Keeping things in perspective...
A pattern that I've noticed for a lot of guys that are on some form of regimen for MPB (Male Pattern Baldness), is that as their knowledge increases on ways to fight hair loss, their excitement goes up, they try more and more products, and then after about 3 months to a year, they stop their regimen completely! I have done this not once, not twice, not three times, but four separate times! Four times I have started a regimen, kept on it and then after a period of time I have stopped. And I see it all the time on hair loss forums on the internet, and I have friends that have done this as well.
So one has to ask the pertinent question: Why?
I think there are a number of factors that lead to this. At first we get dragged into the hype surrounding treatments. No matter how hard we try to manage our expectations (if you do your research, you should know by now that if you have passed the point of 2 on the Norwood scale, then chances are that you will NOT regrow all of the hair you lost) we still lose hope when we don't see amazing results. That's one factor. Another factor is convenience of the regimen. I call this the floss factor. A lot of people say they use floss every day when they brush their teeth, and for the most part they are probably telling you the truth. But how many people spend the necessary time to do it properly. Flossing is very effective at preventing cavities, and as with hair, most of us would like to keep our teeth, so it makes sense to floss properly at least twice a day everyday. But chances are that most people probably go for long stretches of time without flossing. Why? Because of the PITA factor (pain in the ass factor) associated with it. Same goes for complex regimens. They take a lot of effort, commitment, energy and time to stick to. I believe that for the average person, if you are using more than 4 products to fight your hair loss on a daily basis, then your PITA factor is pretty high, and unless you are very disciplined you will go for long stretches where you just stop your regimen. And this, folks, is bad. You want a regimen that is easy to follow and that you don't have to muster up a lot of will power to follow...more on this later.
Another reason why (at least for myself) it is difficult to stay consistent with a regimen, is that many of the products can be irritating on the scalp, especially if not used properly. It's also possible to develop allergies to some of the ingredients (like propylene glycol for instance). One example of how I encountered this problem was when I was using Nizoral shampoo everyday. Nizoral is one of the products that I think should be a part of every regimen. For a while, I was so gung-ho about it that I was using it everyday. After about 6 months of use, my scalp developed an infection that needed antibiotics to treat. Now I am NOT claiming that the infection was caused by the Nizoral directly, but I am theorizing that perhaps using it everyday killed off some of the natural flora that is supposed to be on the skin, to the point that it made enough room for the infection to take root. This problem returned for me even AFTER antibiotics got rid of the infection. I began to suspect that maybe the fact that I was not using Nizoral properly was the problem. The recommended usage on the label is once per week. By simply reducing my use of Nizoral to twice per week instead of everyday, my infection completely disappeared! Again, I am not claiming that Nizoral caused the infection, but by misusing it, I may have made my scalp less resistant to infections. My reason for talking about this incident is to make the point that by abusing the products that we use to fight hair loss, or by using too many products at once, your scalp can become irritated, you can develop dermatitis, and you can get infections. None of these things are conducive to keeping one motivated to staying on a hair loss regimen. I have learned to pay careful attention to how my scalp feels and to the health of my scalp whenever I try new products or add a new product to my regimen. I think that this may be the number one reason (at least for myself) for stopping my regimen.
Another factor in the equation is the obsession factor. When we get all hyped up and excited about a regimen, and the fact that we are doing something to fight our hair loss, we tend to think about it all the time. Especially if we have a regimen that takes a lot of effort to follow every day. We read everything we can find and we constantly evaluate our prgress, everyday. This is bad. Becasue it gets tiring after a while, and this in turn causes frustration when we don't see immediate results.
All of these can be solved with one simple rule: Keep your regimen as simple and effective as possible! You want to try something new fine. You want to add something permanently to your regimen, okay. Just make sure you ask yourself every time you think of doing so whether you will be willing to use that product for the rest of your life, every day! Be honest when you answer. If the answer is no, then you proabaly shouldn't add it to your regimen. Of course you should still evaluate the product for at least 3 months to see if it works for you at all (six months of using something will usually suffice, but three should be the minimum if you are not experiencing adverse effects from a product in my opinion.) BKeep your regimen simple. Period.This will help keep things in perspective for you so that you are not thinking about your hair loss all the time. Your regimen should become as simple as brushing your teeth twice a day. You probably don't think about tooth decay everyday. Then you should try to make your regimen so that you don't think too much (or obsess too much) about hair loss everyday. I will elaborate on how to do this in my next daily rant.
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