I’m starting to go bald. Yay me. My hair used to be really thick, but in the past few months I have noticed it is getting thinner.
Fucking awesome. Maybe I will just go and get the bifocals this week (which I have needed for a while) so this all doesn’t hit at once.
comrade nimrod humperdink
Really? I went from a full head of hair at 17 to totally bald on top at 22. Now it’s just the old #1 clipper head around the sides every couple weeks. Nothing more to be done with it. I was bitter for a while but I had to cope with it rather abruptly, the process didn’t twist the knife by taking 15 years.
srv
Went to the doctor for my 50th, and had a whole list to go through with “ailments for the last few years I haven’t bothered bringing up.”
As I rattled them off, the good doctor said “Nope, can’t do anything about that!”
So I told him mustard gives me gas and he didn’t know what to say about that one.
Liquid
Dear John,
You used to drive Heavy Armor. Even if you didn’t you did. Run for Office.
Signed,
That Bullet
David Koch
I think Bryan Cranston looks better without hair.
In any event, Patrick Stewart and Jason Statham look great bald.
Fort Geek
Just turned 46 a few months ago. In the past 2 years I’ve had to start carrying reading glasses around just so I can read my freaking cellphone screen. Without the glasses, my arms are almost too short.
Then there’s…the hair. Both nostrils, both eyebrows, both ears–including some wiry patches sprouting just above the lobes along the edges. *grumble*
comrade nimrod humperdink
@Fort Geek: Yeah THAT’s the thing I’m really not looking forward to. Back and shoulders is sad enough, but when the ear and nose hair gets aggressive I won’t be happy.
2liberal
for the glasses get the advanced progressives. I have special computer glasses i use at work where i am at the desk all day for short range, and set of sunglasses set for long range for biking and driving , and progressives with the photo-gray dynamic sunglasses for generic use.
Amir Khalid
A friend got himself into selling quack-medicine stuff. You know, that “nutritional supplement”/alt-med crap. It’s a livelihood for him and his missus, so I don’t give him grief about it. He once asked me if I was worried about hair loss. (I’ve been thinning out on top, very gradually, since my mid-30s. The crown of my head is rather thinly covered, but no areas of complete deforestation yet.) I said, “A man should have more serious things to worry about.”
Death Panel Truck
I’m taking four blood pressure meds (to be fair, I suffer from chronic glomerulonephritis), so count yer goddamned blessings, Cole. Who the fuck cares about hair after 45? (I’m 51)
Karmus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLumAQ-Y7DY
? Martin
I got progressives when I was 19. They’ve held pretty well since then, thankfully, with only minor prescription changes the last 25 years. Still have all my hair, and only a scant bit is grey. My dad was grey at 35, so being 10 years past him really pisses him off. I make sure to point it out at every opportunity.
@Fort Geek: Yeah, nobody warned me about all that shit. I swear to god I can pull 20 hairs out of my ear every day. You’d think it would take a lot of calories to grow that, but no, I’m still getting fat.
Fuck old.
Death Panel Truck
@Death Panel Truck: I guess I should have mentioned that I have the same hairline I had when I was a senior in high school. IOW, lots of hair. Long, thick, flowing hair. Only a tadbit grayer, that’s all.
Fort Geek
@Death Panel Truck: I’m on about as many blood pressure meds, myself. It’s that or go back to the days of 290/150 pressures.
Don’t really care about losing scalp hair, compared to that.
NotMax
Who wants fat hair?
/Henny Youngman
Should it come to the point you need it, memorize and tuck this away in the brain bank:
God made very few perfect heads. And the rest he put hair on.
Amir Khalid
Are you losing hair there as well?
Death Panel Truck
@Fort Geek: My highest reading was 225/140. I had no idea what was wrong with me until I finally saw the doctor who referred me to the nephrologist I’ve been seeing for the past several years. My legs swelled up like tree trunks, but I kept telling my wife nothing was wrong. She finally got through to me, and I owe her my life. My BP is slowly dropping, but it’s been a struggle. My latest lab showed my creatinine level at 1.04. It’s taken years to get it that low.
J.Ty
I’m going bald and I’m like 3/5ths your age. It’s really OK. I think I’ll be getting progressive lenses as soon as I get visual insurance & can afford the other half of the eye exam. I don’t have high blood pressure though, so I guess I’m winning the thread.
