Shedding question

[Phins09]

If one is in the early stages of balding, does extra shedding (more than 200 hairs a day) always take place? I don't lose more than 15 or so in the shower that I can see and there arent more than 10 on my pillow in the mornings, but I think it is possible I am experiencing some slight MPB. Should I be seeing the clumps in the shower that some people experience?

[buckerine11]

If one is in the early stages of balding, does extra shedding (more than 200 hairs a day) always take place? I don't lose more than 15 or so in the shower that I can see and there arent more than 10 on my pillow in the mornings, but I think it is possible I am experiencing some slight MPB. Should I be seeing the clumps in the shower that some people experience?

No, the big increase in shedding you are talking about is more telogen effluvium. In many cases, telogen effluvium can precipitate MPB, which is what happened to me.
However, MPB doesn't have to present with increased shedding. The hairs simply aren't growing back the same.

[Mark]

If one is in the early stages of balding, does extra shedding (more than 200 hairs a day) always take place? I don't lose more than 15 or so in the shower that I can see and there arent more than 10 on my pillow in the mornings, but I think it is possible I am experiencing some slight MPB. Should I be seeing the clumps in the shower that some people experience?

It can be different for different people. Take for example the photos that Anagen posted in this thread. (http://baldingforum.com/showthread.php?t=345)

What you can see there when looking at his miniaturization study is that the miniaturized hairs are all very short. Turns out, he had his hair cut very short a while ago but he's let it grow out since then. The miniaturized hairs however just haven't grown at all. They're dormant. And if he does nothing, they'll eventually fall out or just disappear altogether.

Hair loss does follow patterns, but it's not the exact same in every single person. Some people can lose a lot of hair all at once, others lose it gradually. The best thing to do is do some miniaturization tests on yourself on a semi-regular basis so that you can scientifically measure the kind of hair loss that you think you're seeing.

I've been talking with Dr Rassman a lot about hair loss recently to educate myself, and something that struck me as interesting was the fact that a lot of people who think they're losing their hair actually aren't. Us guys can get sucked into a sort of hypochondria about our physical appearance. To complicate matters, hair loss is something that happens so slowly that it's almost impossible for a person to adequately measure visually, so people can tend to think they're seeing a lot of hair loss when in reality it's nothing.