Male premature hair loss group. I started losing hair on my temples when I was 16

Bright idea. I join the group. Just like you I'm from a family of hairlosers. My bro and my father and my uncle and my cousins on my father's side are all bald or balding. For dad and uncle it started when they were in their early 20ies, for my cousins also, except for 1 who started to lose hair on his temples only when he was in his late 20ies. Whereas his brothers lost their hair on the top of their head with a bald spot becoming larger, he lost his from the front going backwards, his hairline receding ever more. My bro is 19, he has bald temples and a thinning spot on top of his head of 7-8 cm. I'm 23, I've had bald temples ever since puberty, a bald spot progressing (there are 2 cm without any hair) but my hair is thinning generally, even the one in the front, so you see my scalp everywhere except for a very narrow crown on the rear of my head. My dad says that's the way he lost his also, without any chance of hiding the process.

I read that 16% of boys aged 15-17 experience already male pattern baldness, even if only the 1. stage of ti. So it's not that premature, I mean 1 out of 6 of us has it because 1 out of 2 will be bald when he's 50 and it has to start somewhere. It's the stage which really makes the difference. I had an early puberty, my testicles grew when I was 10 and shortly after I had the 1. hairs around my penis. My body hair grew fast and I started to have a mustache when I was 12. That was probably also the age at which I started losing my hair on my head but I didn't notice at the time. Then I noticed hair in the drain after the shower and my father told me that he thought I was losing my hair because my temples were growing bald. I was 13 then and everything was going wild. In school I was already considered a freak because I had a lot of body hair and thick testicles and a large penis and I was always more or less hard. Losing my hair was just what it needed to make me go mad. My father's barber also told me that he thought I was definitely going bald. When I was 14, my temples were bald (Norwood II). Puberty was over by then. At 15 I was Norwood IIIA, meaning that I lost my hair from the front, not with a bald spot on top. So the frontal hairline was receding, but somehow this seemed less dramatic than if I had grown bald on top. It took 6 more years for me to lose the rest of it. Today I'm 52, so I'm ok with it, but I've got 2 sons, the older one started balding at 18, following the classical pattern and he's 27 now and Norwood IV, the younger one will be turning 14 next month (they are 13 years apart and have 2 different mothers) and just like me he had a premature puberty. He started even earlier than me, with pubic and armpit hair growing at 9. He was diagnosed with excessive testosterone but the doctors didn't want to intervene. Hair on his temples started to fall out at 12 and then his frontal hair started thinning (Norwood IIA). So we knew he was also going to follow my pattern of baldness/ Today he's Norwood IIIA and will probably be completely bald before his 18. birthday.

Gosh and I thought I was an early bald! How could you possibly be Norwood III at the age of 14 or 15?! That's already the stage with the high forehead with no hair left in front! I had balding temples at 16, then a slowly progressing baldness. The bald spot on my temples grew always larger until it reached above the ears and the place where there was front hair left was only 1" wide. I was maybe 25 by that time. Then I noticed a spot on top of my head where the hair was thinning but it must have been there for a while because then everything went very fast and a year later I was bald except for a small patch of hair in the front which grew thinner and then was lost also. From then on it was my crown growing thinner until it reached its present stage (I'm 37): my hair starts behind my ears and runs aroung the back of my head in a more or less 1,5'' large crown.

Temples at 16, front hairline at 20/21, bald spot on top at 23/24.

Hi, I looked this up because of my brother but actually I thought i was going to find some advice here to help him but this is all pretty discouraging. He's 17 and over the last 2 years his body grew very hairy but at the same time he lost all the hair on his temples and his front hairline has receded to the point that the beginning of the flat part of the head above the forehead is already bald. He asked me to check the rear of his head but there's no thinning there yet. He suffers greatly from it and talks already about growing a beard in order to compensate. Personnally I don't think balding is ugly. I'm 24 and my friend who's 27 is losing his hair and has decided to shave completely but I like him to keep at least a little bit of it. It's part of how men develop. Nobody thinks it's ugly that they've got hair on their face or on their body and my brother is rather proud of his chesthair which he finds very masculine so why not also be proud of a bald pate? It's also masculine and a sign of healthy hormones. Anyway nobody else in our family has suffered from early hairloss and I myself have also grown very thick pubic hair so maybe it's just the 2 of us being hairy and his hairloss will stop in time.

Hi guys. I'm joining. For me it started after puberty, I was 17 when I noticed the angles of my forehead going bald and then my front hairline was getting thinner and receded whick makes me the "A" type in the Norwood classification. The rear part of my head remained covered with hair until I was in my early 20ies but by then the hairline had receded back to the middle of my head and it went on going backwards. Today I'm 28 and I feel I look like 60! My first gf liked my the way I was, she was witness to the beginning of it all, but I felt she was said about it, then I was with a girl who said she wasn't afraid of me losing my hair but that she had preferred if I had been the normal type, getting bald on top of the head and keeping hair in front which didn't make me feel that good as you can imagine and her sister also said I was looking terribly old. Then I met a girl who had hair problems herself having had alopecia as a child but it was really a desperate thing for both of us and it didn't work at all. For the last 4 years I have a stable Relationship with a nice girl who was witness to the change from stage 4 to stage 5. That's the real problem, I mean, pleasing the girls. I found that very difficult.

