Men of Reddit who've experienced it: when did you notice your hairline was receding? What did you do about it?

I first started worrying about it when I was 23 or so. Although in retrospect, 15 years later...that was nothing to worry about then. I had kind of a natural widow's peak, but it wasn't early balding. No one back then would have said I was balding.

Around 6 years ago, I started to notice that when it's windy, it kind of looked like it was receding.

For the past 4 years, I've struggled with combing it towards one side (my hairline is receding in the front). Still, I'd tell myself it was just my widow's peak and it still didn't look bad, didn't look like I was "balding". I'd tell myself it was just like Jude Law's hairline or something.

In 2020, it took a toll on me. First there was Covid, then I moved out of the town I lived in for the past 10 years, left my job there (greatly adding to my stress), and came back to my hometown, which is demographically, a much, much younger town than where I was living.

So after all that, after seeing what a 20 something guy's hair looks like, I've realized it's definitely receding, noticeably. I gave up trying to comb it to one side. Now I use pomade to try to push it all together, in the front, and try to evenly distribute it. When I do that, it looks somewhat passable to me. But I might be delusional about that, and now I know the clock is ticking on it.

Not too long ago, I even decided to purchase a rogaine-like product to regrow my hair. But I saw on the box that that stuff isn't designed for frontal hair loss. I went online, and looked up what to do about frontal hair loss. The best advice I got was to "massage the scalp". Lol. I'm fucked.

But, I've tried massaging my scalp, and I actually feel like it does kind of work. It's like controlled burns in forests: first it kind of thins my hair out when I do that, but then it grows back thicker (or at least I tell myself it does).

I've also gotten more settled after my move. I'm conscious about not stressing out too much so I can hold on to as much if my hair for as long as possible. Then of course, there's my pomade trick.

With all of those things combined, I actually feel like it's doing a lot better than it was 6 months ago. But I still lost a good deal of hair that I'm not getting back.

Eventually, I think I'll just shave it all. I even have some crazy ideas for viking-esque hairstyles (I like vikings, and I feel like their hairstyles can obfuscate my frontal receding hairline).

But I've also realized hair loss can be a really slow process. You can't grow back what you've lost (for the most part), but I feel like you can slow down the loss considerably by controlling stress, and living healthy.

/r/AskMen Thread