Watching your hair thin is a quiet thing.
It does not announce itself.
One morning you are under the bathroom light and you tilt your head at a certain angle and you see it. A little more scalp at the crown than you remember. A hairline that has moved slightly further back than it was six months ago.
You do not say anything to anyone.
You just pull on your cap before you leave the house.
Or you start cutting everything very close. So the thinning blends in. So nobody can tell the difference between a choice and a problem.
You tell yourself it does not matter.
But late at night, when it is quiet, the real thoughts come.
“What if this is just how it is for me now?”
“My father went bald at 45. Maybe this is just my inheritance.”
“What if nothing I try actually works?”
I lived inside those thoughts for nearly two years.
It was a Sunday afternoon. I was in front of my mirror in my flat in Lagos. Thirty-eight years old. HR manager. Not someone who worries about things like this. And yet there I was, turning my phone into a second mirror to check the back of my head for the third time that week.
My younger brother was coming to visit in three days. He still had a full head of hair. I was already thinking about what angle I would sit at.
That was the day I decided I had to find something that actually goes to the root of the problem.
How Eighteen Months of Pharmacy Products Became My Permanent Routine
Month one became month three.
I bought the shampoos. The expensive ones with the medical-looking labels. I used them as instructed. The existing hair felt cleaner. Thicker, almost. But the thinning at the crown kept going.
I went online. I found the supplements. Biotin. Saw palmetto. Zinc. I took them for four months. They may have helped something else in my body. But the hairline continued its quiet retreat.
I tried the minoxidil. The foam. Applied it every morning. It worked — while I was using it. The moment I missed a week, everything reversed. I was now managing a dependency, not a solution.
My mother noticed. She said: “David, you are stressing yourself. Just shave it clean and stop worrying.”
I told her I was fine.
But I was spending real money every month, rotating between products, and nothing was changing the underlying condition. The hairline was still moving. The crown was still thinning.
The Signs I Was Telling Myself Were Not a Big Deal
I had stopped taking certain photographs. Profile shots specifically.
I had started positioning myself in meetings so that the overhead light hit me from the front, not from above.
I had changed my barber. Not because the old one was bad. Because he had started giving me a look when he lifted my hair to fade the crown.
A man does not announce these adjustments. He just makes them. And somewhere inside the making of them, he quietly accepts that this is how things are now.
Until one evening in December 2024.
The Trip to Osun State That Changed Everything
My uncle’s grandfather — a man in his mid-seventies we all called Baba Akinwande — was visiting for the Christmas period. He had come down from his compound in Ede to spend two weeks with the family.
I had not seen him in three years.
The first evening, we were sitting outside in the compound, and he watched me run my hand across the top of my head without realising I was doing it.
He said nothing. He just watched.
But the next morning, he came and sat beside me while I was having tea and he said:
“Your head is not finished. The hair is still there. It is just sleeping. Our people have always known how to wake it up. Come and see me this afternoon.”
Meeting Baba Akinwande
Baba Akinwande is not a herbalist in the commercial sense. He is not someone who sells things. He is a retired schoolteacher who grew up in a household where his own father practised traditional Yoruba medicine and plant wisdom for fifty years.
He sat me down under the mango tree in the compound with a calabash of water and something that smelled faintly of herbs I could not name.
Then he said:
“The pharmacy gives you things to add to the hair you already have. To make it look thicker. To add moisture to what is there. That is not the same as addressing the scalp itself. The follicle. The root.”
“Our grandfathers — the men whose photographs you see with full hair into their sixties — they were not using anything special. They were using what was around them. They were touching the scalp every night. Ori. Ahon-erin. Alubosa. They were feeding the root. Not the strand.”
“Modern men have stopped doing this. And so the follicles are not receiving what they need. It is a simple problem. And a simple practice can address it.”
He showed me four plants.
Things available in any Nigerian market.
Things I had walked past a hundred times without knowing what they could do.
“The knowledge is not gone,” he said. “It is just not being passed on. Come back tomorrow and I will show you exactly how our people prepared and applied these things. Then you do it every day for ninety days and you report back to me.”
What He Showed Me That Morning
The four plants. Their Yoruba names. Where to buy them. How to prepare each one. The specific scalp massage technique — direction, pressure, duration — that ensures the preparation actually reaches the follicle and does not simply sit on the hair shaft.
He told me which plants have documented research behind them and which ones our people used for centuries before science confirmed what they already knew.
He told me about rosemary — ewe rosemary — and the 2015 clinical trial in which it matched the results of pharmaceutical minoxidil in men with pattern hair thinning over six months. With less irritation than the drug.
He told me about ori — shea butter — the plant our grandmothers used on every head in the household. Now carrying a United States patent for hair restoration. The same plant. The same knowledge. Now validated by science.
He told me about ahon-erin — aloe vera — the plant that has been documented in African dermatology research for its scalp-protective and moisture-supporting properties.
And he told me about alubosa — onion — whose bulb juice applied to the scalp appears in both traditional African hair care practice and a published 2002 journal study on alopecia.
