i've been a member of this site for a couple years now. The last couple years have had high highs and low lows, but I keep on trucking through year after year. This site has been a big part of that progress and I appreciate it always being readily available. Even when it's 3:00 am. Somewhere along the line things got screwed up. I dont know who's fault it is, and I really don't have the energy to read through endless threads of people accusing others of things they did or didn't do. I just hope that this forum could once again find the right path and be the unbiased useful tool I once found it to be.. With that said this will probably be my last post for a while. Just wanted to let everyone know before I left.

I'm not quite sure what you're complaining about

you dont know? a site being hacking into. claims of people being paid for their support. members being banned for asking questions or making statements. this place is a mess.

All forums have their cycles. HLH may be at a low point right now (at least from an activity standpoint) but we'll bounce back.

Stay with us and keep posting.

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hair_tomorrow@usa.com ~ NW5A ~ Dut: 2x weekly; Proscar: 1 mg 4x weekly ~ Minomuck ~ SuperZix II ~ Copper Peptides ~ Shampoos: rotate Dr. Lee's Regrowth, "Thicker Fuller Hair" w/ caffeine, Biotin w/ TTO ~ Emu & Essential Oils ~ Varied OTC Supplements

Every year or so Farrel has to 'drain the pool'.

This forum will be just fine.



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Veteran HT patient. 16 strips since 1992 at PMI, Los Angeles.
1000 graft BHT hairline repair with Dr. Umar 2005.
Full-face video documentation of my repair:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNEZb42ZrYs&feature=channel_page

You are falling for nothing more than a smear campaign. The same person who caused problems on the site then went and posted false claims on another site about me.

It's all false and there has been no evidence presented because none exists.

Furthermore the claim that people are being banned for asking questions is another false claim. The person claiming this has never proven this to be true. I have asked him to prove he has an account here and he has refused to do so because he does not have an account here.

It's related to a lawsuit that has been brought against another site by a now former advertiser on this site.

I suggest waiting for the thing to go to trial before passing judgement....




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Disclaimer - I am not a physician or an expert and my advice should not be considered medical/expert advice. - If you follow my opinions and/or advice you do so at your own risk.

I also want to add this. The people being sued have not disclosed exactly what this case is about. Its not about the members of that site being able to criticize a doctor.

Its about the alleged unethical conduct of the administrators of the site. That's why I said wait until the case goes to trial and you will learn what the truth really is.




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Disclaimer - I am not a physician or an expert and my advice should not be considered medical/expert advice. - If you follow my opinions and/or advice you do so at your own risk.

Edited: 12/05/2008 at 04:35 PM by Farrel

BTW Raybones. What this forum was meant for is for people to be able to help each other in dealing with their hair loss issues.

If you appreciate the help you have gotten here over the years then the best way to show that is to help other people who now need your help.

Leaving the site because of some garbage you read on another forum makes no sense to me.

Giving back to other posters is all that should be at issue here. And nothing has changed on this site that prevents you from doing just that.

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Disclaimer - I am not a physician or an expert and my advice should not be considered medical/expert advice. - If you follow my opinions and/or advice you do so at your own risk.

Do you still allow armani reps on here?

Armani is no longer an advertiser here and he has no reps on here any more.

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Disclaimer - I am not a physician or an expert and my advice should not be considered medical/expert advice. - If you follow my opinions and/or advice you do so at your own risk.

Since these type of threads are nothing more than a distraction here, I'm going to accept questions until midnight tonight on this issue and then close the thread.

This forum is meant for people to be able to discuss hair loss issues, and the sooner we can get back to what this site is all about, the better for all posters.

I can assure you that once this thing goes to court you will get the truth because the people who hide behind their keyboards and lie will not be able to do the same thing there.

Until this happens my advice is to just ignore this garbage because you are being played.


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Disclaimer - I am not a physician or an expert and my advice should not be considered medical/expert advice. - If you follow my opinions and/or advice you do so at your own risk.

farrel.. I enjoy this site and being part of the process very much. my departure I'm sure will be temporary. I'm sure this is something the site needs to get through to ultimately arrive in a better place. I'm not passing judgment on either party as I feel I could not be nearly informed enough on the situation to properly form that opinion. I just hope that soon enough I could find myself here in a discussion that helps me fight this battle.

Sure what happened was negative but one positvie came out of the whole situation. UPDATED FORUM SOFTWARE!!!!!

Never again will I have to navigate to page two, scroll to the bottom to read the original topic starters question lmao.

You do realize you could have gone into your account settings and fixed that little "problem" don't you?

