Full Head of Hair with Shedding

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /

My hair right now is very thick, and my hairline is a Norwood 0-1.5 depending on who looks at it. But sometimes when I’m showering and also when I put gel in my hair, I notice that some of the hairs that shed are very thin. They are so thin that they are hard to see unless you are looking for them. Other hairs that shed are very thick and can be felt on my hands, while the thin ones can’t. Is this a bad sign?

You may be seeing miniaturized hairs that are falling out. Miniaturization is part of the early balding process. A good video microscope purchased from Amazon for under $20 can tell you if you are miniaturizing. You can read my many posts on miniaturization on BaldingBlog.com (https://baldingblog.com/?s=miniaturization+hand+microscope&x=0&y=0).

 

Fear of Finasteride and Fear of Losing Hair

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /
Hi doctor, I’ve sent you a message on Reddit and you told me to send you an mail.
I’ll try to be as brief, as hard as it is, about my situation is this:
I’ve basically had really good hair all my life, at least till I turned 18. I want to say I have a good hairline, and a fairly good crown. My hairline hasn’t receeded much, if at all, for the past few years. My main problem is that my hair is thinning in in a very unusual pattern. Since I had long hair, in most of my teenage-hood, it was hard for me to even notice it was thinning – the long hair usually masked it. I found out when I got drafted ~9-10 months ago and had to get a buzzcut – that’s when I noticed some spots on my head are significantly thinner than the rest of the head. Especially at the middle-front of my head, there’s practically a hole of seriously thin hair. However, growing my hair to 4-5cm in length is enough to mask it. The thing about my thin hair is that I don’t notice any shedding, and a year a go it seemed perfectly normal. If I run my hand through my hair it will usually take out 0-3 hairs. Same in the shower. I even remembered worrying about my thin hair before I got drafted because it used to look really bad when it was wet, but when I googled it people said it’s perfectly normal.
Basically, I want to get on Propecia, but I am terrified of the side effects, especially since it will be harder to monitor while I’m in the army, which is for at least a couple more years, but I don’t want to wait until then. 
The reason I’m so confused is because:
1. The hair is thinning out in a very strange fashion.
2. The thinning doesn’t seem very aggressive – my hair is maybe slightly thinner than it was a year ago.
3. I remember noticing the back of my head was fairly thin, but this was 3+ years a go. It’s as if my hair is thinning in episodes, I don’t even know anymore.
4. I have or had lots of bad skin conditions, like acne, inflamed pores on my face, and the most dominant is seborrheic dermatitis, characterized by red, flaky patches on my entire face and scalp. I used to treat it with Ketozol.
Would love to hear what you have to say, really, any honest opinion would help me so much as this thinning has been wrecking my mental health as of late. I don’t know what to do anymore. I would really appreciate your help.
Thanks ahead,
The chance of sexual side effects are only 4% at most; however, you can talk yourself into these sexual side effects all too easily, then it would be 100%. It is tied to your attitude. Most of my patients take the drug when I recommend it and very few get sexual side effects (about 2-4%). Statistics are what they are, and they are reliable. Most men take their daily pill and don’t notice anything. Nonetheless, reading the many negative posts certainly doesn’t help, but the statistics should help you put the sexual concerns into perspective.

 

Why Is It That Blonde People like Me Don’t See Their Hair Loss Until It Gets Bad?

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /

When the contrast between hair and skin color is minimal or when hair is very blonde, hair loss does not show well. I have seen many people in the office over the years with this situation. Contrast with a man with fair skin color and black hair (most Asians), especially when their hair is straight, balding stands out with less than 50% hair loss. I believe that a platinum blonde person can lose 85% of their hair, if it is a distributed, without seeing the loss.

 

Is It Possible to Have a Hair Transplant Fail Because of a Medical Condition?

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /

There are many dermatologic diseases that will kill transplanted hairs. Most of these diseases have signs that are present, either obvious ones like alopecia areata or subtle ones like Frontal Fibrosing Alopecia. These diseases are easily diagnosed by a doctor who is an expert in this field or a dermatologist who specializes in diseases of the scalp.  The key is to have the diagnosis made in advance, something that an experienced hair transplant surgeon will always look for.

