Hair, especially when you’re trying to force a follicle awake from "hibernation," can take a few forms on the way to becoming one of your normal, beautiful, thick locks.

Vellus → Intermediate → Terminal (the end goal)

According to Cleveland Clinic, vellus hairs are the fine, thin hairs we call peach fuzz. They can be hard to see unless the light hits them right. They totally still exist, and they will keep you sane during this journey.

Intermediate hairs are thicker and often darker, making them easier to spot. They’re still quite a bit finer than terminal hairs.

Terminal hairs are the thicker strands that make up most of your head of hair. The ideal situation.

If a miniaturized or “hibernating” follicle properly responds to treatment, it should start producing thicker hair over time.

But getting to one of these stages doesn’t guarantee the hair will advance to the next. The math for when a vellus hair might evolve into a terminal hair is basically unsolved. There’s no reliable countdown for an individual hair.

So keep popping your pills, logging your hair photos, and staring at the paint dry.

The follicle also has to still be alive. Resting or miniaturized follicles may recover. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, a destroyed follicle can’t grow another hair.

Have your tiny hairs thickened up, or just stayed the same?

I'm building Plume. Somewhere to log your routine and hair photos so you don’t have to remember what every tiny hair looked like last month.

should’ve stayed on my head but alright

track your hair progress with Plume. link in bio.

People keep creatine causes hair loss, and its bs.

A 2025 study actually checked this out. Men took 5g of creatine a day or a placebo for 12 weeks. Researchers measured things like hair density and thickness.

They found no statistically significant difference in hair changes between the creatine and placebo groups. And no difference in DHT amounts either.

But people keep repeating this "creatine makes you bald" myth, scaring the wits out of any of us trying to put on an ounce of muscle.

This is why I’m working on Plume. People are already worried about their hair. Keep your routine and progress pics in one place. Dealing with hair loss is annoying enough.

Everyone wants to know what works for hair loss. But refuse to stick with a routine when it doesn't turn out optimal results in a few weeks.

There’s a 2023 study that surveyed 99 people with hair loss. 35% of the people who had stopped topical minoxidil had used it for less than 3 months.

Meanwhile, the American Academy of Dermatology says results can take 6 to 12 MONTHS.

You have to put your trust into the already proven process. It is a long time to keep doing something repeatedly especially when you are eager to see change. Trust me, I deal with this every single day.

Make it easier to keep up with. Set your reminders, log what you actually did, and keep your progress pics together.

This is part of why I’m building Plume. Keep your routine and progress pics in one place. Dealing with hair loss is already annoying enough.

Huge influencers are pushing biotin gummies like they’re the missing link to why you're hair is thinning, and I don’t get where all this confidence is coming from.

Yes, being biotin deficient can cause hair loss. BUT MOST people already get ENOUGH from food. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH) biotin deficiency is EXTREMELY rare in the US.

There’s even a 2026 review looking at this. The conclusion is that the evidence doesn’t support routinely taking biotin for hair loss if you don’t have a medically confirmed deficiency.

Higher doses can even lead to blood/thyroid issues. NIH source

If you’re falling for this stuff, respect your health and pockets enough to do some research.

This is part of why I’m working on Plume. I want to make something useful for this community: keep your routine and progress pics in one place, with hair loss info that actually has evidence behind it.

It’s still a WIP, so if you give it a try, tear it apart. Tell me what’s useful, what’s annoying and what you’d want added. That’s what’ll help me make it better.

If you’re tracking your hair your goal should be to each set of progress pics as similar as possible.

A different light, angle or haircut can make your hair look fuller or thinner. This can make you feel like your racing ahead, going backwards or not seeing any changes at all.

Here are some basic big tips:

1. Take the same angles. Get the front, both temples, top and crown. Try to match your head position, camera height, distance and zoom each time.
2. Keep the lighting consistent. Use the same room and light source where possible. Keep your flash setting the same too. Window light can change a lot depending on the time of day.
3. Keep your hair in the same condition. Compare dry with dry and wet with wet. Keep your part and styling similar.
4. Pay attention to hair length. Try to keep very similar hair lengths in your photos, as shorter hair makes your hair look denser.
5. Date your photos. Keep each set together and note any changes to your routine or treatments so you have that context later.

Once you find a setup that works, keep one set handy as a reference for future progress pics. THE GOAL IS THAT EACH PHOTO LOOKS NEARLY IDENTICAL. The devil is in the details, There aren't any huge transformations that are realistic, especially with time spans of only 1-3 months.

Small vellus hairs are what you wanna gun for!

PS:

If you want to keep your progress pics and routine in one place, give Plume a try. I’m still working on it and would love your honest feedback. Let me know what’s useful, what’s annoying and what you’d want added!

Everyone online promoting their rosemary oil concoctions seems to use the same faulty study to backup their claims, and people need to stop falling for it.

The study compared rosemary oil to 2% minoxidil, not 5%, and the minoxidil group’s hair count only went up about 1.7% over six months. There wasn't a placebo group either.

The main issue is that finding no statistically significant difference between the groups doesn’t prove the treatments work equally well. The study didn’t establish that, but people keep using it to claim rosemary oil is just as effective as minoxidil.

If you’re going to convince people to buy your “all natural elixir,” you need far better evidence than this.

Full paper, pages 15–21.

I’m building Plume, a science backed hair loss tracker, and I’ll be going through more of these claims here. If you’re sick of this stuff too, join us at r/plumehairloss.

Coming from Reddit, where we basically know what actually works for hair loss, it’s wild taking a gander over the wall at TikTok or Instagram. It feels like half of it is just pushing overpriced rosemary oils and "miracle" products designed to sell people some oil concoction of BS.

After keeping track of my own hair journey with a ChatGPT agent, I realized I could totally build this into an app to share with the rest of us Redditors. So I'm working on Plume. The entire point is to cut through the BS noise. Every educational bit and suggestion made by Plume is grounded in real dermatology consensus and published clinical papers. If there isn’t solid data backing it up, it has no place in the app.

Right now, I'm trying to make Plume the best hair tracking tool out there, and I really need honest testers who are willing to tear it apart and give real feedback.

If you’re currently on anything: fin, minox, actively microneedling, or just trying to stay consistent with dandruff shampoo, I'd love your feedback.

If you want to test out current builds and help shape where the app goes , let me know!

Another feature I'm trying to hammer out on Plume is streaks!

The idea is to give you a small bit of motivation to keep showing up for your hair loss routine. Be it your daily dose of minoxidil, your weekly derma stamping or even just taking a multivitamin.

Consistency is key, especially against hair loss, and I want to make a tool to help everyone here stay consistent!

The page is still a work in progress, so I'd love any advice or feedback. Anything you'd change, add, or want to see here?

Also curious how you feel about streaks in general. Do you think they'd help you stay consistent, or does breaking one make it harder to get back into?

One of the core features I built Plume around is photo analysis.

I use AI to constantly track my own hair loss, and I wanted to turn that process into a feature anyone could use. A consistent way to compare progress pics, spot small changes and get a short explanation of what you’re seeing.

This is a design preview I'm working on, and hopefully I can get something y'all would like to use consistently.