Eight straight answers
Questions people ask before buying
Why should I believe any of this?
You should not, on our word. That is the whole design. Every statement of fact in both guides carries its source and its year on the page where it appears — the FDA-approved label with its setid, the journal with its issue, the American Academy of Dermatology page, the NCBI Bookshelf entry — so you can check any line without leaving your chair, and so can your clinician. Where the research disagrees, both sides are printed with their sample sizes. And both books carry Appendix C: What We Could Not Verify — the list of things we went looking for, could not confirm in a primary source, and therefore did not print as fact. Nobody in this subject publishes that list. It is there because it is the only honest way to tell you that everything else was confirmed.
Does this contradict what the videos say?
Sometimes it adds the part a video cannot fit, and sometimes that qualifies a headline. That is not a disagreement, it is a different job. A video has to hold your attention for twenty minutes; a page has to survive being checked. So where a topic is popular and the evidence behind it is thinner than the topic suggests, the guide prints the study, its size, its year and its limitations, and lets you weigh it. The rosemary oil chapter is the clearest example: the trial is real and it is printed straight, and then the four things that trial cannot tell you are printed just as straight. Nothing here asks you to stop watching. It asks you to have the sourced version in your hand when you are deciding where your money goes.
Is this a subscription?
No. One payment, one time. There is no renewal, no membership, no account to cancel and no card kept on file for later. You buy a PDF and it is yours. This is worth saying plainly because nearly every alternative in this subject is billed monthly, and several of them are billed monthly forever.
I'm a woman. Is this written for me?
Yes, and not as an afterthought. A widening part with the front hairline preserved is one of the five families in Chapter 4. Chapter 3 covers the triggers that get missed in women — a hysterectomy, childbirth, rapid weight loss, coming off birth control. Chapter 11 covers ferritin, which is the dispute women get the worst of. The Treatments guide devotes Chapter 7 to spironolactone and why the reassuring safety figures come from cohorts of women aged 18 to 45 with acne rather than from women over 60, and Chapter 14 to menopause, which is the largest unserved question in this market. One note that catches people out: the over-the-counter minoxidil men's solution says on its own label that it is for use by men only, and the label also says not to use it if your hair loss is at the front of the scalp. That is the product's restriction, not this guide's.
I'm already using minoxidil. Is this still any use?
Yes, and it will not tell you to stop. This guide gives no doses and no instruction to start, stop, change or adjust anything — that decision belongs to you and a clinician. What it gives you is the label read line by line, including what it says about how long before results can be judged and what happens if you stop; the chapter on how these things are actually used — frequency, contact time, what comes off on the pillow, and why starting two treatments in the same week makes both of them unreadable; the side effects that turn up in the first weeks, including the shed that follows any new stimulation; and Chapter 15, which is how to measure twelve months so that a treatment that worked is not abandoned at week three and a treatment that failed is not carried for two years.
I'm 63 and I've had this for twenty years. Is it too late for this to be worth anything?
We are not going to answer that with encouragement, because the honest answer is more useful. A miniaturized follicle is smaller and still there. A scarred follicle has been replaced by fibrous tissue, and dermatology reviews are blunt that this loss is permanent. Nobody — not us, not a photograph, not a mirror — can tell you which one you are looking at; that takes an examination. What Chapter 8 does is explain what the difference actually depends on and what would mean being seen soon rather than buying something. And there is a second reason this is worth doing at any age: several of the causes in Chapter 9 and Chapter 11 are things that matter for reasons that have nothing to do with hair.
What exactly do I get, and how?
PDFs, by email, within a couple of minutes of paying, plus a download link on the page you land on. The Field Guide is 224 pages, the Treatments guide is 277, and the Kit is both of those plus 13 printable sheets, 82 pages, sized for US Letter and laid out to print on a plain home printer in black ink alone. They read on a phone, a tablet or a computer, and the sheets are meant to be printed and written on. No app, no login, no shipping. If anything does not arrive, write to us and we will send it.
What if it doesn't help me?
Then write to us within 60 days and we will refund you in full. That is The Source-Check Promise, and it covers three separate things: a factual claim you find with no source behind it; finishing the guide and feeling it did not help you narrow down what is likely going on; or walking into an appointment no better prepared than you were before. What is deliberately not promised is a single hair — no book can promise that, and the ones that do are selling you something.