Death Panel Truck
@Fort Geek: I’d trade my high school hairline in an instant for a 120/80 BP reading. I’d sooner be bald than be dead.
protothad
My hair has been going grey and thinning for a while now, but the fiance claims she likes it. I assume she is just trying to protect my fragile ego… but then again she has already proved she has strange tastes (she is with me), and she does have a thing for Patrick Stewart.
When enough of the mop is gone, I am just going to shave the rest off. I will definitely NOT do a comb-over. I will likely give in and get the bifocals soon though.
Liquid
As a non sequitur I regret sending my marines to die for some backwater colony.
Fort Geek
@Death Panel Truck: I’ve got the same stuff–swollen legs, high creatinine. That’s been an issue since I got rid of one kidney (cancer).
BP’s under control–120/something. It’s taken most of 4 years to drop it to that, mostly from financial issues. Doctors kept prescribing stuff I couldn’t afford *smirk*. I got Medicare D going a few months ago and went from almost $60/month to about $8 on prescriptions.
John Revolta
I see on Newsmax that Michelle Obama is enjoying the opulent Presidential suite in Beijing. Who the Hell does she think she is, amirite?
patrick II
@Death Panel Truck:
That is pretty much what I told my two brothers, both in their 50’s and getting pretty bald. I have, at 65, kept most of my hair. The night after I told them that I had a nightmare in which I was standing in front of a mirror and saw that, to my horror, all of my hair was falling out. I guess I cared about not going bald more than I had admitted to myself.
EriktheRed
@2liberal:
Just so happens I have an appointment today to get my eyes checked and order me some bi-fokes, too. I will keep this advice in mind.
raven
@EriktheRed: My progressives cost $600 a couple of months ago but I keep thinking I need to got back to regular “special computer glasses” for my work.
Joseph Nobles
47 here and I’ve been balding in the back for a long while. And boy, those furrows in the front are reaching back for it! Plus it has always been incredibly fine. I don’t even have to blow dry it. I just comb it back and keep moving. I use a little conditioner to keep it from drying fly away.
Now my younger brother, he’s really going bald. Older brother FTW.
And I finally got my bifocals last month. After the insurance, they cost over $300, so they’re nice. No line, etc. They work just fine. To tell the truth, I’d already done all the getting used to it by now. The old glasses, I had to tilt my head back and look through the thicker part of the lens to see clearly. So it was definitely time.
jomike
@Fort Geek:
And back hair, woo hoo! My dad’s theory was that we don’t actually lose our hair. It just slides down our bodies.
raven
I’ve had a shaved head and goat for 20 years. If I can’t have it like this, fuck it!
Fort Geek
@jomike: Hahaha! I had a nurse say that same thing last week about her husband–“He was complaining about going bald and I told him, ‘Honey, you’ve still got your hair, it’s just moving down.’ “
Villago Delenda Est
John, I’ve been “going bald” for like 30 years now. My brother saw my hairline receding in a very small way and went into the panic mode, thinking ‘ZOMG that’s what my hair is going to look like!”. I still have a pretty full head of hair, admittedly not as thick as it was in my teens and twenties, but still. Of course, the temples are going grey, but I always like the Reed Richards look. I seem to have reached a compromise between my dad’s genes (full head until the day FSM took him away) and my mother’s side (grandfather, uncles, and a few cousins were/are bald/balding.
Lavocat
It sucks to get old – but it’s better than the alternative.
Schlemizel
@John Revolta:
Have they used the term “nigress” yet? It only seems logical for newmess.
Of all the things that have fallen off, broken or are just not right on me my hair is not on that list. I had cataract surgery for both eyes while in my 40s so bifocals are a given, many other things I have mentioned here earlier but in my 60s I still have a full head of hair and it is still mostly the dark brown its always been. I still treat it as mostly an annoyance, while I wash it regularly I have not had it cut in over 6 months I just can’t seem to care.
I can feel bad for younger guys who lose their hair because it is an emotional blow but I like the comment above “a man should have more important things to worry about”
Lavocat
@srv: You have mustard gas!? That shit’s poisonous, you know!
EconWatcher
48 here. It’s my body’s increasing inability to heal that gets to me. The kinds of sports injuries that used to put me on the sidelines for a couple of weeks now take months to heal.
OzarkHillbilly
A little Roquefort anyone? Maybe a nice, sharp, well aged cheddar? I still have some Manchego from Spain I save for those special occasions.
