#hair loss on t

[answersfromzestual]

"Understanding the Hair Growth Cycle and Causes of Hair Loss"

The hair growth cycle involves three distinct phases:

Catagen. The transition (catagen) phase signals the end of active growth. It can last several weeks.

Anagen. The growth (anagen) stage is when new hair fibers actively form within the hair follicles. What you might not know is that this process can last several years. TL;DR: Hair growth definitely doesn’t happen overnight.

Telogen. The resting period (or telogen phase) is when hair follicles become dormant. At any given time, up to 15 percent of the hairs on your body (including facial hair, arm hair and even chest hair) are in the telogen phase. This stage can last up to a year.

Shedding hair every day is normal — up to 200 strands, give or take. Shedding more than this might indicate an underlying hitch in the hair growth cycle.

External and Environmental Causes of Hair Loss

Many factors can disrupt the hair growth cycle and lead to increased shedding such as:

Poor nutrition

Infection

Medication reactions

Stress

Menopause

Constantly wearing hats

Tight hairstyles (ex man bun)

As for the case of male pattern baldness, hormones and genetics are at play.

Let’s start with how hormonal treatments can disrupt your T-levels.

Hormonal Causes of Hair Loss

There is a link between low testosterone levels and issues such as a lower sex drive and poor sexual wellness.

Low-T is a factor and can be caused by conditions like diabetes, autoimmune disease, and thyroid disease.

The following can also cause a temporary dip in testosterone levels:

Over-exercising

Poor nutrition

Certain medications

Testerone Hormone Treatment (often called HRT or TRT) comes with potential side effects, and in some people, it may trigger hair loss.

High testerone causes hair loss, so more T isn't better. Stay with your doctor's instructions. Don't mess around with your dose.

Genetics influence how sensitive your hair follicles are to circulating dihydrotestosterone (DHT). DHT is a byproduct of testosterone and one of the most potent androgens (male sex hormones).

Testosterone and DHT are interlinked, and when T levels rise, DHT levels typically rise as well.

Researchers noted in a 2017 study that was done in Germany, which backs up previous research suggesting that developing bald spots from male pattern baldness might have more to do with sensitivity to testerone than the level itself.

Testerone converts a small amount of what is in your body into DHT by way of the 5-alpha reductase enzyme, which is found in small amounts in the body.

Secondary sex characteristics: any physical characteristic developing at puberty that is not directly involved in reproduction.

Why do we have DHT?

In young males, the body needs DHT to ensure the healthy development of the genitals and prostate. Ftm trans people obviously do not have testicles or a prostate. We focus on secondary sex characteristics like voice, muscle mass, and body hair.

As an adult? DHT doesn’t really have a large job to do anymore. Therefore, it can cause problems, like hair loss. In fact, researchers have found more DHT in balding scalps compared to non-balding ones. But not every guy’s hair follicles are ultra-sensitive to this sex hormone.

The more testosterone, the higher the levels of DHT in your body. That’s not necessarily a death sentence for your hair, but it is a fact.

DHT can attach to receptors in the scalp and gradually shrink hair follicles until they can no longer produce hair — a process known as follicular miniaturization.

If you have a genetic predisposition to DHT sensitivity, too much of it can cause hair loss.

While TRT doesn’t directly cause hair loss, increased Testosterone can lead to androgenic alopecia if the patient has a genetic sensitivity to the hormone DHT (dihydrotestosterone).

Androgenic alopecia is also known as male-pattern baldness and female-pattern baldness. Is the most common cause of hair loss in men and women.

Diagnosing Your Androgenic Alopecia

The first step to avoiding hair loss on HRT is to identify whether you have a genetic sensitivity to DHT. If you don’t, then it’s unlikely that HRT (and a resulting increase in DHT levels) will trigger hair loss.

Male-pattern baldness most often occurs in an M-shaped pattern starting at the forehead. It may also manifest as a slowly growing bald spot on the top/crown of the head. If you notice either of these patterns in your hair, then it’s possible you have male-patterned baldness.

Because androgenic alopecia is a genetic condition, you can also look at your family line for any signs of hair loss, as well. A common myth is that hair loss is inherited from the mother’s side, but in actuality, both parents can pass down the genes that lead to androgenic alopecia. This condition is polygenic, meaning it comes from multiple genes rather than just one.

It’s useful to work with a knowledgeable provider when diagnosing androgenic alopecia. Defy Medical offers consultations to discuss this topic in detail.

DHT Blood Testing

If you’re experiencing hair loss but aren’t sure it’s androgenic alopecia, or if you don’t have any symptoms but still want to check, you can order a DHT blood test. This test measures your DHT levels to determine whether your levels are elevated. Elevated DHT levels along with hair loss often indicate androgenic alopecia.

