Just wondering if any of you guys have done any blood or other tests to see whether the usage of topical fin can have a big impact on semen?  And has anyone tried to conceive successfully while on topical fin, any issues any thing? 

Yes, many men on finasteride develop a waterery semen with a decreased volume. A family member of a friend of mine took finasteride, had watery semen and a low sperm count, and made two nice babies.

Is there any truth or validity to the claim that one’s hair at age one can be used as a predictor of their hair loss later in life? Looking at a few famous people with notably in-tact hair, such as Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Brad Pitt, there seems to be some correlation. Still, I couldn’t find any formal research on the subject, and I assume the connection isn’t as direct as the rumors might imply.

Maybe one can make a business out of this as most parents would like their children to be men like those you mentioned. Some scam artists may develop a combination that will make susceptible parents take up the challenge.

I’m writing this because, I keep finding contrasting opinions about microneedling Since scientific papers have already proven the efficacy of this therapy, especially when combined with other treatments, my main questions are related to depth and frequency, Is the recommended depth of needles 1.5mm, 1mm, or even lower than that? Some people say the frequency should be once every 1 or 2 weeks, while others have posted promising results from doing it every day To avoid the risk of creating scar tissue, what would be the ideal frequency for microneedling?

How much pressure am I supposed to apply if I don’t want to damage hair follicles and the hypodermis? Since dermarollers are usually not recommended, I’m considering buying a dermastamp to test microneedling’s efficacy, and I will consider a dermapen in the long run.

Microneedling works for most men.  Some microneeding results parallel a good hair transplant (rare), but you will grow some hair if you do it right. For younger men, hair growth is better than in older men with long-term balding, but I have seen good results on a few men in their 50s or 60s with long-term balding, like a Class 6 pattern balding. The microneedling using a Dr. Pen device gives you control of the damage the microneedling does to stimulate hair growth.  What happens is that the microneedling produces damage at the very upper part of the hair follicle where the stem cells are present.  Bleeding is the first step, followed by migrating specialized healing cells from the body’s defenses.  Within 2-3 days, stem cells appear at the wounding site as part of the cascade of events that occur with miconeedling. These stem cells convert to hair stem cells that control hair cycling, and with enough injury frequency, the hairs in the area of wounding stimulate the hair to commence their anagen cycle.  The microneedling needs to be done once a week initially.  A maintenance schedule is required, like once a month, once the hair has grown.  Usually, a person can expect hair growth within 5-6 months or earlier. 

I recently saw a video of some guys hitting the sauna (why I am watching other guys going to the sauna is another story), and they received this kind of hat at the entrance. They said it’s to protect their hair. Been doing Sauna for a while and have never seen that. I did notice how my hair would get super hot like it could almost burn my finger. So yeah, I was wondering what is the risk there? Usually, you hear it’s good because it makes blood circulate, etc. Side question: would the steam room be better if the sauna is damaged?

No, neither a sauna nor a steam room should damage your hair. Remember, the hair on the head is not alive; only the hair-manufacturing apparatus beneath the scalp is alive.

Should I start taking finasteride now?

First, find out for sure that you are losing hair and have miniaturized hairs and the extent and severity of it. The best way is to see a doctor or purchase a hand microscope from Amazon and then look at it yourself. My baldingblog.com has instructions on how to do it.  I suspect you are not balding at all, but I can’t be sure without a hand microscope. In someone with such a thick-looking head-of-hair, without a hand microscope looking for significant miniaturization throughout the head, one can’t tell if you are balding now.  

As a former Vietnam Veteran, I thought I would share something personable about myself this Memorial Day. I had read this story while reading a book by Brian Greene, when he discussed Otto Loewi and how he got his Nobel Prize in Medicine. 

Solving problems is a difficult problem for many people.  Sometimes, we rack our brains for days, months, or years, knowing that the problem we are trying to solve is almost at our fingertips, but we never seem to reach it. Invention is often the end product of solving problems.  A most notable story demonstrating the power of dreams follows:

Proof that our Nerves Transmit Signals Chemically

In 1903 Otto Loewi had the thought that nerve signals were possibly transmitted using chemical instructions. He could not think of how he could prove his new idea.

In 1920 Loewi had a dream about the problem. He woke excitedly during the night and scribbled notes about the dream.

In the morning, he could not remember the dream, and he could not read his nocturnal notes either!

The following night, he dreamed about the problem again. The dream was about an experiment he could use to prove his idea, and this time he remembered it.

He carried out research based on his dream and published the work in 1921, establishing that signalling across synapses was indeed chemical, as he had suspected.

It’s ironic that it took 17 years for subconscious thoughts to come to the surface in the man often called the father of neuroscience!

Ironic or not, in 1936 the great man was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for work that came to him in a dream.

William Rassman’s note:  I have experienced this process, holding over 60 patents to my name. Some of these were just inventions I participated in, while most were my inventions.  Many came to me in my sleep after racking my brain over a problem for a long time.  One particular problem for which I applied for a US Patent had nothing to do with my problem but the problems of others outside my field of specialty.  I had taken a great interest in reading everything I could about alternative energy.  While reading, I became aware that the United States had more oil in Oil Shale than the entire Middle East. I was stimulated to think about the inefficient ways oil was extracted from Oil Shale (1980).

One night, at 3 am, I woke up having visualized a solution to extracting oil from an Oil Shale with simultaneous refining into kerosene, gasoline, diesel, and all other refining products from oil.  I remember going to my desk, writing up the solution and some images, and then returning to sleep.  When I woke up at 6 am, I only remembered getting up at 3 am and writing something on my desk. I read what I wrote and realized that I had envisioned a solution for extracting oil from Oil Shale. I met with a patent attorney that day, submitting a patent that week. Three years later, my patent application was rejected because Exon had submitted the same patent 3 weeks before I did.  I was proud that I had seen the solution for extracting oil from Oil Shale while I was asleep. At the same time, Exon spent countless years developing their solution before submitting the same idea and then submitted a patent just 3 weeks before I did. 

If you are interested in reading about similar happenings in other historical figures, read here (from Google, where I copied the piece on Loewi): https://www.famousscientists.org/7-great-examples-of-scientific-discoveries-made-in-dreams/

When i massaged the crust (maybe a little to hard) there also came little hairs with it. But there was no blood. A big indicator for losing grafts is blood, right? So is my assumption right that it would be probably the shedding of the hair itself and not the grafts that were lost?

Timing is everything!  In our article on Graft Anchoring (2006), Dr. Robert Bernstein and I noted that if there is crusting on the grafts, “at nine days post-op, grafts were no longer at risk of being dislodged“.  If you try to remove the crusts (scabs) before the 9th day you run the risk of losing the graft.  At 9 days, what is coming out is the graft residue and the hair shafts of the transplanted grafts, leaving behind the stem cells that will regenerate new hairs between 2-5 months after the hair transplant.