This 23 year old male who wanted to find out if he was a good candidate for a hair transplant. His present Norwood pattern of hair loss is an early Class 3 pattern.  At 23, I normally would not offer hair transplants to someone of his age because: (1) the balding pattern is not completely defined at this age, see example here: https://baldingblog.com/need-master-plan-think-hair-transplants-photos/), (2) I usually ask myself the questions “can he support a worst case Class 7 balding pattern if it should occur?”, (3) his hair thickness is very coarse (see example here:  https://baldingblog.com/hair-thickness-vs-density/) and (4) his level of maturity in accepting the advice of a doctor like me appears reasonable as we worked on the plan shown here together and he understands that his final balding pattern is poorly defined at this time.  I asked him to map out his head and with a hand microscope purchased from Amazon, he mapped out his head and gave me detailed microscopic views of his hair in different parts of his scalp.  The pictures here show that there is some early miniaturization in the frontal area (first set of photos) and that his donor density when calculated by me, showed that his total hair count (total hairs on the head) is approximately 160,000 hairs (an average Caucasian has 110,000), and that he averages 3.2 hairs/follicular unit (or graft). The average Caucasian has a follicular unit hair count of 2.2 hairs/follicular unit (or graft). His available hair is 50% higher than the average Caucasian. That puts his donor graft supply very high.  In addition, he purchased a micrometer from Amazon (at my suggestion) and measured his donor hair thickness (he cut 6 hairs from area [CD] on the third set of photos). His hair thickness measured 72 microns which means that he has a coarse hair.  From a Personalized Master Plan perspective, if he was to progress even to to a Class 7 pattern (the most advanced hair loss pattern), he would have enough hair to transplant his entire head. His hair has a high hair mass capable of covering a huge area of his head, if he should bald further at sometime in the future which is likely from what I see on the various maps he provided to me. At this time, all of his miniaturization is confined to the frontal area of the scalp and the frontal corner hairline.

This is an amazing result from finasteride alone. I don’ believe that I ever saw such remarkable growth in just 9 months.

If it is not approved in the US, doctors will not write an Rx for medical-legal reasons. For example, if someone gets post-dutasteride syndrome, then there is no legal protection for the doctor for legal action taken by the patient.

I feel like my rate of loss isn’t as bad as my grandpas and line’s up better with my uncles. However they lost more overall than my great grandfather, which I attribute to their father’s influence. Neither of them were as bad as his though. I can’t tell if they had crown loss like I do, my uncles seemed to just recede from front to back while I started at the crown and eventually the temples. I believe my grandfather was a diffuse thinner.

Best case scenario is that I take exactly after my great grandfather, his hairline was fairly far back but it looked more or less like a full head of hair, kinda Richard Nixon territory. -but considering he started losing hair about… 100-ish years ago? There’s not many people I can query about regarding the rate it happened. Nor any pictures where I can see his crown.

Today, drugs like finasteride which slow down the loss were not available with your grandfather or other relatives, so you can modify your end balding stage and with a good hair transplant, you can bypass what happened to them.  Look at yesterday’s  post about a 10 year finasteride study, it shows that men with less severe hair loss, may gain hair with finasteride.

This graph taken from the article below, tells us a great deal about long term finasteride use by pattern of hair loss.  Look at the stabilizing effect on the progressive nature hair genetic hair loss once the pattern has been achieved (about 5 years into the study). It appears that many of the less advanced patterns of hair loss, have even gained some hair over the 10 year study.

Source: https://www.oatext.com/Long-term-(10-year)-efficacy-of-finasteride-in-523-Japanese-men-with-androgenetic-alopecia.php

First, check with your mom and the other females in the family (grandmothers, aunts, sisters, etc..) and see if they had the same situation in their 20s as this condition is often inherited on the female side of the family. You need to get a good doctor and a good examination of your hair with a trichoscope which shows classic genetic patterns in the area around the sides and back of your head.

Some common blood tests for female hair loss:

• Sex Hormone tests
• SHBG (Sex Hormone Binding Globulin) used to test status of male hormones
• Estradiol is a sex hormone
• FSH (Follicle Stimulating Hormone) *not hair follicle but follicle in the ovary*
• LH (Luteinizing Hormone) is a sex hormone
• Free Testosterone
• Total Testosterone
• ANA (Anti Nuclear Antibody) used to test for Lupus or other autoimmune diseases
• TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) used to test for hyper or hypo-thyroid disease
• Test Iron status
• TIBC (Total Iron Binding Capacity)
• Ferritin
• Iron

As these test may point to a cause other than genetic

I think because of better social media, we are more aware of balding today and we are sharing the problem with others. I don’t believe that we moved the needle on balding