I appreciate the basic information I have gained from this site. I appreciate what Farrel has intended to do for the hair loss community. I have even found some decent support in hard times as I'm sure other people can attest to as well. So before anyone tells me what this site is meant for, just reread those last three sentences. However, and I absolutely do not mean this in a harsh way, but some posters spend incredible amounts of time on the forum. For me personally, and judging by the posts of many members, it can get to a point of really losing focus on life outside of hair loss. Constantly checking a forum and getting into bickering arguments over studies and physiological processes that less than 1% of anyone on here understands kind of undermines the point, in my humble opinion. By devoting copious amounts of time to hair loss, you are designating it as a main focus in your life.

This is the pattern I have noticed from myself and for many posters. You realize you are losing your hair, either because someone mentions it, or it is just plain obvious to you. It could be really receding, thinning out, or maybe you are just getting your mature hairline and it's freaking you out. You look for help. The internet is a nice way to get feedback on anything without having to be embarrassed by asking for it face to face. This is one of the first google searches for hair loss help, incidentally (or not). You begin to learn a wealth of knowledge about hair follicles, internals, topicals, lasers, research, hair transplants, hair pieces. So much more than just Rogaine! There is hope!

People use the products of their choice, or maybe decide against it. Overwhelmingly, what they try does not work. Yes, I know some people find success (really great). However, I would put large sums of money on the statement that less than a significant amount of people have pictures that show any considerable cosmetic difference (unless they aren't just posting pictures, which is a further detriment to people's validity in many of their claims here).

If you know anything about statistics (or even if you don't, I'll tell you), significance means that something has to happen at a certain percent or ratio for it to mean that it would not have just happened by chance alone.

So, for the majority of users, the meds don't work. Or maybe they are just slowing down the loss. Or maybe it's working because there were only 5 hairs on my sink instead of 15 for 3 out of the 7 days of this week. What? What do you mean they don't work? I must be using the wrong ones. So we search for different products, which are reviewed by users based off what they think is happening, almost always without picture evidence, or any consideration about the fact that we're fighting a genetic disposition. Meaning, at some point you are trying to swim against a tidal wave (I stole that from a poster, forget who but great analogy). Or maybe your genetics aren't that extreme with hair loss, and you can stop it for a while.

Now we try a new product, because someone who is an 'Accomplished Poster' said it worked for them or because it will work better with another product. There are a few guys, who mean well I'm sure, that diagnose everyone who comes along with what they think they should use. What happens if it doesn't work? They were wrong, something else has to work. Granted there are some guys who extensive research and probably know and understand a lot about the process. But just knowing why something happens doesn't mean you can make it stop.

If you made it this far, I'll just stop by summing it up. This site is great for basic information, but I would just be careful about becoming a hair loss jock. Fight hair loss as long and as with much fervor as you want, but please remember the big picture sometimes. You can only do so much, and past that point you could start reinforcing negative self talk. I want hair, we all want hair. But it is.... hair.

Can someone please explain what even happened? All I know is that the forum was down for a while and that it had something to do with someone making threats.

All i know is some dick went on HTN claiming to have hacked this site and found evidence that Farrel was being paid by Armani to promote them, or was deleting negative armani threads.

This guy never really produced any evidence, though he did post some stuff from Farrel's computer, but nothing backing up his claims.

What REALLY happend? no idea, don't even care, i'm just glad that armani reps are not allowed on here anymore

Personally, I didn't stop posting because it was a "mess". I simply got tired of always reading every new "promising" study and getting my hopes up, only to still have maybe 2 or 3 effective products at the end of the day (and by "effective" i mean you MIGHT maintain and sprout 2 or 3 new hairs). I've posted here since 2002 and I can honestly say since that time, nothing I used ever gave me any type of significant benefit. I'd love to have hair, but at the same time, I realized that my head shape wasn't the worst in the world....so I started using the lowest blade possible on my hair clippers (it's a device called the "baldy blade", and it is as low as you can get without actually razor shaving). That, along with a goatee, works for me. I do still use Nizoral, for the record.....mainly just out of old habit and for general scalp health. I was planning to order some Revivogen again, but haven't done so yet. I haven't been in any big hurry to do so. I still pop in occasionally just to see what's new (which usually isn't much).........but I can say that acceptance has given me far more peace of mind than Rogaine Foam, Revivogen, ProCede, Zix, Propecia, Proscar, or Spectral DNC ever did. I can definitely say, though, that I always found HLH to be the best hairloss website out there.

What stuff did he post from my computer? I must have missed that.

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Disclaimer - I am not a physician or an expert and my advice should not be considered medical/expert advice. - If you follow my opinions and/or advice you do so at your own risk.

I agree...I've been posting on this site for 5 or 6 years now. I've never been an awfully prolific poster, but I have done a LOT of reading and know who all the old timers are. There were periods I would visit almost daily, and periods I wouldn't.