JPL
Good Morning! Once again we have a freeze warning for tonight. The local news folk are happy because they can talk about it incessantly.
Cassidy
HGH. Any “weight loss” specialist can provide it.
Mustang Bobby
I started to lose the hair above my forehead in college forty-plus years ago, and then it just stopped; it hasn’t receded since. Now it’s salt-and-pepper, like my dad who is 87.
In other news, watching a bunch of middle-aged white guys discussing in-depth their affection for rap and hip-hop on Morning Joe is hilarious.
OzarkHillbilly
Bernie Madoff’s “secretary” is going to prison:
“One defendant, Annette Bongiorno, worked for Madoff for 40 years as his secretary and at one point had as much as $50m in her accounts. Bongiorno, 65, had multi-million dollar homes in Long Island and Florida and drive a Mercedes worth $100,000.”
Right, Sure she didn’t know what was going on.
I am actually kind of conflicted here. On the one hand they took the life savings from hundreds of people, leaving them destitute. On the other hand, the people they took to the cleaners were 1%s, people who all thought they were above the plebes and just sooooo ‘special’ After all, Bernie only took the ‘best of the best’ for his clients.
Ash Can
Let me tell you about menopause…
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: Actually, a lot of “just plain folks” lost lots of money in the Madoff scam. While he, personally, may have been selective, he had a lot of dollars coming in through “feeder funds” which aggregated the savings of little people. Not everyone could afford the losses – many had their life savings wiped out.
And to the topic, here just on the far side of 60, I have as much hair as I did in high school, so thick that the woman who cuts my hair always complains that she needs a rake and not a comb. Many of my friends are in various stages of baldness, so I enjoy holding this over them. Balding guys will say “oh, it doesn’t matter,” but I’ve yet to encounter a guy with hair who wishes he were balding.
Oh, and my cholesterol is under 200, and has been there forever.
Botsplainer
I’ve been in progressive lenses for years. No big deal.
The hair loss sucks, but you get used to it. I just wear a lot of caps on sunny days and in the tropics (the dermatologist yelled at me because she was tired of cutting things off my head).
cleek
hair? oh well, i’m letting it go. it’s not like i was doing anything with it anyway.
arthritis, on the other hand (and the other, other hand) is the worst.
Botsplainer
@Cassidy:
John would benefit from a round of HCG. I dropped 30 since the new year turned; that was a result of one round of HCG and some testosterone replacement. I’m shooting for another 30 by years’ end, which should include one more round of HCG.
The shots aren’t so bad with the HCG – it’s the 500 cal a day diet that sucks. Thankfully, the time is limited.
debbie
No one’s mentioned Biotin yet?
Botsplainer
Costco on glasses, by the way. Nice style collection, great selection on lenses, and pricing is reasonable.
Hawes
This is what you get for bad mouthing Phish.
donnah
I told my eye doctor I was too young for bifocals at age forty and he laughed and said maybe my eyes were older than the rest of me. My hair turned gray gradually when I was in my forties, too, and I have had it colored ever since. Now I’m fifty-six. I let it all grow out to natural gray a while ago and when a well-meaning waitress asked if I had the senior discount, I made an appointment the next day at the salon. Vanity, pure and simple.
WereBear
Whatever you do, don’t touch Propecia. Serious side effects that seem to be permanent.
wormtown
@Ash Can: menopause —You are so right!
OzarkHillbilly
@donnah: I’m not getting grayer, just more blond.
Steeplejack
I have had (progressive) bifocals for nine years, no big deal. My hair remains a silver, leonine mane, though cut short these days. There’s probably a thin patch at the crown, but I never look there.
What I miss, having just turned 62, is being able to sprint. I can still swim very fast—or at least it feels like I’m going fast—but when I’m out for a jog and I try to turn it on I just get that flooring-the-Yugo “yeah, no” feeling. I just had a dream about this a few nights ago: I was back in college and I was racing like the wind.
Other than that, no big complaints. When something does come up, I find myself wondering “random, out of shape or age-related?”
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
I was blond, then went silver-gray about 10-15 years ago. Less of a shock than going from dark hair to gray.
mellowjohn
as a friend of mine said recently, “i don’t have breakfast anymore. i have a handful of pills.”
raven
@Steeplejack: I can’t run or shoot the hoop anymore but I can’t tell you how glad I am I didn’t have shoulder surgery. I was out of the water for 6 weeks but it seems to have cleared up to the point that I have gone back to every other day in the school. I thought I was finished so I’me really happy.
