← LibraryThe Follicle Field Guide · The companion guide to the Health Reset hair-loss channel One payment. No subscription. · Educational material only.
Book one of two · the naming book

The Follicle Field Guide

"Which kind of hair loss is this?"

People spend years on the wrong fix because nobody ever told them which kind they have. This guide narrows it down and sends you into your next appointment with a list instead of a story — with a named source and a year behind every claim.

$27 — one payment, one PDF by email. 224 pages · fourteen chapters · four appendices. No subscription, no renewal, no account.

Before you buy anything: see a clinician promptly if any of the warning signs apply to you. These are not reasons to panic. They are reasons not to wait, and not to spend the next six months on a shampoo. Read the ten warning signs first ↓

Get the Field Guide — $27 See the fourteen chapters

Educational material only. Not medical advice, not a diagnosis, and not a substitute for care from a licensed clinician. Nothing here promises a single hair.

Cover of The Follicle Field Guide
The Follicle Field Guide · 224 pages · $27 · delivered as a PDF by email
Where this usually starts

You did not notice this in the mirror.

You noticed it in the drain, or in the brush, or in a photograph from three years ago. You can see your scalp when your hair is wet and under the light. The part is wider than it was. And somewhere along the way you stopped asking what this is and started buying things.

Then the appointment lasted ten minutes and you came out with the word "stress".

None of it was stupid. The problem is the order.

It was what the shelf, the ads and the search results told you to try. The problem is the order.

Every product on that shelf treats one kind of hair loss. Nothing on it tells you which kind you have. A shedding episode that started three months after surgery does not respond to a DHT shampoo. A patch that is autoimmune does not respond to foam. Low iron does not respond to anything you rub on your head. So the same purchase is either the right one or a wasted year, and the only thing that decides which is a question nobody asked you first.

That question is what this guide is for. It is the book that comes before the treatments — the one that narrows down which two or three things are plausibly going on, and what to take to somebody who can examine you.

And if the fear stopping you is that it is already too late: a follicle that has miniaturized is smaller and still there; a follicle that has scarred has been replaced by fibrous tissue, and dermatology reviews are blunt that this loss is permanent. Nobody can tell you which one you have from a page, a photograph or a mirror. Chapter 8 explains what actually decides that, and what to look for that would mean being seen soon rather than buying something.

Who it is for
You do not have a name for this yet, or the name you were given never came with a reason. Start here.
What it does not do
It does not weigh treatments. That is the second guide. And it is not a diagnosis: nobody can name your kind of hair loss from a page, a photograph or a mirror — that takes an examination, sometimes a dermatoscope, and sometimes a biopsy.
The table of contents is the argument

What is actually in it

Length
224 pages, measured — not estimated
Structure
Fourteen chapters and four appendices
Format
One PDF, by email, within a couple of minutes of paying
Price
$27, one payment. No renewal, no account, no card kept on file
  1. 1Read This Page First: The Signs That Mean See Someone This Week
  2. 2Shedding or Losing? Two Words for One Problem
  3. 3What Happened Three Months Ago
  4. 4Read the Pattern
  5. 5The Kind That Scars, and Why It Cannot Wait
  6. 6A Patch Is Not Thinning
  7. 7Why Pattern Loss Happens — and Why It Is Not a Testosterone Problem
  8. 8Thinner, or Gone? What the Window Actually Depends On
  9. 9The Pill You Already Take
  10. 10On Thyroid Medicine and Still Shedding
  11. 11The Numbers Behind the Word "Normal"
  12. 12The Supplements That Can Make It Worse
  13. 13Weight, Smoke, Tension: What the Evidence Actually Supports
  14. 14Ten Minutes: What to Say, What to Bring, and What to Do If You Are Dismissed

Appendix A: The Ten-Minute Appointment Page. Appendix B: The Test Names, As a US Lab Orders Them. Appendix C: What We Could Not Verify. Appendix D: Check Me — Every Source.

What a field guide does here: it narrows the likely causes and helps you take them to somebody who can examine you. It does not tell you what you have. Nobody can name your kind of hair loss from a page, from a photograph or from a mirror — that takes an examination, sometimes a dermatoscope, and sometimes a biopsy. Read the warning-signs page first. Then use this guide to arrive prepared, not to arrive convinced.

Who wrote it: nobody with a title to sell you. This is published under The Follicle Field Guide imprint, and no clinical credentials are claimed for its authorship. Its authority is the sources it cites — FDA-approved product labeling, the NCBI Bookshelf, American Academy of Dermatology guidance and peer-reviewed dermatology journals — each named with its year so that you, or your clinician, can look it up. It was researched and written with the help of AI tools, working from those primary sources. That is stated inside the books too.

Three questions, three chapters

What each of these actually decides

Three of the fourteen. The source under each one is the point: it is what you are buying.

"I don't know which kind I have, and I've been treating the wrong one."

