My Story

You probably read enough of those sob stories, but believe me mine will be a bit different. I've made my name on quite a lot of places, mostly more infamous than famous. But always with good intentions.

The beginnings

I first started losing my hair in my teens, at around 17 years old. That dreadful itch started and my hair began to thin and my temples receded. That's how I came up with my nickname by the way. I first found the German forum alopezie.de and spent an entire weekend reading about different treatments. Calling these people kooky would be an understatement. While they had no problems rubbing onions, sperm (yes actual human sperm) and other weird things onto their heads they were all deathly afraid of Finasteride and 5AR inhibitors in general. Needless to say their reports of "I can't get an erection anymore after a single pill of Fin" and other blatant scaremongering made me deathly afraid. It became this mythical beast of chemical horror and castration inside my head. Disappointed and depressed I accepted my fate. And kept losing, and losing, and losing more hair. I turned NW1, I turned NW2 and when I was on the brink of NW3 I had enough. Damn the consequences. I started using Finasteride even though I still believed all those fairy tales of people developing tits, turning gay and all that other rubbish from a single speck of Finasteride. (read more about this in the category "The poisonous Hairloss scene")

Better, but not good

The first few months on Fin were quite horrible. I told the guys on the German forum about having started Fin and they prophesied me a future as a half man half woman abomination without a working penis and tits that a stripper would pay for. It robbed me of my sleep. And then the dreaded "Fin shed" happened and for a good four months I kept losing even more hair until... suddenly... that itch was gone. And the bathtub didn't look quite as filled with dead follicles after each shower anymore. After a year on Fin I was at last stable. My hairloss was more or less stopped at NW3, the itch was gone and yet I still had my libido and a working penis. No tits either, how strange. How, very, strange... ? 

I started reading actual studies, informed myself about the chances for developing side effects and came to the conclusion that I fell for propaganda spewn by people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Just like a herd of sheep they would exchange whatever new and old horror story they pick up through the grapevine and regurgitate as absolute fact. In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed truly is king.

Regrowth isn't as easy as people think

As demonized as Fin was, at the same time it was hailed as the absolute and final solution to the hairloss problem by the very same German people who kept me from taking it all this time. Showing once again just how little they know. After two years I was still NW3, where is my regrowth? I was promised a perfect silky smooth NW0! I gave up entirely on that forum and headed for the big boys club, the american Hairloss forums. My choice fell on hairlosshelp.com.

First experiences with common treatments

Hairlosshelp was definitely a step up. I learned about the big three (Finasteride, Minoxidil and Nizoral) and finally was in a place where people at least tried to be logical. I started using a Nizoral shampoo and tried Minox for 6 months. I didn't get any regrowth at all from the Minox and the Propylene Glycol in it made my scalp itch more and lead to further hairloss despite being on Fin. So I was once again out of options. (you can read my theory why some people just don't get any benefit at all from Minox in the category "My theories")

The great unknown: experimental treatments

I started reading the experimental section on HLH (hairlosshelp) and became wildly interested in all this new stuff. Each substance promising to surely be the cure, obviously. :) I was the first guy to trial L'Oreal Neogenic's "Stemoxydine" which was a huge glimmer of hope back then since it was the only thing backed with big money and a legit industry. It didn't turn out to do much of anything but at least I tried and recorded my progress and posted it in the forums. Back then this experimental market wasn't as big it is today, it was mostly dominated by a guy called finfighter who owned a shop at mpbtreatments.com and made quite good cash off of it. I bought an AHK-CU cream (copper peptides) with my measly student money and after waiting half an eternity and complaining over email it finally arrived. The cream didn't end up doing anything and I kept seeing more and more complaints about mpbtreatments.com not sending stuff at all. Then marklc2004 approached me over pm, he was kind of "that guy" at HLH back then because he claimed to have spent thousands of dollars on experimentals and to know everything about hair, claimed. I being a newbie obviously believed him. He told me mpbtreatments.com are scammers, and the cream I received had the wrong vehicle making the AHK-CU worthless. Angry at this I told him somebody ought to do something, they can't be selling stuff to people at premium prices which isn't even going to work. Mark agreed and told me I should make a thread calling them out as scammers. Why he wouldn't make that thread himself I only learned about in hindsight. (I will continue this story and more in the category "On Scammers")

Approaching the limits of public forums

I became mildly infamous after making that thread calling out mpbtreatments.com, however many people with grievances did speak up as well, saying the products are extremely overpriced, or that they never received any products at all, and in general that none of them really did anything. Ultimately it was my first big forum drama. Being once again at a dead end marklc2004 approached me and told me about private invite-only forums and asked whether I would like to join one since I seem to be so deeply involved in all of this. I was overjoyed of course and I joined PHG (pioneeringhairgrowth.com).

