I have been on minoxidil for 7 months now. I’m on my 2nd prp treatment and 2 weeks into finasterid 0.5 mg/day. Do you think fin will do any difference?
Your hairline looks good. What is the problem you see? I see that you are wasting your money and efforts including medications at this time. The arrows show where the hairline is moving into its mature position so it is thinning out to get there. I see some more movement from your older juvenile hairline to a mature hairline now which is what I think that you are seeing.
Yes, it does look like you have pushed your donor area and now have ‘donor site depletion’. I would have to examine you and measure your residual donor density. I see many such patients both in my office and over the internet. Scalpmicropigmentaiton is the best way to treat this and make it look good (https://scalpmicropigmentation.com/). If you are planning on doing more FUE grafts, make sure that you and your doctor discuss the risks of balding of the donor area.
You have something called ‘donor site depletion’ or you could have shock loss which means that the FUE grafts were taken too close and possibly too many for your donor area to support it. Maybe some of the hairs have been shocked out and may return, but if this continues through the 8th month, then you have a problem, the only solution is Scalpmicropigmentation which can hide the effects of the missing hair very well.
My comment: The needle length should be 1 -= 1.5 mm long to reach the growth center of the hair follicle. Read this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3746236/ The question raised is how often does the dermaroller (microneedling) need to be done and for how long? The article doesn’t really answer this question but does show the superiority of using microneedling with minoxidil rather than minoxidil alone.
Comment by Reader: How long should I wait before applying to my scalp? I use the 0.5 mm roller on my hairline, and I use rosemary/lavender oil instead of minoxidil, how long should I wait before applying this? I’ve done it as soon as I finished rolling, and it stung but I’m not sure if this is good or bad.
This article was published however, I am not impressed that this will cross-over into humans. You judge for yourself.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200727145808.htm
The NHS wrote: This US study looked at a medical records database to see how common erectile dysfunction (impotence) was among men prescribed two drugs, dutasteride and finasteride, both used to treat non-cancerous prostate enlargement. The drugs work by blocking the male hormone testosterone. A low dose of finasteride is also used to treat male pattern baldness.
Overall they found that around 1 in 17 of all men prescribed either drug for prostate enlargement had erectile dysfunction. This figure fell to 1 in 31 of those prescribed finasteride for baldness. Using the drug for longer was generally linked with a higher risk. However, in 99% of men, stopping the drugs solved the problem so it wasn’t as catastrophic as the media implies.
This is what I looked like. Did I do any damage to the grafts?
The skin of a hair transplant came from the back of your head which has been protected from the sun since you were born. Now you expose the skin to sun so I would expect it to burn. Also ultraviolet light is not good for wound healing. Use a good sun blocker or a hat and you will be protected. A single sun burn to the grafts probably will not permanently damage them
There has been a suggestion that sperm counts get depressed by finasteride. We know that this happens with dutasteride and this drug even produces azospermia (no sperm) with sterility in some men. The same may happen with finasteride, but the literature is not clear on it. I have now seen many doctor refuse to write prescriptions for finasteride because of the medical-legal risks suggested by articles that discuss side effects that the doctor just doesn’t want to deal with. I continue to write these prescription but place these risks in a consent document that patients must sign.
https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(13)02786-6/pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10495374/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26636418/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4969473/
All three of these research papers discuss the impact on scalp and systemic DHT. Dutasteride reported a low incidence of sexual side effects 1.7% but although this number is thought to be low, if you subtract the placebo group from the sexual side effects group on finasteride it comes out about 2%.
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