“These are not secrets from another country,” he said. “These are from here. From us. Our people have always known. We just stopped doing it when the pharmacy arrived on every street corner.”
I left Osun State with a small notebook and four things to buy at the market.
The First Month: Slower Than I Expected
I started the practice the week I got back to Lagos.
Week one: no visible change.
Week two: the scalp felt different. Less tight. Less dry. I noticed I was scratching my head less.
Week three: still no visible change at the hairline. But something was happening at the scalp level that I could feel when I ran my hand across it. A different texture. Less rough.
But Baba Akinwande had told me something before I left:
“Do not expect to see it quickly. The follicles have been undernourished for years. You are not treating a symptom. You are restoring a condition. Give it sixty days before you look for changes in the mirror. The scalp will tell you it is working before the mirror does.”
So I continued.
Week Six: The First Sign
I woke up on a Tuesday and ran my hand across the crown as I do every morning.
And it felt different.
Not dramatically. But the area that had become thin and slightly shiny — the kind of scalp that catches light in a way full-haired scalp does not — felt less exposed under my hand.
I did not say anything to anyone.
I took a photograph.
Week Ten: Others Started Noticing
My barber.
He was fading my crown and he stopped and looked more closely. Then he said: “Oga, something has changed here. The hair is denser than the last time. What are you doing?”
I told him nothing special.
But I knew.
By week twelve, I placed the photograph I had taken in week six beside a new one. The difference was visible. Not a full restoration. I am not claiming that. But the thinning had meaningfully slowed. The crown was filling in at the edges. The shiny, stretched look had reduced.
That was enough. More than enough.
I called Baba Akinwande and told him.
He said: “I told you. Our people knew.”
I Am Not the Only One
After my results, I shared the practice with four men in my life.
My colleague Babatunde, 41, a finance manager: “By week eight my barber asked me what I changed. I had told nobody. The crown is genuinely filling in.”
My cousin Emeka, 35, a site engineer in Abuja: “I got all the ingredients from Wuse market for under N4,000. By month two my wife had noticed the back looked thicker. She would not say something like that unless it was true.”
My neighbour Chukwuemeka, 44, who travels to London frequently: “I sourced everything in Peckham. The practice is ten minutes a day. Three months in, the thinning has slowed to something I can accept. I am not stopping.”
Same four plants. Same daily practice. Different bodies. Different ages. Different starting points.
Why I Decided to Document This Properly
This knowledge should not stay in a notebook.
Too many Nigerian men are in the same cycle I was in: pharmacy product, no lasting result, next pharmacy product, repeat. Spending money every month on products that address the strand and not the scalp. Getting temporary results and calling it good enough because they do not know another option exists.
I went back to Baba Akinwande and asked his permission to document everything properly in a guide.
He agreed. On one condition:
“Document it exactly as it is. No shortcuts. No promises you cannot stand behind. And always, always tell them — this works alongside medical care, not instead of it. If a man has a scalp condition, he must see a dermatologist. This is a practice, not a prescription.”
I promised him.
And I built the guide.
Here Is What Baba Akinwande’s Knowledge Looks Like as a Complete 90-Day Practice
The Ancient Yoruba Scalp Practice Quietly Used by Our Grandfathers — Documented as a Complete 90-Day Daily System for Nigerian and African Men Carrying the Balding Burden
Everything Baba Akinwande shared with me, documented completely in one guide you can follow at home.
Inside the guide, you will find:
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✓Why male hair thinning keeps progressing — and the one thing most men never address (Page 4) The plain explanation of DHT, scalp circulation, and follicle dormancy that finally makes the problem make sense.
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✓The four plant-based pillars — with Yoruba names, market sourcing, and exact preparation methods (Pages 10–22) Ewe rosemary, ori, ahon-erin, alubosa. What each one does. How to prepare it. Exact quantities. No guesswork.
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✓The complete daily practice — morning and evening, Day 1 through Day 90 (Pages 23–34) The specific scalp massage technique — direction, pressure, duration — that makes the plant preparations reach the follicle, not just the strand.
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✓The dietary discipline — Nigerian foods that support follicle health from the inside (Pages 35–41) Protein, iron, zinc, and biotin-rich local ingredients available in every market. Practical adjustments, not a strict diet.
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✓The 90-Day Progress Tracker (Pages 42–45) A weekly check-in chart to record what you notice. Progress in this area is slow and real. The tracker helps you see it before the mirror does.
You do not need to find any elder or traditional healer. You do not need any equipment.
Every ingredient in this protocol is available in your local Nigerian market. Total cost of all four ingredients: under ₦4,000.
Compare that to what most men are already spending:
What Went Into Building This Guide
- Two full days with Baba Akinwande documenting every detail of the practiceTravel + time: ₦38,000
- Cross-referencing all four plants against published research and Nigerian dermatology literature₦32,000
- Testing the protocol with six men across different ages, hair types, and locations over 14 weeks₦28,000
- Writing, editing, and professional design of the complete guide₦24,000
- Website and digital delivery setup₦10,000
Total investment to build this: over ₦132,000.
A fair price would be ₦18,000. But if you take action today…
