If you consumed a hair loss pill everyday, you would be almost sure to retain a full crown of hair. The pill is known as propecia and it is a result of scientific serendipity, which is another way of saying that it is a fortunate, accidental result… Read Story Here

Reading Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and other clinical tales I was overwhelmed at the idea of the perception-of-self illustrated through these stories. Starting from a neurological point of view one is confronted with extraordinary conditions that express the complexity we possess.

It is tempting to reduce the complexities of existence to a purely mechanistic understanding, a biology book or chemistry text, more often than not will contain such an account. Observational views of reactions and regrowth, taking for granted the fact that they organize and behave as they do simply bypassing the question of overall organizational direction that takes place in complex systems.

Sacks presents the story of a man Jimmie who had seemingly lost his ability to retain new memories past a certain age. He lived as if he were perpetually twenty-four years old (though nearly twice that age at the time of the story) and as one can imagine the continual shock of unfamiliarity and uncertainty can be disastrous to being human. Sacks questions this purely mechanical view of being and goes on to deliver a volume of parables that shed some light on the matter.

“Hume wrote, ‘that we are nothing but a bundle or collection of different sensations, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.’ In some sense, he has been reduced to a ‘Humean’ Being–I could not help thinking how fascinated Hume would have been at seeing Jimmie his own philosophical ‘chimera’ incarnate, a gruesome reduction of a man to mere disconnected, incoherent flux and change.” (Sacks 30)

Sacks quickly returns to defining and describing neurological control systems, however one is unable to help but think of the implications these stories have against a purely mechanistic view. In the first few stories one is introduced to the system of proprioception, it gives us the ability to “feel our bodies as proper to us, as our property, as our own.” (Sacks 43) It is one of three main systems that give us a sense of the body, the other two being vision and the vestibular system or balance organs.

The story is given of a woman who due to a toxic shock was left without her proprioceptive system shows just how crucial this is to our perception of self and how easily we take it for granted, perhaps never even considered. The woman, Chris, was forced to rely upon her optical system to monitor and watch her body, but it was as if it were not her own. The stories that follow go on to illustrate different sense perceptions related to proprioception but in smaller increments.

Phantom limbs, many have heard of, give the sense that one possesses a limb where it had been removed. One man… “whenever he moved his hand toward his face–for example to eat or scratch his nose–he was afraid that his phantom finger would poke his eye out. (He knew this to be impossible, but the feeling was irresistible.)” (Sacks 67). This ‘irresistible’ feeling is enough to make one marvel at the complexity of neurology yet Sacks continues to provide even more intriguing thoughts.

“All amputees, and all who work with them, know that a phantom limb is essential if an artificial limb is to be used . . . One such patient, under my care, describes how he must ‘wake-up’ his phantom in the mornings. First he flexes his thigh-stump towards him, and then he slaps it sharply–’like a baby’s bottom’–several times. On the fifth or sixth slap the phantom suddenly shoots forth, rekindled, fulgurated, by the peripheral stimulus. Only then can he put on his prosthesis and walk.” (Sacks 69)

What exactly is proprioception and what else does it control? Where do the original spatial concepts come from? Are they passed on in ones DNA? Is it proprioception that drives embryonic growth, healing, regrowth, cell differentiation? How does the nervous system interact with  this overall control system? Why is it that without this system some may intellectually know but still lack the ability to compensate for a deficit? Like the woman with hemi-inattention.

“Sometimes, she will put on lipstick, and make up the right half of her face leaving the left half completely neglected: it is almost impossible to treat those things, because attention cannot be drawn to them [...] and she has no conception that they are wrong. She knows it intellectually, and can understand, and laugh; But it is impossible for her to know it directly.” (Sacks 77)

Do things such as faith, belief, and meditation enact these spatial controls in our minds thus driving and catlyzing things such as healing or positive feedback loops? The implications are intriguing.

The last section of the book is the ‘world of the simple’ where Sacks gives new perspective to individuals that are often overlooked and written off as simply mentally handicapped. His sensitive observations of one girl revealed how her sense of self of self-perception though handicapped in a traditional sense was instead expressed in a ‘narrative’ organization of the world. In fact she seemed to excel in her grasp of narrative as it connected her whole world. Other similar patients showed tendencies toward musical and narrative understandings of reality.

When one looks are the power of metaphore it becomes obvious how essential stories are to the basis of linguistics, morality, biology, religion, just to name a few. Sacks points out the common mistake of giving narrative and metaphore such little importance when approaching the mentally handicapped. This makes one consider how it may be lacking in their own personal life even though we may excell in other ’intellectual’ modes. Overall this well written volume causes one to reconsider the importance and function of healthy self perception. Most importantly it leads ones mind toward more questions. {tb}

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said in a press conference this week that the country is “turning a new chapter and that chapter is providing opportunities for Zimbabweans who are probably now living in worse conditions abroad (than they would at home).”

After fire the grass tree (Xanthoria australis) flowers in a spectacular and prolific manner. This particular one had a flower stem about 3m in height. It was not only this that attracted me to this particular specimen but the smaller ‘dolphin’ shaped flower near the crown. Whilst the light this particular morning might have sucked for landscape photography it provided other opportunities. For more information and images involving native Australian vegetation’s adaptation to living with and depending upon fire check out a post Cain Doherty has recently added to his blog from a visit to the Kinglake NP area post ‘black Saturday’.

‘ Xanthoria australis  –  Canon 5D2. ’

by Ralph Meima, MBA Program Director

J.R.R. Tolkien’s elves treasured woods in mystical and practical ways.  Peter Jackson captures their reverence in his first Lord of the Rings movie, when the heroes traverse the forest of Lothlórien and ultimately reach the city/grove of Caras Galadhon, deep in the region named the Naith.

Through an accident of history, technology, and the global power balance, here in Brattleboro we live surrounded by forests.  In our busy lives, many of us take them for granted.  A century ago, however, almost all of them had been cut back to the highest ridges and narrowest valleys, replaced by open crop and pasture land.  Old photos of Windham County depict this.

