Hey everyone, 

I'm really not one to post on reddit, but seeing others' progress posts on this sub over the last 7 months has been an immense source of comfort so I'd love to be able to give back. 

I first started noticing that my hair was thinning late December last year (2024). I didn't notice the actual shedding at the time, but felt like the amount of hair in my ponytail was a lot less than normal. Once my attention was drawn to it I did start to notice that I was loosing A LOT of hair in the shower (probably around 200 hairs a day?)

I've always had very thick hair, and by February you could easily see my scalp when I was in the sunlight. This was a really distressing, which I'm sure didn't help with the shedding. I booked in with my normal GP who ran all the appropriate blood tests and referred me to a dermatologist that specialises in hair loss. 

All my bloods came back fine (though I didn't have any hormonal testing). My dermatologist was lovely and took me seriously which was a massive relief (located in Melbourne, VIC - happy to pass on her name). After examining my hair she felt quite confident that I had both **TE and AGA**, but that the AGA was in a very early stage and was unmasked by the TE (so I guess I'm lucky in a sense that I can start treating it early). She put me on a very low dose of **oral minoxidil (0.25mg)** and **spironolactone (25mg)**, which I started in mid March. I am also taking a standard hair, skin and nails supplement but apart from that no other special treatments. 

I did experience the minoxidil 'dread shed', but I think my TE shedding was slowing down at that point so it just felt like a continuation of the same amount of shedding. I'd say that the excessive shedding has now finally stopped, approximately 3 months after starting minoxidil (and around 7 months after the TE started) and I'm now only losing around 50 hairs a day (!!) 

My dermatologist also helped me narrow down the trigger, which we believe was a bout of **Covid I had in August last year**. I had also had a lot of stress and grief in November-December which I initially thought was the cause, but she was confident that the illness was due to the timing of things. 

It's still very early days for my regrowth but I'm really happy with where I'm at given months and months of stress around all of this. I hope my post brings some comfort for others in the thick of it, like so many others did for me.

TE and AGA progress!