would also tell him to keep living while that plan had time to work.
That is why I created Hairline Helpline. I want to offer the explanations and perspective I would have found useful, while being clear that education cannot replace individual medical care. Hair can matter without being allowed to organise your whole life.