Poll: Is it time to shave it all off?

Is it time to shave it all off?


  • Total voters
    248
  • Poll closed .
Caporegime
Joined
24 Oct 2012
Posts
25,062
Location
Godalming
None of this will work to actually keep your hair. Minoxidil basically makes all your follicles grow at the same time which gives the appearance of a fuller head of hair, but its just a lie; it will fall out.

Shampoo and conditioner are bunk.

You have one option: Finasteride. Get on it, or accept your hair doom.


Yep, all it seems to do is excite the remaining follicles in to growing, a bit like viagra for hair. For the record, I am extremely cynical of all of this stuff and don't believe it works but my wife seems to think it's amazeballs so I do it. I don't know why a company like Smarties doesn't make the same claims, at least then it'd save me some wedge and I'd have a tasty little morsel as a treat for sucking on the consumerist thumb of nonsense.

I'll have a look at this Finasteride stuff, thanks :)
 
Soldato
Joined
2 Nov 2013
Posts
4,121
YMMV but I went number 1 all over for a year or two just because I got fed up of haircuts. (Well that's part of the reason. The other part was drunkenly agreeing with a mate - who had been bald since 18, and I might have occasionally ribbed about this - to go back to his place and clip it all off. I feel revenge played a part in this.)

No-one else told me so, but I decided to grow my hair back again when I realised that I looked like I'd just been through chemo.

And do consider that if you are really thinning, and you chop it all off, it'll probably never come back.
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Jun 2013
Posts
9,315
When you're losing your hair, you should just cut it short. When you do that, you move the emphasis from your hair to your face. When you resist with ponytails, combovers, the Trump, etc, all you are doing is emphasising your hair loss. You might as well wear a sign that says "BALDY". Embrace it, own it. Be the bald.
 
Caporegime
OP
Joined
13 May 2003
Posts
33,962
Location
Warwickshire
Thing is for practical reasons I really want to take it all off. I'm all for it.

I'm not bothered about social factors etc. The only things stopping me are the reactions from wife and work.

Might try a really short scissor cut first and test the water. Brb.
 
Soldato
Joined
2 Nov 2013
Posts
4,121
Just been reading some Norwood Reaper threads on bodybuilding websites. Pretty amusing.



Is that true? Shaving hair has no bearing on the resilience of the follicles!

I don't mean that it'll grow less quickly or thickly than it did before. But it's already growing slowly and thin, so forcing it to start from scratch will mean it probably never recovers.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Jan 2004
Posts
3,047
Location
Cambridgeshire
None of this will work to actually keep your hair. Minoxidil basically makes all your follicles grow at the same time which gives the appearance of a fuller head of hair, but its just a lie; it will fall out.

Shampoo and conditioner are bunk.

You have one option: Finasteride. Get on it, or accept your hair doom.

I looked this up because i have a similar amount of hair to the OP but it doesn't seem like the benefits outweight the side effects. I will be reassessing my '2 back and sides and a trim on top' cut that i've had for the last 15 or so years when i next go to the barbers. I don't want to be one of those people holding onto the hair they have for longer than they should be....
 
Last edited:
Caporegime
Joined
22 Nov 2005
Posts
45,276
Are you already using/tried thickening conditioners or similar? some work to a degree for some people.
do they really with scientific evidence to back them up? my partner got me some elvive fiborology thickening shampoo/conditioner and I tried them for a few months, don't notice any difference.

Not that I'm going bald just my hairs are really thin
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
91,153
do they really with scientific evidence to back them up? my partner got me some elvive fiborology thickening shampoo/conditioner and I tried them for a few months, don't notice any difference.

Not that I'm going bald just my hairs are really thin

They ain't gonna reverse or stop it but some do find it slows down loss and/or improves the apparent density. While I can't prove it wouldn't have changed rate of its own accord the rate mine was receding at has slowed a lot since I started using Elvive and at the very least has better feeling of depth and quality though for the first two weeks it made my hair super curly.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
5 Dec 2003
Posts
20,999
Location
Just to the left of my PC
Do whatever you want with it, obviously.

When I started going bald I went straight from waist length hair to a few mm. 2 on the standard shaving grades. Well, actually I initially went to a rough shave because the first time I used the shaver thing I forgot to put the relevant guard on and shaved a strip to 0 grade, i.e. a rough shave, so I had to do the rest to match :) But you do what you want - it's your head. Have a medieval style monastic tonsure. Dye your remaining hair lilac. Whatever.
 
Soldato
Joined
7 Aug 2009
Posts
4,901
Location
London
Seriously, once you start thinning just shave it off. As long as you have a decent shaped face, lean jawline etc shaved bald nut looks awesome. I have full head of hair still at 35 thankfully but would buzz in an instant if i started to thin.
 
Soldato
Joined
2 Nov 2013
Posts
4,121
That's not how hair works. :p

I don't think this is so complicated.

Hair not growing.
All hair chopped off.
Hair not growing results in continuing to have no hair.

I'm not saying that clipping all the hair off will make any difference to how quickly it grows. I'm saying that the rate it's already growing at means that chopping it all off is a pretty long term move.
 
Associate
Joined
10 Jan 2013
Posts
916
Tempted to do the same myself tomorrow.
Ive got a huge beard now anyway, hair isnt too badly going thin but its thinner than when i was younger, im 32 now.
Wife doesn't mind me having either head or face shaved, just not both at same time lol.
 
Associate
Joined
21 Sep 2013
Posts
586
Location
London
When I started going bald I went straight from waist length hair to a few mm. 2 on the standard shaving grades. Well, actually I initially went to a rough shave because the first time I used the shaver thing I forgot to put the relevant guard on and shaved a strip to 0 grade, i.e. a rough shave, so I had to do the rest to match :)

Similar experience here.....my wife bought me a clipper set a few years ago so she could give me a trim at home (I'm sure we have saved a fortune over the years from me not going to the barbers). She used to give me a grade 4 top and sides but last year we decided to try grade 2. Two stripes in she realised she didnt have the guard on and had given me a grade 0, which she then had to continue with. We had a film playing in the background with Vin Diesel and The Rock in it, so maybe she was distracted...or influenced?
 
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