Dear Dr. Rassman,

I’m very concerned over the article regarding the law suit being launched against Merck. I’m 31 and have been using Propecia for the past two years, which reversed crown thinning and has maintained a mostly full head of hair for me. I stay hopeful however that a better medication or procedure will come along for maintenance/regrowth over the next decade. Do you think that law suits like this are going to kill the efforts, funding, and motivation to continue research for creating more options for hair loss sufferers?

Thanks for your time

There’s around 7 billion people in the world, about half of those are men… and in general, hair loss affects about 50% of the male population to some degree. So with such a huge potential market measured in billions, if there is opportunity the drug companies will likely work it. These companies are in the business of making money. Lawsuits won’t stop them from their research and development.

We live in a very litigious society and a lawsuit against Merck does not mean they’re guilty or at fault.

I heard of a technique where your own bodily fluid is injected into the male pattern balding spot and is supposed to grow hair. Can you tell me what you know about this treatment? Is it for real, is it permanent, is it for the frontal part of the scalp etc.?

I don’t know of injecting body fluid (???) in your scalp to grow hair… but I do know some clinics offer platelet rich plasma (PRP) into the scalp in hopes it will provide faster healing after a hair transplant. Some dentists use it for faster healing after a dental procedure. I asked a few dentist friends, one of which is a professor at UCSF, and she believes PRP is controversial even in the dental field.

In the end, this method has never really been proven to grow hair on a bald scalp. If anyone can find a well controlled study for hair growth from PRP, please let me know. Some doctors charge hundreds or thousands of dollars for PRP, but I remain a bit skeptical. The patients we’ve viewed in the office haven’t had the results their doctors promised.

I am an 18 year old male who’s hairline has receded recently. I would consider myself a Norwood 1.5 on one side but the other side still maintains its juvenile perimeter. Due to my paranoia, I recently attempted to initiate a homemade miniaturization test. I plucked a hair from the corner of my receding temple and from the vertex of my head and found the corner to be slightly thinner. I then proceeded to compare with hairs on the sides of my head and hairs on the sides of my vertex. I found them all to be thinner then the thick mane that runs through the dead center of my head all the way to the hairline.

My question is, is it normal to find hairs to be slightly thinner on sides and corners than the very top of head?

What you are doing on a one-hair-at-a-time basis, is what we do for a 1 square inch area that will clearly define your hair bulk and find out with accuracy if you have less bulk on the sides than on the top. You should have good numbers (metrics) put to your observations and then you will be able to tell what is happening. If what you’re noticing is confirmed by measurements, then I’m really at a loss.

What you’re describing is unusual and almost the opposite of genetic male pattern baldness (which would mean the top thins while the sides remain thick). An examination would be critical for me to draw any conclusions at all.

In non-hair-loss-news:

A French father-of-two is to take GlaxoSmithKline to court on Tuesday, alleging the British firm’s drug to treat Parkinson’s disease turned him into a gay sex and gambling addict.

The 51-year-old’s lawyers say their client’s behaviour changed radically after he was first administered the drug in 2003 for the illness, which causes tremors, slows movement and disrupts speech.

Read the full story — Man claims Glaxo drug made him ‘gay sex addict’

That’s a hell of a side effect. The drug in question is Requip (also known as ropinirole).

Snippet from the article:

Now 55-year-old Joseph Fox Batista sits in a Miami-Dade County jail, accused of scamming his yogurt cream investors and spending their money on a luxury apartment in the Flamingo condo on South Beach, fancy dinners, alcohol, and, one victim says, drugs.

In a jailhouse interview with the Miami Herald, Fox dismissed charges of grand theft and organized scheming to defraud as persecution from “shady forces, possibly members of the powerful and very jealous hair transplant industry.”

Read the full story at MSNBC — Man accused in scam blames hair transplant industry

According to the article, people invested thousands of dollars into the idea that yogurt could supposedly regrow hair, reverse aging, and turn gray hair dark again. Wow. I don’t even know what to say…

Hello,

Some of the individual hairs on my beard get really thick and seem to fuse together with other hairs. These hairs are clearly visible upon close examination of my stubble, at least to me … I hunt these bizarre hairs like wild game then extract the bounty, mercilessly, with a shiny pair of unforgiving tweezers. If I rub the follicular carcass between my powerful digits, individual hairs separate from the seemingly single, thick, shaft. Moreover, when I pluck these wild beasts, there is no pain, whatsoever – they submit to my attack and exit the follicle, without fight or protest. If I pull a regular beard hair out, it screams in protest and fights ’till the bitter, painful end.

Are you familiar with the hairs I’m describing? If so, what’s going on?

I’m a 32 year-old male and I’ve been on Finasteride for almost three years. I break a 5mg pill into four pieces. I take one piece in the morning and one piece at night so I always have some in my system.

Thank you very much.

You’re taking 2.5mg of finasteride daily after only 3 years? That’s higher than the recommended dose for treating hair loss, but hey, if it works for you and your prescribing physician is fine with it, more power to you.

Some hairs grow out in 2’s or 3’s. It can be normal to see those on your beard, chest, or pubic area. You’re probably not seeing your facial hairs become symbiotic, attacking each other in a fight to death. Give your hairs some “mercy”.

By the sound of what you describe, you seem like someone who battles not only with hair loss, but perhaps an obsessive compulsive disorder. I will give you points for a highly creative email, though.

I’m always receiving emails about weird hair loss products that claim to do things they can’t possibly do. I’m sure most of you know this isn’t a new phenomenon, and so I decided to search for some historical hair loss “cures”. Turns out, the scams that exist today aren’t that much different from the quackery of 100 years ago.

In the late 19th century, Dr. George A. Scott was an advertiser of brushes for teeth, skin, and hair that claimed to cure everything from hair loss to headaches. I found a couple of ads for his Electric Hair Brush with some outrageous and ridiculous assertions that I thought the readers of this site would get a kick out of. But first, I wanted to learn more about the man behind the “inventions” and about the actual brush itself. For that, I turned to a fantastically informative site called American Artifacts.

From the American Artifacts site —

Dr. Scott’s Electric Hair Brush. One of the more famous quack devices of the 1880’s, advertised in Harpers Weekly and other popular magazines. Dr. Scott’s 1881 patent claimed merely several magnets embedded in a plastic material and a mold for holding the bristles, which are also embedded in the hard rubber. There is the usual crack across the handle – the metal rods embedded in the thermoplastic material and running the entire length of the brush prevent the handles from breaking. Marked “No 5” and “Dr. Scott’s Electric” on the underside of the handle, and “The Germ of all Life is Electricity”.

The image above is one advertisement I came across from 1882. There’s a larger and more detailed version available here.