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Book two of two · the referee

The Follicle Field Guide to Treatments

"Of everything people tell me to try, which has evidence — and what does each cost me in a year?"

There is no referee in this subject, so here is one that shows its work: every claim with the study, the label or the guideline it came from, its year, and — printed in its own appendix — everything we went looking for and could not confirm.

$47 — one payment, one PDF by email. 277 pages · sixteen chapters · four appendices. No subscription, no renewal, no account.

Read this before you buy this one.

If you still do not know which kind of hair loss you have, this is not the book to start with. Weighing treatments before anything has been named is how the last two years went. The Follicle Field Guide, $27, is the one that comes first: it is the naming book.

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 Treatments guide — $47 See the sixteen 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 to Treatments
The Follicle Field Guide to Treatments · 277 pages · $47 · delivered as a PDF by email
Where this one usually starts

One video says rosemary oil beats minoxidil. The next says it is useless.

You have a name for this now — from a clinician, or from the first guide — and the question changed. It is no longer what is this. It is what to do about it, and every source you can find contradicts the last one. Meanwhile the shelf, the ads and the search results keep selling, and nothing tells you what any of it costs over a year or how long you would have to wait before you could tell whether it did anything.

That is the job of this book. Every option weighed against the research: minoxidil and finasteride in the words of their own FDA labels, oral minoxidil, spironolactone, compounded topicals, rosemary oil, laser caps, PRP and transplants — what each costs in a year, how long before you could judge it, and what would tell you to stop. Sources with dates on every page.

It does not tell you what to take. It gives no doses and no instruction to start, stop, change or adjust anything — that decision belongs to you and a clinician. What it hands you is the sourced version of each argument, printed with its sample size and its year, so that a decision about your money and your body is made with the evidence in front of you.

Who it is for
You already have a name for it — from a clinician or from the first guide — or minoxidil failed and you want to know what is left.
What it does not do
It does not do the identification work. That stays in the first guide — this one opens with a two-page routing check and the full warning-signs page, then moves on.
The table of contents is the argument

What is actually in it

Length
277 pages, measured — not estimated
Structure
Sixteen chapters and four appendices
Format
One PDF, by email, within a couple of minutes of paying
Price
$47, one payment. No renewal, no account, no card kept on file
  1. 1How to Read This Book, and How to Check Me
  2. 2What "Works" Means, and the Clocks That Decide Everything
  3. 3The Label on the Box You Already Own
  4. 4Finasteride, in the Words of Its Own Label
  5. 5Dutasteride and the Rest of the Off-Label Shelf
  6. 6The Blood-Pressure Pill, Told Straight
  7. 7Spironolactone, and Why the Reassuring Numbers Are Not About You
  8. 8Compounded Topicals and the 2025 Alert
  9. 9The Shampoo Chapter, Honestly
  10. 10What the Rosemary Study Actually Found
  11. 11Devices and Procedures: What Each Costs and What the Evidence Shows
  12. 12How You Actually Use These Things
  13. 13The Side Effects Nobody Mentions Until You Have Them
  14. 14Menopause: What Is Established, and What Is Not
  15. 15Twelve Months, Measured
  16. 16Still in Dispute, and What We Could Not Verify

Appendix A: The Treatment Comparison Table. Appendix B: The Words They Use. 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 sixteen. The source under each one is the point: it is what you are buying.

"Is minoxidil a treatment or a mortgage? And why didn't it work for me?"

The Follicle Field Guide to Treatments · Chapter 3: The Label on the Box You Already Own

The over-the-counter minoxidil Drug Facts label, read line by line. Four of its own "do not use" statements describe a large part of this audience: you are a woman, your hair loss is on the front of the scalp, it is sudden and/or patchy, or you do not know the reason for it. The same label says you may need at least four months before results, that using more or more often will not improve them, and that continued use is necessary to keep any regrowth or hair loss will begin again. That last sentence is on the carton in your bathroom. It is from the FDA-approved labeling, not from us.

"One video says rosemary oil beats minoxidil. Another says it's useless."

The Follicle Field Guide to Treatments · Chapter 10: What the Rosemary Study Actually Found

The 2015 six-month trial in Skinmed, 100 people, rosemary oil against 2% minoxidil, no statistically significant difference between the groups — printed straight. Then the four limitations printed just as straight: the comparator was the weaker 2%, and a 2002 trial in 393 men found 5% produced substantially more regrowth; there was no placebo arm, so everybody was massaging something into their scalp twice a day for six months; it is one study of 100 people; and itching went up in both groups, which is the opposite of how the study is usually sold. The chapter ends without telling you what to do, which is the point.

"It started with menopause, and I was told that's just how it is."

The Follicle Field Guide to Treatments · Chapter 14: Menopause: What Is Established, and What Is Not

More than half of postmenopausal women had pattern hair loss in one study — that part is established. What is not: a 2021 review in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine states plainly that the evidence conflicts on whether estrogen stimulates or inhibits the hair follicle, and most women with pattern hair loss have normal testosterone. Which is exactly why "your hormones are normal" does not mean nothing is wrong with your hair. The chapter refuses to guess about hormone therapy in either direction, and gives you the version of this conversation that works in a menopause appointment: a question, not a demand for a prescription.

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.

$47

The Follicle Field Guide to Treatments · 277 pages · one payment, one PDF by email

Get the Treatments guide — $47

Still no name for what you have? Start with the $27 guide instead — this one weighs treatments, it does not identify them. 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 Kit contains this book in full, plus the naming guide it tells you to read first, plus a printable set sized for US Letter — the paper the books ask you to bring: 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. Bought separately at their own checkouts the two guides are $74, so the printable set costs $23. If what you need is the treatment evidence and nothing else, this book on its own is the whole of it.

See what is in the Kit

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