Most of all I'm happy you have a gf and she likes you. For I don't mean to offend you but "pleasing the girls" as you say I believe has Nothing to do with hair or hairloss or whatever. I may have felt excessively confident because of my family history and I'm grateful for that but still I believe what I lived other could live also even without my history. I've got 3 brothers and a sister (3 families though lol sister has different dad, oldest brother has different mum) and there's a big age difference, oldest is 12 years older, the other 9 and the other is my twin brother. We were all early balders more or less, starting during or just after puberty. So from the time I can remember when I saw my oldest brother he was already losing his hair and he was fine with it actually. The other of course I grew up with and I was more directly involved but he was also fine with it laughing it off. It started for him after puberty when he was 17 or 18. So for one we the 2 youngest knew we were in for it and for the other we also knew it was nothing dramatic but part of the growing adult. Both brothers had beautiful gfs and nothing was a problem. Of course we observed our hair closely when the age of losing it arrived/ We had staretd to lose hair at our temples when 15 but that stopped again for me but my brother went on losing hair and I started again when I was 17. We were the only ones in our class going bald that early but we made it an asset and we were respected because of it and actually girls liked us because of it. They wanted to touch our head and feel our thin hair and a few months later our bald spot. I suppose for each man it's a different experience. That s ours.

I read that 25% of men who will suffer from male pattern baldness start losing their hair before they're 21. So since it will affect eventually 85% of all men, this means 1 out of 5 is concerned when in his early 20ies. For the lucky ones it means hair recession at the temples, for the unlucky ones it means Something more. But at any rate, this means that it is not that exceptional unfortunately. I also found that it is untrue that we start balding earlier.

from a girl/woman's point of view
I read that more women get bald too and I believe men get bald earlier (and so there are more young bald men)
I'm an undergrad, I'm 23, boys around me are 21-23. My friend's 25, his friends are 25-29.
In school 1/2 have bald temples, 1/5 thinning hair on top. 3 have already a bald spot on top, 1 is even bald, he's 21. So this makes 26 out of 32 with hair problems.
My friend's unfortunately got thinning hair himself on a rather large area and seen from a distance he already looks bald there, 3 of his friends have thinning hair too in various degrees, 1 has a receding front hairline which makes him half bald and the 3 members of his musicgroup who are all 29 are all bald.
Don't tell me this is normal!!!!

Hi, I lost hair on my temples right after puberty and I got a V like front hairline and then hair on my head just went thinner and thinner. I've got no bald spot but you see through the hair everywhere it's as if I had lost half my hair everywhere except behind my ears and on the back of my head below the prominent part. I've never seen anybody going bald like that. If I let it grow the hairs part and it looks even worse. If I cut them short it's as if I was bald already. Hairdresser says going bald involves hairs falling out and growing back thinner then falling out and growing back even thinner etc. and also falling out faster each time and growing less long until they don't grow back at all. He says that my remaining hair is already very thin and doesn't grow long anymore and most of it will only go for a couple more cycles like that. And he also says that if that much hair has gone already and the rest of it is that thin it means that my cycles have become very short, maybe a year, maybe less. So he says I shall prepare myself to be bald in a couple of years from now, maybe much earlier and since it's an ongoing process I will look balder and balder until then. He witnessed hairloss like mine before but in older men, men who had kept their hair until their 40ies or 50ies and who went bald very quickly. It sucks.

sorry to say but from my (woman's) point of view this general thinning (similar to what happens to women who lose their hair) is the worst possible way to lose hair. A bald patch at the rear which increases is "neat" and acceptable but this general thinning is kind of disgusting. Plus in general when you lose it like that generally the remaining crown is lower and smaller. When I met my husband he had your V front hairline and it looked very good, very manly. I knew of course he was going to be a baldie but hey many men are that's what genetics and hormones do to you. For the first couple of years his V got deeper into his temples but when we married the tip of it wasn't that sharp anymore, we talked about it he was insecure about it and I told him I was going to miss his hair. Products wouldn(t help and he soon began to have the general thinning hair you describe and 4 years after we noticed it he was completely bald with only a very low cronw which started behing his ears like yours will. We divorced in that period but whenever I see him it's a shock to me. Basically he's got only a strip of hair left on the lower rear part of his head. He was bald at 32.

sorry to say, lady, but that's no comfort! did you even divorce because of his hairloss? if you experience it one day on your own head you will know how bad it makes you feel and how desperate you need a partner who makes you feel beautiful nonetheless! my partner who's 11 years older than I am was bald already when we hooked up that was no problem for me and so it was no problem for both of us when I started to lose my hair. Unlike the other guys here I didn't lose hair right after puberty (I had lost some on my temples at the beginning of puberty but Nothing dramatic) but only in my early 20ies. I feel like premature bald nonetheless. It felt like I had suddenly more hairs in the shower drain and I told my partner and he checked and found that I had thinning hair on my vertex. Since we've only been together for a couple of months when it happened he joked about me wanting to make him feel at ease and be like him. I was 22 it was no good news but thanks to my partner I lost my hair with a light heart and even today I Don't regret it, i barely remember how it was to have hair.

are we really all living the same story here? I noticed that I was losing my hair on my temples when 15, at 18 I started to have thinning hair on my vertex, bald spot at 20, receding hairline at the same time, bald spot and receding hairline still in progress, I'm 22, bald father, 2 bald grandfathers, so I suppose what you expect?

my current boyfriend is 22 and he just started losing his hair, he's very sad about it but I find it exciting, in every sense of the word, I always thought men should loose their hair, it's part of the process, but now that I'm witnessing it, it really turns me on. so great!