It wasn’t that long ago.  It was when the vast majority of our food, feed, fuel, and fiber (the “Four F’s”) came from local sources.  In 1900, Vermont’s population topped 343,000.  About 85% of the landscape had been deforested to support that population plus nearby states with less productive land per person.  Then, the sheep moved to New Zealand and Australia.  New transportation and storage/preservation technologies allowed us to buy most of our food from distant places like California, with higher agricultural productivity.  We switched from wood to fossil fuels that came from other states and countries.

And the forests grew back, quietly, year after year.

Several weeks ago, I took an all-day hike from my front door downtown through miles of forest, never needing my car.  After stopping at the Co-op for trail snacks, I crossed the Hinsdale bridge and climbed the switchbacks to the top of Mount W.  From there, I hiked the ridge trail down to Indian Pond, over Daniels Mountain, through Bear Mountain State Forest, and into Pisgah State Park to Kilburn Pond.  The round-trip distance was around 18 miles.  In a whole day of walking, I met three people.  As terrain, soils, and orientations shifted, the trail passed through areas dominated by white pine, hemlock, maple, birch, oaks and hickory, beech, and other tree species.  The biggest animals I saw were chipmunks and squirrels, but from my winter trips there, I knew that deer, moose, bear, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, beavers, turkey, owls, raptors, and all the varieties of weasel creatures, rodents, and other small mammals and birds were somewhere nearby.  Around me was an extraordinary, contiguous testament to New Hampshire’s successes at land conservation: Mount Wantastiquet State Forest (520 acres), Madame Sherri Forest (488 acres), Bear Mountain State Forest (about 100 acres?), and Pisgah State Park, with 13,668 acres (more than 21 square miles) of wild land. The result is a Lothlórien in our own corner of New England, and that’s before including all the other publicly accessible forests near here.

The fact is, if late-19^th Century industrialization had been any guide to the future, those forests wouldn’t even be there.  They were almost lost.  Luck and the efforts of conservationists saved them.

I’m all for the localization of the economy.  Everything I see, hear, and read suggests that sourcing the Four F’s much closer to home will contribute to a saner, more peaceful, and more ecologically healthy planet.  But what is clear is that our technology and practices must leap forward again, as much as they did from the late 1800s to the late 1900s, for this to be possible without once again destroying our home forests.  With Vermont’s modern population and the resource intensity of our way of life, if we were forced to become primarily dependent on local biological resources again, what has grown back as forest land would rapidly give way to intensive cultivation, grazing, and clear-cutting, and our water quality, air quality, biodiversity, carbon cycle, and the essential quality of our lives would suffer catastrophically.  One need only look at Haiti, Madagascar, and regions of China and India.  (Most recent studies of biomass supplies, for example, indicate that they could only meet a few percent of a typical state’s total energy needs if used sustainably.)

What’s good for the forest is good for humanity.  One of the greatest challenges of the next decades is to find ways to regenerate and maintain diverse, extensive, contiguous forests while obtaining the Four F’s locally.  Permaculture, intensive organic farming, higher living density on smaller footprints, net-zero-energy houses and buildings, bioenergy, other renewable energy technologies, dematerialization, recycling and industrial ecology, mass transit, and high-efficiency vehicles all offer pieces of the puzzle.  None of them will develop without extensive R&D, public ecological and science literacy, willingness to adopt new ways of living, investment, and – perhaps most importantly – a deepened reverence for the forest we live in, steadily regaining its integrity around us, all by itself.

Today, I will continue my “control” series with a post about healing macros.  As I mentioned yesterday, I combine mouseover macros and Grid with my Nostromo for maximum efficiency.  Many people seem intimidated by macros.  However, once you understand the basics you will see that macros are actually very easy to work with.  Below, I will show you how to duplicate a macro that I use.

It may sound obvious, but the first and most important thing you need to do is decide exactly what you want it to do.  For this example, I want a macro that does the following things.

1. Cast Nourish on my Mouseover target.
2. Cast Nourish on my target.
3. Cast Nourish on myself.
4. Cast Regrowth on my Mouseover target when I hold down Alt.
5. Cast Regrowth on my Target when I hold down Alt.
6. Cast Regrowth on myself when I hold down Alt.
7. Cast Tranquility on my group when I hold down Shift.

I actually have a macro that does all of the things I listed above.  It happens to be my most “complicated” macro, but in reality it is still very simple.

So let’s construct the macro that we planned above.  One important thing to note:  If you are using a macro that checks for modifier keys (alt, control, shift, etc.) you will need to put the unmodified spell/ability last.

Cast Nourish on my Mouseover target

/cast [target=mouseover]Nourish

Pretty simple Huh?  There are actually a couple other things that you need to add in order to check for conditions.  The keyword Help determines if the target is a friendly target and the keyword exists determines whether or not your target exists.  The importance of this will be explained later, but it does add a little more complexity to our macro.

/cast [target=mouseover,exists,help]Nourish

Now that you understand the modifiers this is still pretty simple.

Cast Nourish on my target

/cast [target=target,exists,help]Nourish

This one is very similar to the macro above.  The only difference is we use the keyword target to refer to our target. The additional modifiers help and exists are still needed here.

Cast Nourish on myself

/cast [target=player]Nourish

This one is really easy.  The Player keyword simply refers to yourself.  For reasons that I will explain later, the help and exists are not required in this macro.

Cast Regrowth on my Mouseover target when I hold down Alt

/cast [mod:alt,target=mouseover,exists,help]Regrowth

This macro is almost exactly the same as its Nourish counterpart except for the mod:alt part.  All that argument does is check whether or not “alt” is pressed down when the macro is selected.  If it is not, the entire command is skipped.

Cast Regrowth on my Target when I hold down Alt

/cast [mod:alt,target=target,exists,help]Regrowth

Probably not much explanation needed.  Again, the only thing different from its Nourish counterpart is the Alt check modifier.