How to Avoid Hair Loss on (T)HRT

If you do have androgenic alopecia, there are several treatment options to slow and minimize hair loss.

It’s important to catch hair thinning and hair loss as quickly as possible, so you can preserve hair follicles. It’s much more effective to slow hair loss than to grow hair back after it’s gone.

Sources:

https://www.defymedical.com/services/hair-loss/?_gl=1*synut2*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTA5NzY4NDUxNy4xNzEyMTU1NzIx*_ga_XWPYJFFXE5*MTcxMjE1NTcyMC4xLjEuMTcxMjE1NTc0MS4wLjAuMA..

https://www.defymedical.com/blog/how-to-avoid-hair-loss-on-trt/#:~:text=While%20TRT%20doesn't%20directly,baldness%20and%20female%2Dpattern%20baldness.

[uncanny-tranny]

I think it's incredibly important to remind folks on testosterone or folks who want to reverse patterned baldness about their options, but man, does it sometimes suck wondering how much of our insecurities about our hair stem from backwards beliefs that to strive towards beauty is not only preferable but "makes you good."

As someone with a rather masculinized body pre-medical transition, patterned baldness has always seemed neutral. Hair is incredibly important (hell, much of my own energy is spent on my hair because I like it), but the pressure to have hair, to have hair the "right way" is something that I absolutely loathe.

I'm not here to judge people who don't want patterned hair loss or baldness, I'm here to say that those traits will never make you lesser. Not only is it neutral, but it is also just as worthy and beautiful.

[transmascissues]

it's silly but the biggest reason why im not into t yet is bc im so afraid of losing my hair. do you have any solutions/tips for it?

first of all, i don’t think it’s silly — it’s natural to be worried when hair loss is talked about by so many people as like…one of the worst results of aging for men. listening to my dad talk about how much he hates balding definitely did not make me feel particularly good about the knowledge that i may very well be joining him someday. i’m not saying the fear is right, because i don’t think hair loss is something awful that we should avoid at all costs, but it’s an understandable fear given the beauty standards we’re working with, and it’s one that a lot of us (myself included) feel.

one thing that’s helped me is just…paying more attention to the guys that i interact with on a daily basis. i’ve learned two things from it: 1) hair loss is super fucking common. i’d say it’s much harder to find an adult man who isn’t balding at all than it is to find one who’s completely bald. and 2) if you forget everything you’ve been told about how bad hair loss is, you’ll realize that quite frankly, every single one of those guys looks totally fucking fine. it doesn’t ruin their appearance and make them ugly, it looks totally natural and isn’t really even something you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. we put so much weight on it but it’s really just not that big of a deal. i’ll hear my parents talk shit about men in my family who are losing their hair when i didn’t even notice a difference last time i saw them. it’s one of those things (like so many other appearance-related things) that you really only notice at all because you’ve been taught that you’re supposed to care about it.

this isn’t something i’ve done personally, but if you really want to desensitize yourself to the idea of it, embrace the time-honored queer tradition of just shaving your whole damn head! find out what you’d look like without hair, find out how you feel about it and what you can do that makes you feel good about your appearance without hair, test the waters while it’s still a temporary change and not something permanent. that way, it won’t feel like this big scary unknown, and you’ll actually have a frame of reference for your feelings about how you look without hair rather than accepting the societal assumption that you’ll inevitably hate it. if you don’t want to actually shave your head, you could also just fuck around with bald filters or photoshop and see what happens.

oh, and if you’re attracted to men, keep an eye out for guys who are bald or balding and also hot as fuck. in my experience, there’s no insecurity or potential future insecurity that being gay for other men hasn’t helped me with. just off the top of my head, i can think of a couple actors who i think are absolutely fucking gorgeous who have helped me get over my fears about losing my hair. despite what our anti-aging-obsessed world might want you to think, there is no such thing as a physical feature that automatically makes someone less attractive, and while making attractiveness less of a priority in your life is good, it can’t hurt to also give yourself some proof that actually, you might lose your hair and look hot as hell doing it.

basically, entertain the possibility that it won’t be a bad thing at all! whether that’s just because it turns out to be a neutral thing for you or because you end up actually liking it, it’s not an inherently bad thing. i’ve ended up liking a lot of things that were “supposed to” be bad effects of t — i love the weight i’ve gained and the new shape it gives my body, i get a lot of gender euphoria from the fact that my acne is now on parts of my face that i saw a lot of guys in high school get it and i’m not complaining about the scars i get from it either because i’ve always liked the added texture that acne scars give my skin, and so on. i think there’s a lot of joy to be had in the changes we’re taught to fear, once we look past that conditioning and actually explore how we feel about it.

