Hello! I'm new to this forum. I was looking for an "introduce yourself" thread, but didn't find one, so I just made my own tab to introduce myself.

I was recently diagnosed with telogen effluvium. Since 2011, I've lost about 30-40% of my hair. It's very depressing. It's a long story, so I won't bore with the details, but the bottom line is my hair continues to fall out. It will seem like it's doing better, then all of a sudden, I'm losing handfuls of hair. I finally went to a dermatologist who did a scalp biopsy on me, which determined that I have telogen effluvium. I go back tomorrow to find out what my treatment options are (I looked online, there wasn't anything encouraging, unfortunately, but I'll see what he says tomorrow). I had been on 50 mg of Spironolactone per day since May/June 2011(prescribed by my OBGYN), but about 2 months ago, the dermatologist increased that amount to 100 mg per day. It took about a month to start noticing a difference in the amount of hair falling out, but I can tell. Unfortunately, when I go through these awful episodes, the hair grows back thinner (and my hair is already fine to begin with) & slower. My telogen phases are lasting longer &  my anagen phases are becoming shorter.

I really wish I had found this dermatologist years ago. I had gone to one back in 2014 when my hair started falling out in droves again & was told to continue my spironolactone & use rogaine (Rogaine made my hair fall out more, ironically, & I had to cut my hair really short).