Cast Regrowth on myself when I hold down Alt

/cast [mod:alt,target=player]Regrowth

Again, this is the same as its counterpart with the exception of the alt modifier.

Cast Tranquility on my group when I hold down Shift

/cast [mod:shift]Tranquility

Now that we have all of the macro functionality defined, we need to put all the pieces together.

Let’s start by combining all the parts dealing with Nourish.

/cast [target=mouseover,exists,help][target=target,exists,help][target=player]Nourish

Okay, now all of the sudden it looks complicated again.  It’s really not.  If you look closely, all we really did was remove all the redundancy.  The modifiers should also make sense now.  Let me explain exactly what this macro does.

1. If my mouseover target exists and is friend cast Nourish on it.
2. If I do not have a mouseover target or it is not friendly, then check if I have a friendly target.  If I do cast Nourish on it.
3. If neither steps 1 or 2 are true, then cast Nourish on myself.

If that still does not make sense to you, feel free to contact me.

Next let’s combine the Regrowth parts of the macro.

/cast [mod:alt,target=mouseover,exists,help][mod:alt,target=target,exists,help][mod:alt,target=player]Regrowth

The Regrowth section is exactly the same as the Nourish section with the exception of the alt modifier check.

Now let’s put it all together

#showtooltip

/cast [mod:alt,target=mouseover,exists,help][mod:alt,target=target,exists,help][mod:alt,target=player]Regrowth; [mod:shift]Tranquility; [target=mouseover,exists,help][target=target,exists,help][target=player]Nourish

Again, since Nourish does not have a modifier it needs to go last in the macro.  Otherwise, the condition statements will never get checked and it will always cast Nourish no matter what modifier key you have pressed.  You also need to separate commands by a semi-colon.  Other than that there are only 2 differences.  First, showtooltip does exactly what it says. Second, we removed the redundant instances of /cast.

I hope after reading this post you will be able to create your own or at least be able to decipher other macros that you find.  As always, if you have any questions feel free to comment or contact me.  Using these types of macros in conjunction with a device such as a Nostromo will make healing much easier and more efficient for you.

Related Posts

Controls, Keybinds and Macros Oh My! (Part 1 of 3)

Controls, Keybinds and Macros Oh My (Part 3 of 3)

Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. Today we root around our inbox and herd a series of scribbled notes across our desk, trying to get what we actually know about patch 3.3 in order. Also, Zach Yonzon�s PhotoShop skills for the win, but we already knew that.

This week�s column is going to be a little bit of a grab bag in much the same way that our patch 3.1 miscellany post was, because there have been a few changes on the PTR recently that we haven�t yet discussed.

Before we get any farther, I�d also like to give a shout-out to our readers and commenters on last week�s column, “The disappearance of the bear.” I was a little antsy over how it was going to be received (lengthy articles on what�s going wrong with a spec can get derailed into QQ-fests pretty easily, and that wasn�t my intent), but was heartened to see so much quality discussion. One of the things I realized after reading through the comments was that Blizzard may actually have succeeded a little too well in their quest to make tanking more attractive and fun to the average player. WoW�s four tanking classes (warrior, paladin, druid, and death knight) comprise 4 of the 5 most popular classes in the game right now. As I�ve written previously, the druid functions as the proverbial canary in the coal mine as a harbinger of class balance concerns, and with each of the game�s plate classes numbering among the most played at 80, it�s impossible for this not to have an impact on druid spec choice.

Anyway. For the moment, we are going to turn away from this rather depressing situation, and concern ourselves with what�s going on in patch 3.3.

What are the current patch notes?

As always, the most recent version of the PTR patch notes can be found here on Blizzard�s PTR page. The only recent change that�s been omitted (I think) is that the most recent build includes the following change:

Gift of the Earthmother: Now also reduces the base cooldown on your Lifebloom spell by 2/4/6/8/10%.

More on this in just a bit (and yes, that�s in addition to the existing GotE change that�s a flat 2/4/6/8/10% improvement to spell +haste).

What the hell is going on with Rejuvenation?

(As an aside, I shouldn�t have laughed at Nailer�s take on this from the EJ forums, but I did: “Well, there is nothing left from Lifebloom to nerf, so we saw it coming.”)

The max-rank Rejuvenation was first the target of a bug-fix, which was really a nerf, then it was un-nerfed, but it�s kind of still nerfed because of the changes to Gift of the Earthmother…and…./scribbles and starts over again.

Right. In the first patch 3.3 PTR build, Blizzard had corrected a bug (that has apparently existed for the duration of Wrath) where rank 15 Rejuvenation was healing for a base 15 seconds instead of the normal 12. Problem is, that�s partly what�s powered Restoration�s amazing raid-healing capacity, and players were not happy that the “bug fix” constituted a 20% nerf to the existing spell. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth and threats to defenestrate later, Blizzard changed the duration back to a base 15 seconds but is still tinkering with Gift of the Earthmother. Per Ghostcrawler, this has a lot less to do with Rejuvenation itself than it does to do with the cumulative effect of both the Rejuvenation nerf and the GotE changes being too harsh on Resto, and they didn�t want that.

So the answer to “What the hell is going on with Rejuvenation?” is — nothing, at least for the moment. It�s the exact same “bugged” spell, healing for the same amount for the same duration for the same mana cost on both the live realms and the current PTR build. But this still leaves Rejuv in a place where the developers have acknowledged it�s healing for too much and too long. Don�t be surprised if we see a Rejuv nerf in either patch 4.0 (the Cataclysm content patch) or shortly after Cataclysm goes live.

OK, so what�s up with Gift of the Earthmother?

Nerfsville, baby. Well, sort of. As Ghostcrawler observed, upcoming changes aren�t really meant to be a nerf: “(They�re) aimed at not making haste such a wonky stat for Resto.” The deal with Gift of the Earthmother is that, as gear has improved over the duration of Wrath, +haste has become steadily less and less useful because we were already shaving 20% off the base GCD of three frequently-cast spells (Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, and Wild Growth). Gift of the Earthmother on the live realms is worth close to 1,000 +haste rating for these abilities. Because there�s no way to get below a 1-second GCD, this meant that most of the +haste and/or +haste procs on trinkets and gear were largely wasted itemization on three very commonly-used spells in both PvE and PvP.