Real Pioneers

PHG was something else. While on public forums the logic usually ended at "put this on your head and you will grow hair" nobody really understood what the studies they googled up really meant or how the processes behind them worked. The guys on this private forum were a lot more involved. Some of them even have a background in biology, chemistry, medicine and other areas. Knowledge was not only a requirement but something you would have to actually help increase. I quickly learned a lot and went above and beyond normal involvement. I started learning the basic principles of biochemistry, biology, the way hormones work in the human body and their involvement in hair, the chemical attributes of molecules, how they penetrate skin and how to figure out a vehicle to deliver a substance safely and effectively and so on. After about a year of feverish study and dedication I became a moderator.

When greed rears its ugly head

Around the same time a Chinese businessman only known as "Kane" became somewhat famous. After my public thread had turned a lot of people away from mpbtreatments.com there was a void in the experimental hairloss market and Kane was more than happy to fill it. Having no real competition he became the market leader over night and had a monopoly on whatever he sold. Especially since he delivered quick and had the backing of a lot of public forum users who were considered experts. His prices however were horrendous, but since he had no competition you either paid up or you were out of luck.
Since we at PHG were interested in some of the stuff he sold but knew his prices were a ripoff, we decided to do our own group buys. We had a user with very reliable business connections to China, he found us a quote of RU58841 which back then was -the- experimental that everyone wanted. Our price was only about 30% of what Kane charged people at the time. This was possible since nobody profiteered from it, it was sold at cost. We ordered the substance and had it third party tested at another lab. It was a gigantic success. More and more people quickly wanted in on these groupbuys of ours. RU58841 was the new miracle compound and it halted hairloss dead in its tracks, in some people it even caused quite a bit of regrowth. Eventually Kane lowered his prices due his new "competition" from PHG. This is when the real problems began.

Big trouble in little China

At some point a few prominent users on PHG started to question whether there really wasn't anyone profiteering off of the groupbuys. They said the groupbuys weren't at cost even though they were still almost all 50% cheaper than Kane even after he had lowered his prices. When those accusations wouldn't stick they said the products at PHG were bunk even though there was third party testing and the products miraculously worked on everyone except those same few guys who always complained. When they ultimately tried to tell people they should be buying from Kane instead, they were rightfully banned. Those people were: marklc2004, ziom1990 and swooping. We would later find out that mark received kickbacks from Kane right around the time his complaining started. And that he recruited ziom1990 and after that swooping to create propaganda for his sake. It was obvious that the Chinese guy wasn't happy about us killing his thriving business and undercutting his prices. (I will continue this story and more in the category "On Scammers")

Private wars, on public battlegrounds

It officially turned into a war. PHG needed a certain amount of people participating in groupbuys since there were minimum amounts to be reached for the labs to produce anything at all. Kane knew this and so did his new paid lackeys. So it became their first priority to sabotage our groupbuys no matter what to reach their monopoly again. They turned to the public forums and under anonymous accounts spread rumors about "the scammers from PHG" taking advantage of people and stealing their money. We were still able to hold our groupbuys for experimentals but it became increasingly harder with active ongoing sabotage.

As the years went by

We investigated several completely new experimental treatments, some which most people probably never even heard of: BNP32, SHH agonists, MG132, CP-690550, CB-03-01, Calcium L-Threonate, Epitalon, Diazoxide, PSI, Thymosin Beta 4 and many many more. Some with no results, some with ok results, and some with surprisingly good results. I plan to eventually make a list of how effective all these were so the knowledge doesn't get lost. Anyway, back to myself. Thanks to a few experiments with some exotic treatments I made it back to NW2.5 from my NW3. Nothing impressive but at least there was some progress from all that invested money. After 6 years on Finasteride I tried my luck by switching to Dutasteride. It thickened up my existing hair very well but didn't really affect my temples which were still slick bald. I was approaching the point where I was ready to throw in the towel and go for a transplant.

