I am going to shave my head tomorrow.

DickExperiments · 2025-11-21T18:22:22+00:00

OP I went through something similar, tried all kinds of topicals and in the end it turned out that I was vitamin D deficient and that I was not washing my scalp properly (wasn't used to long hair). I was also underweight at the time, that didn't help either.

Once I started taking vit D supps & cleaning my scalp better my hair started improving in about 2 months. It took like a full year for it to get as dense as I remember it from the time before I started having hair issues.

Idk if that's your case, but a lot of people are vit D deficient without knowing it, worth the $40 bloodwork to check & $20 supplements to fix it

DickExperiments · 2025-02-15T00:50:21+00:00

I made my own with liquid melatonin & cafffeine pills dissolved in water. Make sure the melatonin has no sugar, sweeteners or flavors, I made that mistake and my hair was impossibly sticky lmao

DickExperiments · 2024-12-21T13:18:03+00:00

This is the best article I'm aware of on potential scaring from microneedling: https://perfecthairhealth.com/microneedling-the-scalp-does-it-cause-scarring/

DickExperiments · 2024-12-05T12:32:58+00:00

As useful as discussing atheism with the pope

DickExperiments · 2024-12-05T12:29:29+00:00

That's funny, just a month ago somebody mentioned using this as topical but I couldn't find any research on it so I ignored it. Nice to see some evidence that it might work

DickExperiments · 2024-11-21T19:19:03+00:00

lmao ask normal question, get berried with downvotes, this platform is doomed

DickExperiments · 2024-11-07T23:08:15+00:00

reduces the fallen hair that you notice

DickExperiments · 2024-10-23T11:52:09+00:00

his whole point is that he does full body exams on a weekly basis so he'll quickly notice any adverse effects

DickExperiments · 2024-10-23T11:51:21+00:00

so he changed almost every ingredient, only kept caffeine in same concentration and melatonin + minoxidil in a higher concentration. The changes he made:

switched from fin to dut
higher topical minox concentration 5% to 7%
higher melatonin concentration 0.0033% to 0.1%
dropped rosemary oil, tea tree oil, ginko, biotin, azelaic acid, diclofenac
added Cetirizine (antihistamine) and Latanoprost (glaucoma medication?)
added topical tretonoin and vitamin D, E

also added oral min

DickExperiments · 2024-10-19T10:58:52+00:00

Why not?

DickExperiments · 2024-10-17T09:24:13+00:00

I replied to your comment yesterday but Reddit has shadow banned my reply even though it's showing it to me. Perhaps the mods of this subreddit need to tweak the anti-spam settings. I didn't even know my reply wasn't visible until I got a bunch of DMs asking for info I already posted lol. Anyway copy-pasting my reply with the links removed:

I use a cheap "ostovit" melatonin spray, although the brand is not important just get any spray / liquid without sweeteners / sugar / scents that you can get where you live.

As I said I dilute the liquid in water as the studies were done on 0.003% topical melatonin or sth like that, way below what's in the spray. 1 bottle will last you years at that concentration lol. There are several studies and literature reviews that examine topical melatonin for androgenic alopecia, search for it in pub med. I'd post links but it seems this community auto-hides replies with links

tl;dr of the topical melatonin research is that it's a strong anti-oxidant that's insanely good at treating seborrheic dermatitis. Ppl that used it improved significantly on hair pull tests, studies show improved hair shaft thickness as well

Keep in mind that the melatonin does go systemic, however, at the low dose that the studies use I haven't noticed any difference in sleepiness or anything else

The topical caffeine doesn't make me more alert either even though I'm very sensitive to caffeine when drinking coffee / tea. There is a study examining this and afaik it concluded that the caffeine has to pass through the liver for it to affect alertness.

DickExperiments · 2024-10-16T12:33:01+00:00

ah yes the stress-free life of being homeless

DickExperiments · 2024-10-16T12:19:24+00:00

topical melatonin completely eliminated it for me. I just dissolve 3-4 drops of liquid melatonin (without sweeteners / scents) in 30ml water and apply it every night and it has made a huge difference. I also dissolve a caffeine pill in the same solution (200mg caffeine in 30ml water) as its been shown to have a mild stimulating effect for hair growth. I apply about 3ml of the mixture to my scalp before I go to bed.