So what does the Gift of the Earthmother change do to our existing spells?

Dreambound Druid had a great article on precisely this right here that you should read, but as a means of shorthanding everything:

If it�s not currently affected by GotE (e.g. Regrowth, Nourish), it�s going to get faster.

If it is currently affected by GotE (e.g. LB, Rejuv, and WG), it�s going to get slower (less so for Lifebloom). +Haste effects will, however, be significantly more useful for all three.

Regrowth is likely to be the big winner of the GotE changes. Although it�s still unlikely to replace either Rejuvenation as a raid heal or Nourish as a spot heal, it�ll be possible at existing levels of gear, talents, and a few raid buffs to get its cast time close to (and even less than) the base cast time for Nourish (i.e. 1.5 seconds). Nourish, in a very surprising development with absolutely no precedent whatsoever, gets a nice buff as well. I was ready to say that Rejuvenation was going to be the big loser even though we�ll still be using it, but then there�s this new glyph…

Do tell.

Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation. �Nuff said.

However, I can�t be the only person who finds it funny that so many Restos will happily slot in a glyph that, despite its benefits, functionally accomplishes the exact same Rejuv duration penalty that people were so terrified of with the initial Rejuv “bug fix.” Lissanna�s done some testing if you want a look at how the glyph currently functions on the PTR.

Wait a minute. Isn�t +haste an equally screwy stat for Balance?

Yes, which the developers aren�t happy about. Any moonkin with halfway-decent gear is likely to be haste-capped for the Wrath portion of his/her rotation, which creates the exact same problem Restoration currently experiences with Gift of the Earthmother, except much, much worse. Being haste-capped on a spell that�s essentially 40-ish% of a Balance player�s normal rotation creates two issues: a). a UI issue, because you can�t queue a spell while it�s on the GCD, and b). a gear issue, because +haste is frickin� everywhere and most of it is completely wasted on one of Balance�s two main nukes. In another touch of irony, Starfire (the other main nuke) does great with +haste, to the point where all the +haste on early Wrath gear was enormously prejudiced toward the use of a lunar rotation before the patch 3.2 Eclipse change.

Read on for part 2 (which is funnier) >>

• “It feels like someone kicked me in the stomach.  I’ve gotten my breath back, but now all I do is cry”
• “If I continue to feel this way, I’d rather be dead.  What do I do with the pain?”
• “Right now I feel no hope that I’ll ever experience Joy again.  I have no idea what to do. I can see no way out”

Have you ever heard someone say something like this?   Have you ever said this yourself or maybes something like it?  Well congratulations, you’re perfectly normal.  In the last eight months of my life, I have said these things and a few things that were probably a little more intense than those.    I remember though that life often runs in cycles and one of those cycles is the premise for the fifth chapter of the book; The Rhythm of Hope.    HAPPINESS ->DESPAIR->JOY .   The author states that this cycle should be familiar to any honest person who is sincerely trying to follow this pot-hold ridden road called Christianity.   This leads me to a question about why Christians feel this sense of entitlement (which inevitably leads them to the despair phase).   Anyhow, I would take this a step further and say that most anybody should probably be familiar with this cycle.

Can I just say here that sometimes, I really hate fucking computers!!  I sat down this morning and after taking an almost one month break from writing, I wrote the next installment in my series and it actually made sense.   Finally, I wanted to add a picture to wrap up the whole idea and then BAM!, WordPress locked up on me.  I couldn’t get the image library screen to go away.  It was like a bad dream.  Then I hit the refresh button and got my post back but when I went to save it…nothingness.   So like a good Christian, I slammed my mouse onto the table, yelled Goddamnit really loud and stormed away from the table in a huff.   As I was walking away, I laughed as I remembered that for a time, I would have believed that this happened because I had something very important to be said; so much so that Satan himself came into my computer and sabotaged it causing everything to freeze up and the normally “johnny-0n-the-spot” autosave function to not work at all.    AS IF!!

I do remember from my original post a point that I made about despair turning into joy.  One of my greatest loves on the face of this earth is Yosemite National Park and I have actually mentioned it in my writing here at Simply A Night Owl.  Back in the late 1990’s, there was a bad fire on the southern portion of the park between the Fish Camp entrance and Yosemite West Lodge.   The sight of the scored and charred earth, trees and forest was enough to bring me to tears.  Several years later though, I drove through that area again and what I saw was different; life had reappeared.  New life and new growth had emerged from what had been destroyed.    Something very good had come out of something very bad.   This lesson has stayed with me throughout the years and when necessary, it comes to the forefront of my memory.

A lot of years ago, I bought into the party line that once I accepted Christ, everything would be better and for a time it really was.  This was the happiness portion of this cycle.  One might also call this the infancy of my true Christianity because in reality, I felt very blessed and everything was going really well.   In truth, I was being bottle fed.    Enter the despair portion of the cycle.   In this part of the cycle, divorces happen, people lose their jobs and homes, bills become hard to pay and bankruptcy occurs, those we know and love die from horrible diseases and unexplainable accidents.    Sometimes, those who we called our church family are the first to abandon us as if we are carrying some kind of very contagious plague.  In the last eight months though, I have been weened from the bottle.   It’s crunch time.   My forest has been burned down and now it’s up to me to trust in God that the old is going to become fertilizer for the new; that in the end, out of the destruction will come new life.

Maybe that rule even applied to my original post!

So this is pretty much impossible for me to wrap my wee little brain around but apparently peeps down at Wake Forest University have developed a technology that will allow people to grow their own organs.  I have been praying and begging for this technology ever since I reached legal drinking age-I will be able to regrow my own liver!  YES!