RSA
I started to go gray in my late 20s. In my 40s, I had long hair in a pony tail down to my shoulder blades. This was partly laziness–I couldn’t find time to get my hair cut often enough that I wouldn’t look a lot different (to me, anyway) afterwards. But at 50 I noticed how much white was in my hair, and that I was starting to look like an extra from the Lord of the Rings. So it’s short again. No lack of hair, though. It even seems to grow faster. I never used to have to shave every day, but now…
Belafon
I am about 6 months older than you, John. While I will never go bald (based on my hair being like my dad’s), my hair will continue to get thin, and really thin in some places.
I have also been wearing trifocals for the last decade because I read a lot, work on a computer, and still have to drive.
NotMax
Speaking of the pitfalls of getting older, just arose from a lie down to rest the eyes for five minutes – five hours ago.
The hair sprouting in the ears doesn’t really bother me. Scalp hair is long enough to cover the ears until I feel like dealing with them. It’s having to shave the bridge and tip of the nose which is most annoying. YGMV*.
*Your Geezerhood May Vary
RSA
Also, after almost a year, I’m still getting used to bifocals. They’re progressives. Sometimes I’ll see something weird, like the coffee table or the corner of a wall changing shape, as if I were in the Matrix, and then I’ll realize that I was moving my head and it was just my glasses. Disconcerting.
Steeplejack
@raven:
Swimming is my favorite form of exercise. If I ever hit the lottery I’m putting a lap pool in the backyard at the dream house. Or maybe one of those “endless pool” things.
Punchy
Hey look! Another….”accident”
I’ll be stunned if this doesn’t become the fallback defense of every homicide in 2014. Nobody (white) ever seems to be arrested once the “accident” excuse gets used….
Tim I
John, I’m going through the same shit myself, Hairs been falling out like crazy the last couple of months and I’m only like twenty some odd years older than you are.
I find that mainlining Minozidil really helps. It’s not much of a high, but it keeps the goddamn hair in place.
raven
@Steeplejack: Yea, I had managed 200 mile a year for a decade but I may have to settle for 100 now.
jake the snake
There is an old saying, “Old age is not for sissies.”
randomworker
By the time I got to my late 20s I had seen enough of the world to be able to say, with all sincerity, “if this is all I have to worry about I am pretty damned lucky.”
I just do the #1 buzz. Pretty convenient. No bad hair days.
Paul in KY
@comrade nimrod humperdink: It’s coming :-)
Paul in KY
@comrade nimrod humperdink: It’s coming :-)@Villago Delenda Est: You get your mother’s father’s hair (anecdote I’ve been told a few times).
Paul in KY
@WereBear: A work friend of mine had a son who used it & had really bad side effects. Messed him up bad for awhile.
KXB
I’ve had to wear bifocals since I was a kid, since the lenses in my eye were not situated properly – they would just float around. My hair is thick in the back and sides, but my hairline is fighting a desperate battle.
Welcome to hell.
Paul in KY
@raven: Glad to hear that, raven!
chrome agnomen
hey, cole! fuck, man, are you ever not angry any more? except, of course, when you’re having conjugal relations with your pets.
muricafukyea
Ah yes I see a few posts down wr0ng way Cole is back to blowing wet kisses to Griftwald and Snowden.
Funny he forgot to mention that Snowden is hiding if Russia. That bastion of human rights and respecting other countries privacy and sovereignty. Still haven’t heard Snowden critisize Putin for that either.
blueskies
@raven: I did and it’s great. Progressives are “good enough” for most vision needs through the day, but if you’re at a computer screen a lot during the day, I highly recommend getting glasses for just that range. Really cuts down on fatigue.
blueskies
@EconWatcher: Hahaha! Just wait until the old sports injuries, the ones you thought had healed long ago, start acting up every time the weather changes.
Long Tooth
You’re not going bald, your head is just blowing a bubble.
Sebastian
This is not 1995. Medicinr has made significant progress in the past 20 years. You can keep your hair if you want to.
Driving now, I’ll post more later
Jack the Second
So are you going with the comb-over or the pony tail?
Stella B.