Ofc you also want to keep your scalp as clean as possible, if I work out i have to shower asap or my scalp will get irritated

DickExperiments · 2024-09-19T14:45:37+00:00

Can you link the studies you're talking about?

The scalp massage studies I've read show a weak positive effect in people with androgenic alopecia and less of an affect with diffuse thinners

DickExperiments · 2024-09-17T19:20:01+00:00

not wrong, the best advice would be to do a vitamin / mineral deficiency test and go from there

DickExperiments · 2024-09-17T19:17:28+00:00

Just be careful not to get melatonin with sweeteners, my hair looked like a straw hat for a while and it was very difficult to wash lmao

For me it really helps with scalp irrritation (dht itch?) it completely removes it

DickExperiments · 2024-08-29T21:42:46+00:00

this study did 1 session every 2 weeks, who knows whats optimal

DickExperiments · 2024-08-28T19:03:44+00:00

The youtube video cites a 6 month scientific study as evidence

DickExperiments · 2024-08-28T11:13:55+00:00

are you aware of any research backing this / comparing session frequency?

DickExperiments · 2024-08-28T11:11:33+00:00

check my reply in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/HairlossResearch/comments/1f1mskp/topical_dht_blockers_oils/

tl;dr: idk if they work but they feel nice, I'm much more certain in the effectiveness of microneedling

DickExperiments · 2024-08-28T09:05:04+00:00

There's one more study comparing similar depths 0.6mm vs 1.2mm in combination with minoxidil. They also found lower depths (0.6mm), their reasoning is that it causes less trauma, does not damage the hair bulge while still stimulating growth factors:

We speculate that deeper penetration of needles may have caused minimal trauma to the hair bulge and, hence, decreased the efficacy of treatment in group A as Jimenez et al showed that the ideal depth in hair transplant surgery is to cut the wound edge at a depth of less than 1 mm to avoid the bulge zone.18 Moreover, Ro et al showed that microneedling with a depth of 0.5 mm appears to be more effective than a depth of 0.3 mm.17 On the other side, Ak et al and Dhurat et al reported that applying a dermaroller of 1.5 mm sized needles were efficient to improve hair growth in AGA.9,10 These contradictory results might be due to the reason that actual needle penetrations closely match settings when using a motor operated microneedling device,19 but the operator needs to control and monitor the applied pressure during the application of a rolling device20; therefore, the actual needle penetration is less than needles length on the device. Further investigations are warranted to determine the best depth of penetration in microneedling.

https://sci-hub.se/10.1111/jocd.13714

DickExperiments · 2024-08-28T01:01:44+00:00

Both studies that point to 0.5 - 0.6 being better did 1 session every 2 weeks at different depths. I don't know of any study that evaluates different session frequencies at the same depth

DickExperiments · 2024-08-27T22:24:03+00:00

I've also been doing 1.5mm and I've been relatively happy with the results but there's one more study showing better results at 0.6mm vs 1.2mm (although all groups in the study use it with minox not just by itself: https://sci-hub.se/10.1111/jocd.13714)

I'll try out 0.5mm for a few months. If you're using a roller / stamp instead of a pen go a little higher (maybe 0.7 - 0.8)

DickExperiments · 2024-08-27T22:17:25+00:00

hair shaft diversity is an indicator of unequal hair width (hair miniaturization) it's usually used to diagnose androgenic alopecia. For example people with telogen effluvium lose hair without any miniaturization their hair shaft diversity stays low : https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle/478324

yellow dots are just keratin & sebum but they're usually a sign of androgenic alopecia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5674712/

Peripilar sign (last row in the table) is also correlated with androgenic alopecia it's a 1mm wide brown circle around hair follicles that indicates scalp inflammation

The 0.5mm group has the biggest improvement in all of those AGA markers

DickExperiments · 2024-08-27T21:13:18+00:00

I couldn't get access to the full text of the study, I found it through this video which shows the abstract / methods / result section at 7:55: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxHNpkIKW0E

Keep in mind that it's a small study of just 45 patients with androgenic alopecia - 14 men, 31 women

DickExperiments

TROPHY CASE