So I think this also portends the end of days, apocalypse, etc because I just don’t think people will be able to handle living forever…but I could be wrong…but 2012 is soon…think on it…maybe just the introduction of the technology will cause the fall.  I mean, how much does it cost?  What’s to stop everyone from just growing a spare set of everything?  If you’re in a car accident, you don’t know what you’re going to need.  Anyhoo, interesting stuff.

Also interesting to note, O kind of screwed the reduced your calories-you’re going to live forever-benjamin button style people by talking about the diet first (which no one wants to do because you pretty much eat twigs and berries) and THEN the organ growing story (which everyone wants to do because all you have to do is give them some cells!)

Dr. Oz on Innovations in Regenerative Medicine – Oprah.com.

Tired of hair loss? Find a great regrowth treatment program so you can get your

hair back and get your confidence back—it’s easier than you think!

Hair loss is a huge pain in the neck—or scalp, but it is something you can easily

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should begin with prevention—don’t wear a hat too often, don’t pull on it or tug

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check out a regrowth treatment program for your hair loss, thankfully there is a

good handful of them available these days.

To begin with we have products like Rogaine which help to target the scalp and

your hair. These products are effective but they aren’t as powerful as they could

be. It is a great idea to use something like this along with other methods as

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effects—always put safety first.

Secondly there is a great new product called Provillus which can help to regrow

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Considering to recover your hair is important since once it is gone it is gone

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otherwise it may become more difficult to get the results you want.

Get rid of hair loss once and for all—get started at http://www.hairloss-fixed.com so you can get your

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Friend after

Friend before

Does Looking 10 years older frustrate you?

Daryl here…. I’m a balding dude in his late 30’s, I wanted to gain my confidence and youthful look back by regrowing my hair. Going bald can make you look years older and with most men and women…. also take away a lot of your sex appeal.

IF YOU DON’T WANT TO READ THIS  ENTIRE PAGE, AND JUST WANT TO GET A FREE TRIAL OF A PRODUCT THAT REALLY GROWS HAIR ………. CLICK HERE

You’re probably here because like me, you’ve been searching for that *miracle product* that will allow you to grow your hair back, or at the very least keep you from losing more. Well….you can learn from my mistakes!

WHAT THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT & HOW IT WILL HELP YOU & YOUR HAIR

If you want that gorilla-fur thick hair on your head, then you must keep reading. I’m going to go into great detail in this article about how the hairs on my head fell out and, how I started my hair restoration search, what products I used, what worked, what didn’t, and where I am now. I will do my best to link to references and information on everything I talk about so that I keep this page manageable, yet allow you to get as much information as possible.

TO GROW HAIR OR NOT TO GROW HAIR… THAT IS THE QUESTION.

For many of us, stopping our hair from falling out isn’t enough – the damage is done and we either need to find a solution to get the lost hair back, or we do what most of us do, and that is shave it all off, grow a goat-tee, and try to look cool.

For me, that wasn’t really an option. I look like a cancer patient when I shave all my hair off. To make matters worse, I must have been dropped when I was a baby… To be blunt, I am one of those guys that looks so so to start with but ugly without hair. Hey, just being brutally honest. Speaking of being honest, I cracked in to the pressure and shaved my head, but I refuse to grow the obligatory goatee that goes with it.                                                                                                              

WHAT PRODUCTS HAVE I USED?

So let me save you a lot of time by showing you the things I have researched and the products I have used. I’m starting from the beginning with things that didn’t work, to things that may have worked, to things that did work, and seemed best for me.  You can make up your decision as to what’s best for you:

HAIR LOSS PRODUCTS in detail

Hair Transplant Surgery – This was one of the first things I had looked into. Plugs or terrible looking hair replacement options were a thing of the past, and the new thing was hair transplants , I once tried the wiggy feeling tupae , can’t believe I did now that I look back. Spent over a thousand for it….but it looked terrible on me cause the fake hair did’nt even match my original hair for starters….and secondly, it always felt like it was going to fall off  at any time….That was a thousand dollars wasted….… now back to hair transplants,which is when they take a strip of flesh from the back of your head just above your neck, and cut it out to harvest the hairs from it. These hairs are then surgically implanted into your bald spots. The premise is that this hair transplant puts new hair on your bald spot by using hairs that are resistant to falling out because they are from an area of your head where hair loss doesn’t happen. The problem for me was that it was very costly, painful after effects, and the thought of any type of surgery worries me……and although the process did have satifactory results….I learned that even after the surgery, I  still have to take some type of hair loss treatment drug,  like some of the ones I am mentioning in this article….so why not skip the surgery if possible? I would have skipped the surgery if this new product that I am using now would have been out ……see I have to use some type of hair regrowth product to keep my hair line from further receding from the area where the surgical hairs were placed. My friend never had surgery and his hairline looks just as good as mine! Just by using this new product that I will tell you about later in this report.  The art of science! Now let me tell you about some things I tried before and after my surgery……

Rogaine (Minoxidil)– This is a topical solution that you rub onto your bald spots. You can find out everything you want to know about Minoxidil by visiting the Rogaine website,  I tried Rogaine and the first month or so, I started seeing hair growth, Unfortunately, It only started growing hair on the top of my head, and it does work well for balding on the top of the head…but not for frontal receding hair lines…..with this being said…if you are only balding on top of  your head, this product may be just for you, and it really works from what I have experienced…but I needed frontal growth to. Also, rogaine released a foam version of the product after the original solution, but it does not work half as good as the original solution….so dont waste your money on it! . You have to apply it more regularly than the product I settle for, but for some that may not be an issue. This product does work for females as well as males. You can get some of the original solution of rogaine for yourself by clicking here…. GET ROGAINE…… this will take you to a site that sells Rogaine for a good price called eVitamins, and you can also read some of the real testemonials people wrote about this product, before you  actually buy it. You may want to read on to see what worked best for me though…..or you may want to try rogaine first due to its longer time of being on the market…..

