About Hairlossable

Hairlossable is an independent editorial publication covering hair loss, thinning hair, and the products and treatments people reach for in response. We have been publishing in this space since 2015.

We started because the market for hair-loss information is comprehensively broken. A person noticing a widening part or an encroaching hairline will, within minutes of searching, be drenched in promotional copy written by people who will never use the product, dressed as testing by people who have never tested it, and ranked by algorithms that reward confident sponsorship over accurate explanation. The genuinely useful information is out there — in peer-reviewed dermatology journals, in Reddit threads where people document their progress honestly, in clinical guidelines — but it is deeply unpleasant to find, and most people give up before they do.

We exist to do that finding, and to write down what we find in plain language, for readers who are tired of being sold to.

What we cover

The archive is organized around what a person with thinning hair actually needs to know, in roughly the order they need to know it.

There’s the underlying biology — the hair growth cycle, what a normal amount of shedding looks like, how androgenetic alopecia differs from telogen effluvium differs from traction alopecia. None of this is glamorous, but none of the product choices downstream make any sense without it.

There are the treatments with real evidence — minoxidil, finasteride, ketoconazole, low-level laser therapy, PRP — written up honestly, including the side-effect profiles and the population-level success rates that manufacturers tend to round up.

There are the products you see on shelves and in advertisements — shampoos, serums, supplements, devices, caps — reviewed individually and in comparative roundups, using the process described on our methodology page.

And there are the field notes — shorter pieces on the texture of living through this, which matter more than most review sites acknowledge.

Who writes this

Articles are produced by the Hairlossable editorial team: a small working group of writers, editors, and researchers with backgrounds in consumer journalism, cosmetic chemistry, and science communication. We do not publish fabricated “expert” bylines, and where a piece has been formally reviewed by a named clinician, that review — and the clinician’s real name and credentials — is disclosed on the page.

We recognize the category norm is to invent a roster of imaginary dermatologists whose signatures ornament every article. Our inability to compete with that remains a point of pride.

How we fund the work

Reader trust is the only asset this publication has. To keep it, we have adopted a few constraints that are unusual for a site of this kind.

We do not participate in retailer affiliate programs for products we review. The incentive to promote whatever pays the highest commission is incompatible, in our view, with honest review work, and we would rather forgo the revenue than pretend the conflict doesn’t exist.

We do not accept free products from brands for review purposes. When we evaluate a shampoo or supplement, we buy it — at list price, from a retail channel — the same way a reader would. The accumulating bottles under the desk are a tolerable cost of the job.

We do not run display advertising from hair-loss brands. We do not run sponsored posts. We do not accept “editorial fees” to consider a product.

What this means, practically, is that Hairlossable is reader-supported. If the archive has helped you, and you want it to keep being here, you can tell a friend, cite a page, or send us a note pointing out the things we got wrong. That is how independent publications stay independent.

A note on the archive

A version of this site has existed, in one form or another, since 2015. The archive you are reading now is a rebuild — we kept the URLs so that existing links keep working, and we kept the historical posts whose claims still stand up. Some of the earliest material was written under a different editorial model than the one we operate under today, and as we rewrite each piece we update the dates and the methodology block at the foot of the page. The “Last reviewed” date on any given article tells you when it was last checked against current evidence.

If you find something in the archive that reads like old internet marketing, chances are we haven’t gotten to it yet. Please tell us — we read everything sent in, and it helps us prioritize.

How to reach us

Corrections, reader experiences, clinical expertise, polite disagreement — all welcome. The archive is here to be argued with.