The Follicle Field Guide · Chapter 4: Read the Pattern

Frontotemporal recession with thinning at the crown. A part that widens with the front hairline intact. Loss spread evenly across the whole scalp. The differential table sorts five families by speed, distribution, symptoms, whether the follicular openings are still there, and how urgently each one needs to be seen. It decides which two or three are plausibly yours — and which one belongs to somebody with a dermatoscope, not to a bottle of foam. Chapter 2 comes first and settles the other half of the question: shedding and losing are two different things (American Academy of Dermatology).

"It might be the pill I take every day, and nobody told me."

The Follicle Field Guide · Chapter 9: The Pill You Already Take

The classes documented in the drug-induced alopecia literature, named without invented latencies: antihypertensives and beta blockers in particular, lipid-lowering drugs, thyroid hormone, antidepressants, anticoagulants, retinoids, lithium, antiseizure drugs. The one sentence to put to whoever wrote the prescription.

Nobody stops a medication because of a book. Stopping a blood pressure pill, a blood thinner or an antiseizure drug on your own can cost you far more than hair. What this chapter produces is a question, asked of the right person.

"What blood tests do I even ask for? And what does 'normal' mean?"

The Follicle Field Guide · Chapter 11: The Numbers Behind the Word "Normal" (with Appendix B)

Ferritin is the central unsettled dispute in this subject, and the guide prints both sides with their sample sizes and their years: authors proposing hair-relevant targets around 50 and 70 (Guo and Katta, Dermatology Practical & Conceptual, 2017) against work that found no significant increase in iron deficiency in women with hair loss (Olsen, JAAD, 2010, 381 women and 76 controls). No randomized trial shows that raising ferritin grows hair, and the chapter says so. What it gives you instead is the thing that survives the dispute: ask for the number, not the word "normal" — and Appendix B has the test names written exactly as a US lab orders them.

Every chapter prints its sources where you can see them, and the book ends with Appendix C: the list of every claim we went looking for and could not confirm in a primary source, printed instead of guessed at.

See a clinician promptly if any of these apply to you.

These are not reasons to panic. They are reasons not to wait, and not to spend the next six months on a shampoo.

  1. Your hair loss came on suddenly, over days or a few weeks, rather than gradually over years.
  2. Your hair is coming out in patches — round or oval bald spots, or patches in your beard, eyebrows or eyelashes.
  3. Do not waitThe skin in the thinning area itches, burns, hurts, is scaly or red, or looks smooth and shiny with no visible pores. This is the one that cannot wait. Some kinds of hair loss scar the follicle, and scarred follicles do not come back. Dermatology reviews describe scarring alopecias as urgent conditions, because delays in starting treatment can make the outcome worse. If your scalp hurts or your hairline is receding in a band, and especially if you are also losing eyebrow hair, ask for an appointment now and ask specifically about scarring alopecia.
  4. You do not know why your hair is falling out. This is not us being dramatic — it is on the over-the-counter minoxidil label, which tells you not to use the product if "you do not know the reason for your hair loss."
  5. Your hair loss is in the front of your scalp, or the pattern does not match the diagrams on the minoxidil carton. That is also a "do not use" on the label.
  6. Hair loss with other symptoms: unexplained fatigue, unexplained weight change, new joint pain, a rash, fever, heavy periods, or feeling cold all the time. Hair is sometimes the visible part of something systemic.
  7. You are shedding heavily and you are pregnant, recently postpartum, or breastfeeding.
  8. You started, stopped or changed a medication in the last few months. Bring the list. Do not change anything first.
  9. You are losing hair and you take a medication that requires monitoring — a blood thinner, thyroid hormone, lithium, an antiseizure medication. The conversation is with your prescriber.
  10. Any bald patch that is growing, or any hair loss that is accelerating. Earlier is better.

If any of these describe you, close this page and ask for an appointment. The guide will still be here afterwards, and it will be more useful to you once somebody has looked.

$27

The Follicle Field Guide · 224 pages · one payment, one PDF by email

Get the Field Guide — $27

One payment, one time. No subscription, no renewal, no account to cancel and no card kept on file. Educational material only — not medical advice, not a diagnosis, and not a substitute for care from a licensed clinician.

Our terms, in full

The Source-Check Promise

Every claim in this guide is tied to a named source with a date, and where the research disagrees we print both sides. Find a factual claim with no source behind it — or finish the guide and feel it did not help you narrow down what is likely going on with your own hair, or walk into an appointment no better prepared than you were before — and write to us within 60 days and we will refund you in full. Two things are promised here, and they are the two things we control: how this guide is sourced, and your money back. Nothing here promises a single hair. No product can, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something.

To use it, write to mysteriesmediallc@gmail.com within 60 days of your purchase.

If you already have an appointment booked

The Follicle Field Kit — $97

Both guides plus 13 printable sheets · 224 + 277 + 82, so 583 printed pages in all

The difference is not length, it is paper you take out of the house. The Kit is this guide, the Treatments guide, and a printable set sized for US Letter: the lab-request and results sheet with the disputed thresholds printed on it, the medication cross-reference for your prescriber, the twelve-month record with its photo protocol, and the ten-minute appointment script. Six of its thirteen sheets are not in either book. If you do not have an appointment yet, this guide on its own answers the first question, and the Kit will still be there later.

See what is in the Kit

Prices are one-time payments in US dollars. Nothing on this page renews.