Should I Give up on My Hair? (from Reddit)

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /

Hair transplants are an option if you are over 25 years of age. Many men can look normal and never look like they lost their hair or have had a hair transplant.  If you are under the age of 25, you should not get a hair transplant because hair loss is progressive and your balding pattern would not be declared yet. By age 25, most people know, with a good doctor’s help, where their balding is going. They then have a hair transplant if the pattern of balding becomes stable with medications.  If you start a hair transplant process before you are 25, and then you may continue to lose your hair. You may find yourself chasing hair loss with more and more hair transplants. This makes it expensive and wasteful of your donor hair.  You need to build a MASTER PLAN with your doctor that outlines what you will do, depending upon the age, at any point in time.

Should I give up? from tressless

I Had a Hair Transplant 5 Years Ago, and Now These Transplanted Grafts Seem to Be Falling Out.

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /

We do know that for a few patients, these permanent hairs may not be permanent after all. We don’t understand what you are reporting, but I would suggest that you see your surgeon and ask him/her to look at the donor area microscopically and see if those hairs are miniaturizing. If the donor areas have miniaturized hairs, this could explain what you are seeing.

Breakthrough in the Early Diagnosis of Alzheimers

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /

From time to time, I read about something significant in the field of medicine. Many of our readers have parents and grandparents who confront dementia and Alzheimers, so information like this becomes significant from a family’s perspective.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01466-8?WT.mc_id=enews2018_02_07&utm_source=enews-aff-184&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=enews-2018-02-07

Overseas Travel for Hair Transplants (from Reddit)

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /

Traveling overseas can save you money on a hair transplant. I just surveyed many markets to find out what the cost per graft is in various countries from people who knew. Putting Turkey and India aside for a moment, the costs from reputable clinics including Thailand, Korea, much of South America, Mexico and Eastern Europe range from a low of $3 to a high of $5/graft. Two exceptions seem to be Turkey where pricing can be found as low as $0.50/graft and India where similar competitive pricing to Turkey seems available.

In Turkey, hair transplantation has country-wide offerings. There are about 510 clinics in Turkey, of which less than 40 clinics are reported to have physicians. Clinics are required to have doctors, but most seem to avoid this requirement. The government is blind to them because they bring in over $1 billion per year in revenue. The statistics on India are unfortunately not available, but I have spoken to patients who had a hair transplant in India for between $1-1.50/graft.

The issue or recourse is an important issue. If something goes wrong in most of these inexpensive countries, you have no recourse to complain or sue the doctor or clinic. We don’t know how many patients died in Turkey because there is no reporting mechanism and to report it is bad for their local economy. We do hear about complications from Turkey reported by doctors in Europe who see these patients after they develop gangrene of their wounds, or balding in their donor area.

I know of two deaths in the US over the past 8 years, and that is easy to find. Patients have recourse against the doctors in clinics in the US. As a result, there is an effort to do everything right by doctors in the US because they are at risk if they don’t do it right. Good doctors don’t need to be threatened to do it right.

I have been particularly interested in this subject and expect that I will learn more over time. I wonder if readers on this site would travel overseas to save significant amounts of money if the quality of the work was known to be good. Please write me if you are interested at wrassman@newhair.com, subject ‘Overseas travel for surgery‘

Overseas hair transplant options? from tressless

People Wonder What a Hair System (Wig) Looks like (Video from Reddit)

/by William Rassman, M.D./0 /

Reading the comments are about as interesting as the video. Most men don’t understand how a hair system works and this picture shows it well. Good hair systems are not inexpensive. Over the years, the cost for such hair replacements can run over $15,000.  That is why so many people offer hair systems. The glue that attaches to the hair system you see here pulls out hair, so many people who use then become more bald over time from the traction of the glue that pulls out hair.

r/all Hair. from interestingasfuck