but if it’s something you really don’t want and you just want to improve your chances of not having to deal with it, it’s not like there’s nothing you can do! products like finasteride (oral) and minoxidil (usually topical but i think there might also be oral versions) are pretty commonly used among trans guys, for the purpose of avoiding hair loss and for other reasons, and there are plenty of other anti-hair loss products out there (though i don’t know how effective any one of them might be). if it’s a big enough deal for you, you can just decide that you’ll go off of t if/when you start noticing signs of it, since no longer having higher t levels would stop the process in its tracks. and if you don’t find prevention options that work for you so it ends up happening, you can always explore different hair styles (judging by the pattern of hair loss i see in my family, i suspect that keeping my hair long would make it less obvious if i started losing mine), find your preferred method of covering it when you don’t feel good about it (personally i love a good beanie generally and would probably wear them a lot more if i didn’t have hair to worry about because my main complaint is the way they press my hair onto my neck), or just shave it all off if you don’t like the look of the partial balding but don’t mind a shaved head. the point being — you have options!

at the end of the day, whether you go on t or not, you’re going to see your body change as you age in ways that aren’t always going to be attractive to others or aesthetically pleasing to you. that’s just the reality of having a body. even if you never went on t, you’d get older and you might see your hair thin out even if you don’t bald, you’ll see your skin start to wrinkle and sag in places that used to be smooth, your metabolism might slow or your body fat might start to gather in new places; hell, you might lose your hair for a totally different reason and end up in the same place but without the benefits of having been on t that whole time. life is full of bodily changes like that. transphobes will fearmonger about the permanent changes of testosterone all day long but the truth is, there is no escaping permanent bodily changes. whether or not you go on t, your body now isn’t the same as it will be in 1 or 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years, just like it isn’t the same as it was at any point in your life before now. our bodies are never supposed to stop growing and aging and changing throughout our lives. there’s no guaranteeing that we’ll love every single change our bodies go through, but that’s okay! there are so many things in life that are more important than the way our bodies look. even if you go on t and lose your hair and don’t like how it looks, your life won’t be ruined; plenty of other things will bring you joy and more than make up for the insecurities.

just think about the gender euphoria and relief from dysphoria that t could give you. would losing your hair be bad enough to outweigh all of that? or is it just the pressure of a society that decided balding is bad that’s making you fear one single change despite how much joy you could have if you let that fear go? only you can decide if going on t is worth the potential downsides for you, but i suspect that for most of us, the benefits of going on t far outweigh the possibility of side effects like hair loss happening down the line.

[missmungoe]

“You’re such a pretty man,” Makino sighed, touching her fingertips to his cheek, before rubbing his beard with her thumb. “Your wife is very lucky. Oh—hey.” Her whole expression brightened, her smile entirely cheeky. “That’s me.”

Shanks grinned, delighted. “You are absolutely hammered, aren’t you?”

“Hmm, I think I’m about to be.” She frowned. “Wait—was that not a euphemism?”

My masked Zorro, the unbelievably generous and tantalisingly mysterious Cover Anon, sweeps in once more with another gorgeous cover from Shanties, this time for Penelope (aka, the wedding fic, my beloved), by the incredible @sacred_pirate on twitter.

I...don't know how it's possible to capture the way a fic exists in my mind so perfectly it's like the artist reached into my soul, and yet that's what this feels like. This is one of the most beautiful artworks I've ever seen, and I can't believe it's from my fic, and this fic.

[breadboylovin]

having the worst weekend ever in my life rn

[benji-screem]

every time I say that I don't want T to make me look like my dad I get the onslaught of people shrieking at me about "it won't make you a twink!! you wanted this!! you want to be a man!!" and while that is pretty transphobic and shitty in and of itself it's just ??? I am a bear through and through, im fat and hairy and I honestly wouldn't care if I went bald, I down want to look like my dad because he is a pig and a piece of shit???? fucking hell.

[ganondorf]

posts that are like We need to support detrans people too!! like ok but just about every person i've met or seen who actually calls themselves detrans has been super transphobic so 🤷‍♂️

and like the concept of detransitioning inherently like. there's nothing wrong with that and IS something that needs support and like i could not care less if you once identified as trans and then later realized you weren't and idec if you actively Regret transitioning like. what that means to you is your business. but everyone i see who actually calls themselves detrans are always advocating for taking away the rights and happiness of Other ppl because being trans didn't work for them Personally

[solradguy]

This isn’t Johnny discourse but it is kind of discourse about the discourse about him balding (which he isn’t).