Spironolactone – I learned about this hair loss remedy compound from bodybuilders who were losing their hair from juicing too much and were looking for a way to keep from shedding their hair on their head while on the roids. Spironolactone proved to be an effective DHT blocker when rubbed on your scalp. In other words, your hair falls out because of high levels of DHT in your scalp, but by applying Spiro to your scalp, it blocks the DHT from killing your hair follicles and you’re golden.

Sounds like the perfect cure right? Wrong.

Here’s why. It’s a liquid solution you rub onto your scalp, like Rogaine. The version I had came in a long skinny tube that was like a roll-on deodorant. The roller would roll on my scalp and leave it’s magical juice behind. Because of this, it was the same pain in the ass that Rogaine was.

But Spironolactone was worse. Spiro comes with a special smell. Yup, this little treasure has the odor of a striped feline we call… the skunk. I swear, my head smelled like an arm pit with B.O. It was terrible! I would ONLY use it at night, because the smell was too embarrassing to wear it to work. When I was using this, I was a single guy, and as single guys do, I would hunt for a lady friend whenever given the chance, and this smell just wasn’t going to work.From my research, Spironolactone doesn’t really grow hair back – it just keeps you from losing the hairs you already have.

Propecia (Finasteride) This is a pill that has shown promising results as a hair loss remedy in studies. But there’s a catch, and you have to be a big man to handle it. (Its also the only product on this page that will not work for women.) More on that in a minute. It’s only available by perscription….so you have to see your doctor first before using it.

Buying Propecia sounded like the perfect thing for me. Pop a pill every day, and my hair loss would stop and possibly even grow back. Studies have shown that 80% of men who take propecia stop losing their hair, so I got a Propecia prescription and tried it out myself. One Propecia prescription later, I was on it.

I realized weeks into taking Propecia that my libido was just non-existent. This was a time where I did have a girlfriend, and having a libido was important, to me and her. There were times during sex where I just couldn’t get a full erection and this was very embarrassing. I had no idea it was the Propecia, and actually looked into reasons why a young guy like me was having erectile dysfunction issues. It was during this research that I realized Propecia can cause this.

Worse yet, there have been cases of Propecia induced impotence. You read that right – guys that took Propecia and then when they came off of it, even 2 or 3 years after the fact, they were impotent and couldn’t get an erection. Lucky for me, my sex drive and issues went back to the way they were within months of stopping usage. Propecia did not lead to Viagra, at least for me

Nizoral Shampoo – Nizoral really isn’t for hair loss treatment,  but it does help by keeping the hairs left from falling out.  At one time, you couldn’t get this shampoo anywhere in the states, It was only a Mexican brand of shampoo that contained 2% nizoral. Nizoral is a compound that is said to stop hair loss. It’s actually used for dandruff, but people are using it to help stop hair loss.

You should only use it twice per week, otherwise you can dry up your scalp. To this day, I still use Nizoral shampoo and recommend it as a small hair loss remedy, and since you can now pick it up at many local stores.  Use this with Provillus for good results. More on Provillus below.

Procerin– I found this one in an online ad. I was already using the Nizoral shampoo and was looking for something inexpensive to try to regrow some of my hair. The Nizoral also needed a little help from something else, to stop my shedding, so this looked promising.

The ingredients of Procerin were all natural at the time I ordered it, so the risk of impotence or libido obstruction seemed improbably. I ordered the Procerin tablets. 90 days later I stopped when I ran out. My girlfriend said she didn’t notice any difference in my hairline. I didn’t either. It was a waste.

Scalp Med – Before I finished my Procerin, I had seen the infomercial on Scalp Med and it looked really good. But it was a cream for the scalp again. Sheesh! I am starting to think this is the only way to go, even though I hate it. I saw the commercial again a couple months after I had finished the Procerin and decided to order 4 months of the product.

First of all, it comes with a Cortex Enlarger which is hair spray that is supposed to penetrate your hairs and give you instant fullness. I noticed a slight improvement but the other two solutions were of more value.

The good news is that ScalpMed also comes with two other bottles: Vitadil-5A and Vitadil-2A. I stuck with it for several months and was showing some actual progress! This stuff was working. The bad news is that I ran out of money and it was either grow hair or pay rent.

So I started researching ways to create my own version of scalp med. Interestingly enough, the active ingredient in Scalp Med is Minoxidil. Yup, we’re back to square one…. Remember that Minoxidil is the generic name for Rogaine. The difference between Scalp Med and Rogaine is that Scalp Med has a variety of ingredients in it, but more importantly, I actually used this for a handful of months until I ran out of cash. With Rogaine, I didn’t give it a chance. With this, I gave it a chance and ran out of cash.

THE WINNING PRODUCT FOR ME..(PROVILLUS)…CONTINUE TO READ ON AND SEE  WHY!                                    

Provillus– While researching Scalp Med, I came across some chaps online that were talking about another product that hit the market called Provillus. There were an abundance of good testimonials about the product, so I looked into it. I soon learned this product was getting rave reviews from both men and women!

This product comes with both a topical solution and some tablets you take orally. Interestingly enough, the ingredient list looks very similar to Scalp Med. The tablets use natural ingredients to help combat DHT, and since they are natural, they don’t cause the terrible ‘libido-killer’ side effects that you get with Propecia. Thank you Jesus! Click Here To See The Ingredient List

The active ingredient in the Provillus topical solution is again Minoxidil – the same stuff that you get with Rogaine and with Scalp Med.

It also has another very interesting ingredient called Azelaic Acid which helps kill bacteria in the hair follicles, and regenerates the follicle lining and damaged skin cells.

Together, based on the active ingredients, they are very similar to Scalp Med, but are a fraction of the cost. For example, Scalp Med is priced at $318 for 4 months. Provillus is $149 for 4 months. Even a brain damaged monkey can do that math – the Provillus is less than half the cost.

Based on my decent results with Scalp Med, and the fact that Provillus looks similar and is much cheaper, I ordered the 4 month supply. It’s been over a year since then and I have since ordered their 6 month supply – twice. Why? Because Provillus has been working better than anything else I have tried to date.