And you know what? The periods I wouldn't are the ones I remember as happier times in my life. I was too busy going out, travelling, meeting friends, meeting a new girlfriend, doing sports, reading, getting a Master's degree, too busy to be obsessed about my hair loss. Don't get me wrong, the awareness of the hair loss is there, and there's the odd morning when you look in the mirror and think, "damn! I'm balder!". But overall, you forget about it totally and just LIVE! I thought that in 5 years I would be a complete cueball and I'm really not...yes, I've lost quite a bit of hair, but I'm nowhere near as bad as I thought I would be when I was wasting time obsessing like a maniac. When I would come here every day and spend time ordering crapola that may or may not work, it didn't make feel any better - in fact, it made me feel worse - and the stuff was never especially useful (if it was useful at all, which it wasn't 95% of the time).

The point is that so much of this is wasted time. There are just a few things that will truly make a difference and we all know what they are - Big 3 and maybe one or two others. That's it, end of story. You can buy a bunch of extra vitamins and pills and experiment with this or that snake oil, or order Dr. Whatever's super-lotion online, or ask about the latest website offering some concoction. It's all BS. Which is why people argue back and forth about it...there's so much subjectivity involved that a conclusion will never be reached. "Oh, I use sipchinlysyabnaxxx and it's awesome! And I take frog intestine pills and they're helping...I can see a few new hairs! OMG" and someone comes in and says, "No, thats BS!". Etc etc. Six years ago, people were speculating and touting how x new medicine was about to come out in *just a few years* or that y drug was *just around the corner* and was going to change things. And people were bickering like hell about what worked and what didn't work. Just like now. The difference is, nothing really, truly changed. There is still nothing that can challenge Big 3 and the tiny handful of effective medicine. Then something like Toppik with the little sprayer gadget is nice for the occasional extra bit of coverup. Everything else is either so midly effective so as to make no difference on what your genetics dictate or is BS. Either way, it's a waste of time and money. So you look back and realize that all the fixating and nonsense over the years has been pretty futile because progress is unbelievably slow. I used to indulge in the same mental masturbation as everyone else - oh, in 6 years an awesome cure will be here! Guess what, today is that future and we're nowhere near it. Nowhere near. I'm sure someone will come on here and point out bits & pieces of progress....yes, sure, someday we'll have something better, but it may be 10, 20, 30 years. Who knows? But I'm not going to chase the mirage because in 20 years a monster chunk of my life will be gone, along with probably all of my hair, so who gives a shít?

Does that mean coming on here is pointless? Of course, not it's a fabulous site that is still enormously useful because there are always beginners who want to learn & get informed - we can help them. I was just telling some young pup about Nizoral and so on, this is good. Or there are always new things to try out in terms of technique (e.g., what happens if I apply Toppik this way instead of that, or whatever), or if someone is doing their due dilligence on the forums before a hair transplant, or if you're experiencing a Propecia side effect and want to connect with others who have gone through it. This is great. But so much of it is just fretting & fussing over minutiae that CANT HELP YOU ANYWAY! There is no miracle cure, only a few small proven things that can help you hold the fort, kinda sorta....we all know what those things are, and they havent changed over the past 6 years. Trust me, I was here at the time. Sure, you get the few odd new twists like Rogaine foam but there have been no major changes. It's all an industry and people trying to make money off you with false promises and exaggerated claims....but trust me, when something that makes any kind of singificant difference does come out, youll hear of it immediately.

In the meantime, I find it's best to only come to this site when absolutely necessary and go out and enjoy life. The less you stress about it, the better you feel, the more attractive your vibe is, the more you can focus on healthy eating and exercise, the more you can spend time with your family before they die, the more you can shop for clothes that will make you look amazing, the more you can indulge on your hobbies, the more you can work so you can buy Rogaine, Niz and Propecia....and dare I say it, when you're living a stress-free life, I think your hair even falls out at a slower rate.

There's the central Buddhist tenet that attachment lies at the root of all suffering...you can apply it as attachment to your life, which you will eventually lose, or even small things, like being so attached to the idea of eating a burger today that if my friends choose another restaurant I'll be mopey and not enjoy. Same goes for hair....suffering comes from holding on tooth & nail and not surrendering and accepting. Me, I don't fully accept it - I found 3 things that work for me, I use them, and end of story. I don't continue experimenting with thing after thing after thing, debating endlessly, which leads to more worrying. Kudos to those of you on the front line who are experimenting with all this stuff, but I think we're nowhere near an effective cure yet.

And if I ever go full-on bald to the point I can't take it, I'll get a hair transplant and then forget about it again.

Cheers.

Edited: 12/06/2008 at 12:42 PM by wildriff