Seeking and Finding Wholeness

I wrote recently about my recent interest in researching hair and scalp health, how to retain hair, thicken it and even grow new hairs.

The many websites, articles, discussion forums I visited offered a lot of interesting information. I was very optimistic with my findings, based on the many testimonials I found online.

Now, only a few (busy) days since my last article, with over 20 hours of reading and typing, I have now gone through all the research material I had gathered and summarized it all.  Not only that, I now have about another 300 pages of newly-gathered information to go through.

Good news, bad news

I remain optimistic that there are many natural remedies, in conjunction with nutrition and other healthy habits I know that one can make their hair and scalp healthier, this I know for a fact.

The good news is, I believe the material I gathered offered proof and solutions that worked for women that do improve their hair, even grow more of it. For men, with the so called male pattern baldness (mpb), I can’t be that certain.

Since I have mpb and the hormone DHT (self diagnosed, given the other males that share similar genes) I am a prime candidate to try some of the remedies and good habits on myself.

To start with, I took photos of my head yesterday. I’ll be taking a few photos every month to see if I can track any progress, or lack thereof.

So where’s the bad news?

Many people take the words of Doctors to be final and correct. From personal experience I know this is not true. I am not a statistic neither are you.

A lot of the science around hair loss, male pattern baldness, female pattern baldness, hormones effects of hair, in my opinion, offers only theories (not facts). Thus, take everything you hear with a grain of salt, science as of today has theories on hair loss and hair growth, some of these theories are repeated by people as facts, these “facts” are thus not conclusive nor are they final. There is room for interpretation, and there is evidence than does contradict said facts.

Hair health can be affected by many factors. For most men (with mpb) the role of genetics is usually claimed as the culprit. Many consider genetics the ultimate factor in hair loss; others disagree.

Who controls you?

Recently I have come across more and more material that discusses how a person can change their DNA, how the DNA changes due to environmental factors and even mental influences. I have seen cases where “predetermining” factors such as a person’s genetics, upbringing or culture did not have the “expected” outcome.

I’m trying to say that you are not a 100% controlled by a predetermined set of genetic code.

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The answer to eliminating hair loss must lie within the 300+ pages of online-research information that I collected. During the coming days I will be sifting through hundreds of testimonials, research studies, scientific data and traditional wisdom. I have information on the use of Chinese, Ayuvedic, Middle Eastern and other Native remedies. I will be studying the old wisdom of natural and home made solutions along with the latest in science, drugs, and nutritional knowledge on vitamins, minerals. I will also look at the use of oils, essential oils and vibrational therapies in search for the answer to hair regrowth.

I’ve researched hair re-growth and hair health on and off (more “off” than “on”) for about a couple years. I’m a male, my body has the so called “male pattern baldness” syndrome. It started when I was in my 20’s, maybe even earlier, it was very subtle, so I didn’t care much for it. In the last 2-3 years, the thinning hair in the front and center part of my scalp started to thin more rapidly, it is very obvious now; that area is getting close to being bald, and the thinning doesn’t seem to be slowing.

My position on hair has been that I’d simply shave my head if this thinning spreads to more of my head. I accepted that I will likely end up shaving my head since this kind of hair loss is considered to be “genetic” (it “runs in the family”). Since I don’t like the idea of having a half head of hair, with a runway of baldness in between 2 clumps of hair on the sides; shaving seems more appropriate (even though it’s more work).

As a hypnotist, I’ve heard of hypnosis being used for hair health, I know a lot about the power of the mind over the physical body and about the power of positive self-talk. In fact, I believe that, if done properly, hypnosis and guided imagery could aid in hair restoration. Relaxation alone (which is easy to achieve with hypnosis) will help health in general and thus positively help the health of one’s hair. My position, however, is that doing this would require time that I rather use on other matters; it took years of thinning to be where I am now, recovery may also take years and require a lot of my time.

If you know anything about me you probably know how busy my schedule is. I volunteer, I do research on multiple issues, I’m studying multiple topics, I work, etc.. I’ve had the opinion that I don’t have the time to invest into restoring my hair (doing such things as recording my hair health hypnosis tapes, taking time out for hypnosis, relaxation, sitting down for guided imagery, or even to give myself scalp massages, making home made shampoos or even taking the time to research all my options out there for hair re-growth).

Even though I freed a lot of time by almost never watching TV programming (when I do it’s online and not often) my time remains a precious resource. I do have other things I find more important that I rather be spending my time on, such as practicing natural vision improvement, studying Chinese Medicine, vibrational healing therapies, photography, am taking college classes, practicing QiGong and meditation, volunteering my hypnosis skills to help crisis patients, managing a meetup.com group while trying to keep a social life. This is where I’m at right now, things will likely change in the future.

Appearances in our society are given more importance than they deserve. It’s one of these inconvenient [societal] “truths” that many take fore-granted. The issue of hair health is especially important when it comes to women. We all know that a man can shave his head and no one would care, but for women there is much more pressure to “look pretty”. Who decides what being “pretty” is, that’s a topic that I’m going to leave for another day.

I know of a person, who’s a female who has thinning hair and it is bothering her greatly. Like many of us, she had luscious thick hair as a kid, and as she matured, slowly but surely her hair seemed to loose its thickness, and over the last few years it started to thin in certain areas. Medical doctors so far didn’t seem to help much.

This has given me enough reason, now I was motivated to research hair health more seriously. I started a few days ago by browsing many websites and discussion forums. I use specific google search keywords to find what I’m looking for. I am finding a lot of good information and am compiling a lot of the research findings into a rapidly growing document.

Based on what I’ve found so far, I am very optimistic about being able to find things to help her have more hair than she ever wanted! I am finding a lot more useful information online than the doctor had offered her.

In a nutshell the areas I am researching include:

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