What would it matter if he took off his hat and he was a shining beacon?? The dude canonically fucks (well not canon-canon but I feel like there’s implications of fucks-ing)!! At the most, he would be a Pitbull reference and that would be cool because good for Daisuke. Listen to Timber by Ke$ha (feat. Pitbull).

It kind of felt like they were making jokes at the expense of people loosing hair. It’s like that thing where you shouldn’t make fun of people for ‘X’ because then your friends who ‘X’ will know you think that about them.

John E is cool. I think he’s lame but he’s cool.

-A concerned Jellyfish Pirate

Idk anything about Pitbull, to be honest, but my GOD does he look like he's having the time of his life in the Timber video hahah Been a while since I heard that song...

Anyway, Johnny totally fucks. There's no way a man that toned, running around shirtless all of the time, with that slight yeehaw accent, couldn't find someone DTF with the tiniest bit of effort. He's absolutely gettin it rofl He could still get it if he was bald too, or receding.

I've complained about it on here a bit already, but yeah I don't think people making fun of Johnny because they think he's losing hair realize that a lot of people in real life are going to lose their hair as they age, and their jokes at Johnny are also jokes at these people. It's not even just an issue cis men can have either, everyone's hair thins with age, some just more (and sooner) than others. To make fun of someone, fictional or otherwise, for losing their hair is digging a trench to fill with future self loathing at one's own hair loss. And hair loss in >2023 isn't even that bad anymore!! There are so many ways to manage and style it now.

Johnny's a babe. Big fan of his "dad trying too hard to be cool but is actually somehow still really cool despite that" energy

[monsterbutch]

i'm really struggling with what to do about medical transitioning. i know what my goals are but idk if they're possible since u obviously can't really pick and choose what effects of T you get. it's also really expensive so idk. i'm kind of starting to think i'll just be slightly unsatisfied w my body's reflection of my gender forever

[answersfromzestual]

Poll Time! Do you wanna learn about testosterone and hair loss?

[taraolssons]

absolutely DEVASTATED that we’re not getting tao and his dumb little haircut in season 2. look at what you did. hope you haters are ashamed of yourselves. 

[neetpunk]

Rocking my new cane and one of my favorite t shirts :) going to be picked up by transport to go see my doctor soon.

[detectivekonan]

I have had so much hair loss that I am just losing clumps lol my hair is so flat now because I’m have very little hair compared to before

[throughalleternity]

Hi, Im the anon who asked about you using T. I just want to know which emotional and physical changes you went through and when they started. Also, I read often that going on T prevented people from crying as easily as before, one even said that he hasnt cried in 2 years(!), which honestly for me, who is quite an easy crier, and who doesnt believe that men who cry/show emotion are not masculine enough/unamanly, its quite horrifying to hear. So what is your experience with showing emotions/crying before and after T? And how has your partner shown their support? Or have you met them after being an extended amount of time on T?

Physical changes have been pretty much what one would expect I think: lower voice, more and thicker facial/body hair (maybe less than expected?), different body odor, rougher/oilier skin, fat redistribution, more vascularity, bottom growth, more muscle, male hairline, have just starting to treat male pattern hair loss... I'm probably missing some but those are what come to mind. I didn't track them as they happened, unfortunately, but I think they generally happened over the first year/couple years. I know that body fat redistribution wasn't something I noticed until at least a year in, and it probably continued to happen for a while. I lost fat off my face faster though, I think. Voice drop happened slowly over several months.

Emotional changes are harder to isolate since I was already dealing with a lot of stuff when I started T and that might have overshadowed any emotional changes. T and the changes made me less depressed, so I just generally felt better? I don't really remember anything else sticking out - I certainly didn't feel angrier or less emotional.

I can cry pretty easily, and I've cried easier since starting T! But again, kinda hard to isolate from everything else that has happened. The other thing is like. Time and getting older has played a role; I've learned more about my emotions and experienced things that cause new/stronger emotions, and that also makes it easier for me to be emotional. So it's definitely not just T - and even if you were to feel weaker emotions on T, I don't think that's how it always has to be. There are ways to get more in touch with your own emotions and things that will happen in your life that can do the same.

And lol I am single! And yeah, previous partners haven't really needed to be involved, so I don't have personal experience with that.

[hiyari8]

whatever the new kaito design is it needs to be sluttier i mean what cough

official crop top kaito or else

[nancythebisexualslutwheeler]

So im all about being honest and like educating ppl so when I post my pcos hair loss my insta followers finna be shook

This is literally 2 weeks of hair loss bitch.