The cure that wasn't

Some time in early 2014 I stumbled upon a chinese forum where a guy was showing pictures of remarkable hair regrowth. He even had it patented. This would later be the same guy who got to be known as Liu Xuewu on several public forums where he offered his product to trialists for free. Before that however I had already started to copy his patent. The active chemical chlorine dioxide wasn't hard to get since it's popular in some questionable alternative medicine circles, despite being a pretty harsh chemical and not very healthy. In simplified theory: The CD would damage the skin chemically to trigger a stem cell reaction. I had nothing to lose and tried it.

The damage was no joke, it literally ate my skin and caused scabs. It also bleached and chemically damaged the hairline in my temples and caused it to shed. For that reason I kept silent on what exactly it is I'm using as I didn't want others to risk this toxic stuff for no reason. After a few days I was ready to give up as the damage became too much. Yet a week after stopping it I would feel stubble in my temples. It felt almost like a beard. I rushed to my mirror and there it was, little black dots all over my bald temples that didn't have hair for almost 9 years by now. And I could feel hairs growing out of them, thick terminal hairs. I started using the CD again, reported on PHG about my miraculous growth and said I would reveal what I'm using soon. For some reason that stubble never made it more than 2mm in length and would fall out again no matter what I tried. After several months I knew I wasn't getting anywhere. I kept putting this toxic shit on my head that hurt my skin and only seemed to produce temporary 2mm stubble. I gave up, revealed that it was chlorine dioxide and threw the stuff into the trash.

And then it happened

Towards the end of 2014 I decided on one last approach. I had done a lot of theoretical research that even on PHG wasn't common and I was dead set to have it be my last experiment before getting a transplant. Cotsarelis studies and findings were common knowledge but for some reason nobody actually gave enough of a crap to combine them all into one approach. And that's what I did. I studied the prostaglandin chain, their metabolism and effects and it all kind of came together. People always obsess about one factor of hairloss and hairgrowth without actually trying to address the source. Everyone is looking for that one magic bullet or substance. But the problem doesn't lie in testosterone, not in DHT, not in DKK and not even really in PGD2/CRTH2. The problem is a genetical change in the scalp which must be addressed and reversed before any regrowth can take place in that area. You can find all this in Cots' studies and a few logical puzzle pieces to go with it. (I will continue this in the category "The Prostaglandin protocol")

First results

Thanks to all the rampant negative propaganda it became hard to hold groupbuys on PHG. It involved a lot of work to find people with enough knowledge and interest in experimentals. But one part of my Protocol included PGD2 blocking/suppression and another included PGE2 agonism. The other puzzle pieces I could take care of by other means. But these two were something relatively hard to do without fitting chemicals. I got a groupbuy going for Setipiprant and PGE2. Seti is the best choice for various reasons, it is the cheapest, the one with the most tests on humans and sporting very good efficacy. The alternatives have too many downsides, especially TM which is a plain health hazard since it's only ever been tested on mice.

So I had to make due with a ghetto regimen for now. I skewed my endogenous PGE2 expression with Sulfasalazine, I used natural ricinoleic acid which partially activates one of the four PGE2 receptors, I added UVB sunburns to further crank up endogenous PGE2 expression, it's a bit of a mess but funny enough even by slowly adding these crappy alternatives I began to see results. The protocol kept growing with alternatives and at around 4 months I saw my first results. I had just added the sunburns to my regimen when I saw some short pigmented hair appearing all over the NW0 to NW3 area. I increased to tweak my regimen and the hair kept growing, longer, more dense, pigmented and quite thick. At 5 months it was clear this wasn't another dud like chlorine dioxide. This is the real thing. The finer hairs at the side of my temples grew to the length of the non-receded side hair and blended in perfectly. The hair in the temples keeps growing and is now approaching 1.5cm. For someone who has tried and gotten nothing from combinations such as RU + Minox + Dut this is quite something. I have just received my Seti a few days ago and will now add it to the stack. I'm looking forward to what's going to happen when throw out some of the ghetto trash alternatives and replace them with the real stuff. But visually? I would already almost call myself cured. The regrown hair in my temples is pigmented, it's long enough to cover the skin and it's all over down to my juvenile hairline.

(you can find pics and info on when I added what to my protocol in the category "My progress")

Closing words

So there you have it. A guy who hasn't responded to anything and tried almost everything growing pigmented thick and long hair after 9 years of completely bald temples. On a makeshift ghetto protocol no less.

I will try to write up the rest of the blog in the next few days/weeks. You can expect pics of progress every now and then. I'm confident it's going to get even better with the real stuff.