The biggest results are in the back of my head (the bald spot up top), and I am getting what my girlfriend likes to call ‘scalp fuzz. Some of the older fuzz is now darker and has turned into real hair.  I am using provillus on the area where the surgical procedure stoped so that my hair does not recede further back from it and on the balding are at the top of my head where no surgery was performed – it’s medically documented that nothing tends to grow in the frontal hairline areas once a follicle has been dormant too long, so if you have just started balding in this area…the sooner you start using provillus the better! 

And yes, I am back to using the liquid solution on my head with Provillus,but I have a girlfriend that is understanding, and for whatever reason, this particular solution mixture doesn’t seems to feel as ‘dirty’ in my hair as the time I tried Rogaine. Perhaps I am  just over the initial shock of it all – you can never get a first impression/experience back.

I guess it goes without saying that I recommend Provillus. I also recommend Nizoral Shampoo. I was taking Vitamin B6 and Zinc in my earlier days because there was a study that suggested their use with Azelaic acid was a DHT inhibitor. The current Provillus formula now contains Azelaic acid, B6 and Zinc, so I no longer need to take those separately.

SO WHAT’S THE VERDICT ON THE BEST PRODUCT?

Based on my experience, If hair replacement is what you want, Minoxidil works, and most other things are a scam. In fact Minoxidil is the only FDA approved substance for doing so.

You can get this through the Provillus product which is what my friend and I use, and that will give you the oral support you need plus the added benefit of the topical solution with minoxidil, plus the Alzaic Acid which has been proven to help.

Using both seems to have worked well for thousands of people including myself. It’s the combination of both the topical solution and the oral pill that I believe really has a whammy effect on hair regrowth. It’s pretty amazing stuff in my opinion.

Many people want to write off the fact that any kind of oral support can be helpful, but just check out the ingredients list and the data that is available on the ingredients. Click HERE to check it out.

Provillusis far cheaper than the alternatives and it offers a 6 month guarantee – that’s one of the reasons why I was willing to give Provillus a try. So you have nothing to lose. ** A little tip ** If you order, place a 4 bottle package because you’ll get 2 free bottles, for a total of 6 bottles that will last you 6 months. It’s well worth the money and you save a ton by doing this.

Also pick up some Nizoral shampoo and start using that 7 days after you start the Provillus. Use it two times per day or every other day at the most.

**Update**

Provillus has a free trial offer so that you can try it before you actually spend your hard earned money on it, to see if it will actually work for you…..and it will……that is why they give the first supply away free…..just to prove it……so start regrowing your hair….click here to get started

I’ve cracked it. Actually, a hairdresser told my Auntie, who told me, who tried it out. I have to wash my hair with washing up liquid- not too much but enough to make a nice lather. I have to leave it in for just over 2 minutes. Then, rinse it out and use shampoo and conditioner as normal. I tried it for the first time this morning and, although it’s not noticeable, I saw some of the water turn purplish when I was rinsing my hair, which means that the dye is slowly coming out.

Another good sign is that some brown streaky bits are appearing in my hair. This may be due to the fact that I’ve been shampooing my hair twice to get the dye out (admittedly I forgot this morning). I dyed my hair brown before dyeing it black so it seems as if the brown is still underneath or something.

As soon as the black has faded a considerable amount I’m going to dye it brown again. I can’t wait.

Other possible ways  I could remove the dye are:

1. Using a ‘hair colour remover’ kit. 

 However, these don’t always work removing black hair dye and can damage your hair.

2. Get colour stripped at a hairdressers.

Very expensive and could damage my hair.

3. Just wait for it to grow out.

That’s going to take til the Summer and will look skanky.

4. Grow it out and have a semi permanent black put on the regrowth.

Again will take forever, will be expensive, and hair will be black for a long long time!

It’s been almost a month, and being someone of little to no patience, I’m starting to get frustrated by the apparent lack of any noticeable progress.  If it’s possible, and from what I’ve been reading it entirely is, I think my hair’s gotten thinner.   I may be experiencing the dreaded shed. 

From what I’ve been reading, this is a fairly normal part of the regrowth, maintenence process that can occur anywhere from a month in to three months.   Basically, before anything new starts growing, some of the old haggard stuff has to fall out.  Now, because there is no objective way, that I know of, to measure this crap, this could all be in my head.

It’s difficult to find any hard and fast information on this issue.  As with anything that appeals to the raging insecurity of men, there is a lot of double talk, the sky is falling rhetoric and misguided optimism with regard to the phenomenom (real or imagined) that is shedding.

Here are some choice snippets on the subject from the hairlosstalk.com forums:

I hit a big shed after 3 months that lasted more than 4 months. For the 4 months I was losing at least 300 hairs a day

really.  you counted every single hair that fell out?

a massive shed during the first 30 days, then it stopped and I experienced great regrowth, and my hair was very strong, But a week ago I started shedding again

great.

IMO shedding is a good thing. Always depends, but I would suggest giving it a year at the very least.

and on and on and on it goes for no less than 1,300 posts (with a simple search of “shedding”.  I didn’t even look for “shed”).

Cleverly disguised and hidden from gazing eyes.
Entering the public world with an inaudibe voice is hard.
Chaperoning 140 14 year olds is another story.

Soy Chai Frappe Currently rules my life.

This only makes it worse.
Arthritis at my age is a terrible hand to have been given.

Sting has been losing his hair for years but is still seen as very sexy. Nicholas Cage appears to be losing his hair but this doesn’t affect his attractiveness. And Sean Connery – probably the sexiest bald man alive – has never stopped having impact on succeeding generations of women. But that’s maybe small consolation if you’ve noticed you’re losing your locks at a rate of knots. You’re starting to blame your genes for thinning on top – and to a degree you would be correct.

