I am a white male, 42.
My dad was bald at my age. He shaved his head and it looked great on him. I was insecure if it would look good on me, so I did a buzz cut first. I thought, if that looks good, then bald probably looks fine too. If I can live with that, at least that fear is gone.
Also, I was able to track my progress better. I started in october 2025. The photo on the top was the first photo I took when I shaved my hair. You see that grey straight hair? That's my baseline on to look at how my hair is growing back.
About the photo
What you see is the grey straight hair at the top is my reference. You see on the top that there are lots of vellushair in a state of rest. They are not actively growing, maybe there where even actively falling out slowly.
On the other photo's you see these same vellus hair becoming slowly mature pigmented hair again. Now I hope of course that all these vellus hairs eventually can become matured hairs again. But time will tell, I am only 3 months in. The real change comes in 6-12 months - Yes, it's a slow process. But that's a year on a lifetime?
That's it.
In my rabbit hole I came to the conclusion that it could well be that the whole hairloss thing might be caused primarily by a tight scalp. Do your own research, if you know a man who has really nice hair, feel his skull. Is the skin flexible on his whole scalp? If you are getting bald, how does your scalp feel on the places where your hair is getting thinner and bald? Is it the same as the sides? Big change, the answer is no.
The scalp skin is already thin. When we get older, our scalp grows and that together with all the other things like, gels, shampoos, bad diet, not enough movement, not enough sun and overall the result is not enough blood flow in the scalp.
Hair follikels need blood in order to thrive. If the blood is blocked, then the hair follikels get in stress mode and release DHT (this is at least my theory). DHT is in that sense more like a saveguard for the hair. It makes them miniaturize and they are in survival mode.