Not nomal for a man your age to start losing hair (a women … maybe). Go see your doc. She’ll check your thyroid. Weight loss sometimes causes hair loss, but you are eating protein. Some BP meds cause hair loss too
JustRuss
51 here, and the hairline has been in an orderly retreat for a few years. If I grow it out it’s sort of hides it, but who am I kidding? I’m waiting for the weather to warm up in a few weeks and taking most of it off. Used to have great vision, finally broke down and got reading glasses about 5 years ago. Bothered me a little at the time but meh, such is life.
One of my best friends, same age, just died from a heart attack. I’ll stick with the hair loss, thanks.
Long Tooth
@Sebastian: George Castanza: “I think this [a toupee] looks pretty good”. Seinfeld: “No, no it doesn’t”.
I went to work at a place where two friends were so practiced at insulting each other that it took a while before I figured out that they were friends. Once one said to the other (who was balding), “Ah, go rub some more cow shit into your scalp to grow some hair” in a tone of voice that actually had me wondering if they hated each others guts. Turned out they were a comedy team.
wasabi gasp
http://i.imgur.com/XdvI8RD.jpg
Ben Cisco
Still have my hair, but I’ve worn it so short since my AF days it’s not of much consequence anyway. Knees are creaky (ever listen to Rice Krispies when the milk goes on? Yeah, like THAT). Back’s OK since the L-5 cleanup, and I finally gave in to bifocals (glasses and contacts, yay!) a few years back.
But as Lavocat (and my father) said…
Elizabelle
In deference to my fantasy that everyone on Balloon Juice looks like a movie star (even a Harvey Keitel type) — because they’re so smart and snarky — I refuse to read this thread.
Nose hair, ear hair, no hair, all the rest — TMI.
Carry on, GQ types.
zeecube
Consider yourself lucky. Think about all the savings from having to buy hair products and getting a decent haircut every month.
rea
In my old age, I’m getting hairier and hairier–got to trim my eyebrows regularly, ear hair is a problem, can hardly breathe sometimes for nose hair, and I swear, the always thick mop on my head is getting thicker. I wouldn’t mind a little hair loss . . .
horse dave
Just turned 50,
I’ve never needed any form of eye wear until 45. Now reading glasses are just a part of my life.
Hair has been receding/thinning since around 40. I’d cut it short but my face and cranium shape don’t work with real short hair.
For me the worst are the injuries that don’t completely heal and the old injuries that have resurfaced. Plantar fasciitis for 5 years, old nerve damage in my wrist, and this week tendonitis in my elbow.
I have a small horse farm (hobby) that exacerbates these maladies. If I had any sense I’d sell and move but the dogs really like their farm-life.
Donut
I’m 42. I am Armenian in ancestry. Since puberty I have been covered with body hair.
I come from a long line of men with bad eyes, so I have worn glasses, I shit you not, for 40 years.
Those of you feeling sorry for yourselves about your hair growth or wearing glasses in your 40s can all shut. the. fuck. up. Seriously. Find some other shit to complain about. You know nothing. I’ve had hair and glasses on my body for-fucking-ever, you babies. Deal with it.
Ruckus
It’s just hair. Just because it doesn’t grow on top any more doesn’t mean it doesn’t grow. And as many have said that should be the least of your worries. Have a heart attack, have to bury everyone else in your immediate family. That gets your attention.
Hair is little stuff. I can live without hair on my head. Besides it just turns gray and/or white anyway. I just compensate with a full beard.
One last parting shot. It doesn’t get any better. Every 10 yrs you add? That hill of life that you are starting to ski down, that son of bitch gets steeper and steeper. At some point you’ll be wondering where the time went, let alone where your hair is.
Ruckus
@Donut:
Glasses at 12, and I’ve got my Medicare card. Glasses, hard contacts, soft contacts, disposable contacts. Then about 18 yrs ago I got laser surgery. Best thing I ever did. But yeah, I’ve been called 4 eyes, blind man, whatever.
Now on the hair front, had a friend in HS who could grow a full, and I mean full beard in about 3 weeks. The summer he was 16 he went with his dad to someplace in Nevada. They stopped in a place for lunch and they carded his dad. And served him without even asking because of his full beard and overall hairy nature. He laughed about it for years.
JR in WV
Finally gave up, got the Mrs J R to buzz my head just the other day. First hair cut since the early 1990s, had a thin pony tail in back, mostly bald.
Still have the full beard, did trim it back, kinda the annual spring shear. 62 now, might as well act it…