If you’re starting to shed hair in your 20s, check out your maternal grandfather. While most baldness is caused by hormonal changes as we age, a 2005 research study showed premature hair loss in men followed the pattern of their maternal grandfather, as the gene that caused this hair loss was carried on the x chromosome.

In 2008, the same researchers reported that chromosome 20, which can be inherited from either the mother or father, also contains a gene that can cause premature baldness. With the chromosome 20 gene, the son’s premature baldness may resemble the pattern of the father’s baldness.

Of course, there are many other causes of hair loss and many other causes of baldness, and these are covered further down, but hair loss and baldness caused by hormones is the norm for both sexes.

The cause of baldness or hair loss needs to be identified to determine the treatment that is most likely to succeed in re-growing hair.
Baldness is defined as an area of the scalp that is no longer covered by hair, while Hair loss is defined as a more generalized loss of hair over all the scalp, or over part of the scalp, but hair is still retained in the area.

Alopecia is a medical term, and can be used to refer to baldness and or hair loss.

Hair loss, of course, can be the start of balding, but the reality is hair loss happens to everyone with hair, every day, so although you may see more hair in your brush than usual, or around the shower plug, don’t panic.

Your hair goes through a cycle of growth and rest. The course of each cycle varies by individual. But in general, the growth phase of scalp hair, known as anagen, typically lasts two to three years. During this time, your hair grows about 1 centimeter (just less than 1/2 inch) a month. The resting phase is called telogen. This phase typically lasts three to four months. At the end of the resting phase, the hair strand falls out and a new one begins to grow in its place. Once a hair is shed, the growth stage begins again.

Most people normally shed 50 to 100 hairs a day. But with about 100,000 hairs in the scalp, this amount of hair loss shouldn’t cause noticeable thinning of the scalp hair.

Gradual thinning is a normal part of aging. However, hair loss may lead to baldness when the rate of shedding exceeds the rate of regrowth, when new hair is thinner than the hair shed or when hair comes out in patches.

Causes of specific types of hair loss
•    Pattern baldness (androgenetic alopecia). In male and female-pattern baldness, the time of growth shortens, and the hairs are not as thick or sturdy. With each growth cycle, the hairs become rooted more superficially and more easily fall out. Heredity likely plays a key role. A history of androgenetic alopecia on either side of your family increases your risk of balding. Heredity also affects the age at which you begin to lose hair and the developmental speed, pattern and extent of your baldness.

•    Cicatricial (scarring) alopecia. This type of permanent hair loss occurs when inflammation damages and scars the hair follicle. This prevents new hair from growing. This condition can be seen in several skin conditions, including lupus erythematosus or lichen planus. It’s not known what triggers or causes this inflammation.

•    Alopecia areata. This is classified as an autoimmune disease, but the cause is unknown. People who develop alopecia areata are generally in good health. A few people may have other autoimmune disorders including thyroid disease. Some scientists believe that some people are genetically predisposed to develop alopecia areata and that a trigger, such as a virus or something else in the environment, sets off the condition. A family history of alopecia areata makes you more likely to develop it. With alopecia areata, your hair generally grows back, but you may lose and regrow your hair a number of times.

•    Telogen effluvium. This type of hair loss is usually due to a change in your normal hair cycle. It may occur when some type of shock to your system — emotional or physical — causes hair roots to be pushed prematurely into the resting state. The affected growing hairs from these hair roots fall out. In a month or two, the hair follicles become active again and new hair starts to grow. Telogen effluvium may follow emotional distress, such as a death in the family, or after a physiological stress, such as a high fever, sudden or excessive weight loss, nutritional deficiencies, surgery, or metabolic disturbances. Hair typically grows back once the condition that caused it corrects itself, but it usually take months.

•    Traction alopecia. Excessive hairstyling or hairstyles that pull your hair too tightly cause traction alopecia. If the pulling is stopped before there’s scarring of your scalp and permanent damage to the root, hair usually grows back normally.
Other causes of hair loss

•    Poor nutrition. Having inadequate protein or iron in your diet or poor nourishment in other ways can cause you to experience hair loss. Fad diets, crash diets and certain illnesses, such as eating disorders, can cause poor nutrition.

•    Medications. Certain drugs used to treat gout, arthritis, depression, heart problems and high blood pressure may cause hair loss in some people. Taking birth control pills also may result in hair loss for some women.

•    Disease. Diabetes and lupus can cause hair loss.

•    Medical treatments. Undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy may cause you to develop alopecia. Under these conditions, healthy, growing (anagen) hairs can be affected. After your treatment ends, your hair typically begins to regrow.

•    Hormonal changes. Hormonal changes and imbalances can cause temporary hair loss. If a hormonal imbalance is associated with an overproduction of testosterone, there may be a thinning of hair over the crown of the scalp. Correcting hormonal imbalances may stop hair loss. Hair loss can also occur with pregnancy, menopause, birth control pills, or an overactive or underactive thyroid gland.

•    Hair treatments. Chemicals used for dying, tinting, bleaching, straightening or permanent waves can cause hair to become damaged and break off if they are overused or used incorrectly. Overstyling and excessive brushing also can cause hair to fall out if the hair shaft becomes damaged.

•    Scalp infection. Infections, such as ringworm, can invade the hair and skin of your scalp, leading to hair loss. Once infections are treated, hair generally grows back. Ringworm, a fungal infection, can usually be treated with a topical or oral antifungal medication.

•    Trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder). Trichotillomania is a type of mental illness in which people have an irresistible urge to pull out their hair, whether it’s from their scalp, their eyebrows or other areas of their body. Hair pulling from the scalp often leaves them with patchy bald spots on their head, which they may go to great lengths to disguise. Causes of trichotillomania are still being researched, and no specific cause has yet been found.

Bald men who feel really good about themselves exude a sense of strength, confidence, passion and masculinity.  Women everywhere have learned that hair doesn’t make the man.  In fact, some hairstyles on men can be off putting. And yes, women would prefer that a man embrace his hair loss issues rather than hide behind a horrible comb over, cheap rug or poorly placed plugs.