Reader is Angry About Hair Loss Treatments
Please don’t call hair loss treatable. Why? Because it isn’t. For the vast majority of people, who don’t even bother seeking solutions because what’s available is so downright pathetic, it is a permanent scar.
Anyone with serious hair loss knows this, that other than some supposed miracle stem cell therapy in twenty years, there is nothing you or any doctor can do to truly repair the damage (I don’t mean moving three hairs from end of the scalp to the next.) Make a Norwood 7 a Norwood 1, and you can call it treatable, until then please be honest about the prospects. Aderans spent how much money and time trying to fix it and look where they are now? The prospects are dismal.
You are obviously angry and my answer is not to assuage your anger. Hair loss is treatable. What you’re looking for is a cure, which doesn’t exist. Treatment options are available, though.
Your experience may not be uncommon, but that reflects poor research, not poor treatment. I am assuming that you are specifically referring to hair transplants. Go to our Full Face patient gallery and you’ll see examples of men that had their hair loss treated successfully with transplants. If you come to one of our Open House events (which are held every month), you can meet many of these patients in person.
Take a look at Patient ZU below and you will see a Norwood class 7 patient that turned into a person with a mature hairline from transplants with almost 10,000 grafts. Are you suggesting this man’s hair loss wasn’t treated?
You know, I am so glad that 3 years ago, I made the decision to focus on SUCCESS cases, rather than failures and complaints, as I sought treatment for my hair loss. I was a strong NW 3, almost an NW 4, just 3 years ago. After a long and arduous process and research of my options, I decided to go on Rogaine 2x a day, Propecia once a day, and Nizoral 2 or 3 times a week.
Today, I am an NW 2 and have gotten control of my hair loss problem. Things are going well, and most people today would not know that I have MPB. My hair looks better than ever.
And with the stuff I have seen…quality hair transplants by doctors like Dr. Rassman, the efficacy of today’s FDA approved hair loss medications, and the visual help one can get with concealers and more permanent solutions like SMP…well, I’m sorry. It simply isn’t true. Today, for the most part, you can be helped.
I get what the guy is saying but unfortunately Propecia Rogaine and Avodart is what we have. And of course hair transplants. It’s better than nothing. I know it’s painful to be on DHT blockers knowing your hair loss can continue any day but it’s better that then nothing at all.
Oh yea, hair transplants can be a pain in the butt of course too, especially when u need more than 1 procedure and they are expensive as hell but it’s the only thing to restore hair today and they got limits too.
It’s a bit like saying we can’t cure ageing. No we can’t. We will all age – and no cosmetic surgery or treatment is perfect but if you can afford it and you are willing to stick to consistent treatments, and find the right doctor/surgeon for you – you can do quite a lot.
I’ll be the first to celebrate a cure but like the other poster here, I was an NW3 and with propecia and minoxidil I’m an NW2 and nobody knows I’m even balding at all other than my hairdresser who can’t tell anymore. I have a better hairline than most men I know. Sure I’d probably love an NW1 and might even turn to surgery in the next couple of years but I don’t begrudge it right now.
As others have shown, yes an NW7 is harder to treat but it can be concealed by a good range of surgeries and now with SMP and ongoing medical treatments they can often live out their whole lives without feeling or looking bald at all.
It is annoying there’s no cure but then I’ve seen friends ranting because there’s no cure for their cancer in their 20s. THAT’S something worth being angry about. In perspective having to treat balding is fairly easy.
Propecia and minoxidl not work for everybody…and have a poor results! Everybody knows this afirmation.
If you catch the balding early, say…no much further than an NW 3, then rogaine and propecia seem to be able to do a lot. The clinical evidence is pointing towards the idea that rogaine and propecia can at least halt hair loss for a good decade for about 90% of men. And of that 90%, I would say that at least half can get some significant regrowth over those ten years.
No, it is not perfect, but we have some pretty decent treatments. We are in a far better position than men were just 20 years ago. So we are very lucky by historical standards.
That you can be helped does not mean you will be helped. At least not in the way you SHOULD have been helped.
“Quality hair transplants” along with their sacrifices (including scarring, donor thinning and possible catch-up surgeries), would be completely unnecessary for most of us, if our hair loss would be treated appropriately. My hair was still pretty thick when I got on propecia, but others are not so lucky, and notice their hairloss problem only when majority of hair has been lost. Do you think these people consider themselves to have been appropriately treated?
Everybody understand the reader very angry …is normal…
2013 and continue with these treatments …. just saying…
So because some people don’t have great results on propecia and minoxidil and because hair transplants are not 100% instant, risk free cures they are all useless? The poster seemed to be angry that anyone dare to treat hairloss unless an NW7 can be turned into a lifetime juvenile hairline without side effects at all. Genetic hair loss affects the majority of men to some degree even if its just the maturing hair line. But to say that the doctors doing good work are lying is just nonsense.
Yes cosmetic surgery has risks. Medical treatments are not risk free one time cure alls. This is true for many things in the human condition. It’s OK to be upset about your balding but accusing doctors of dishonesty and saying there is no treatment that works at all is hyperbole and incorrect.
JB does make a good point though; general practitioners really do not discuss this condition much with young men at all, not do they know how to treat it.
Regular doctors, general practitioners, should diagnose and discuss this condition with the their young male patients and more thoroughly and discuss their treatment options. If a young man, say 23,24,25, goes to the doctor for a checkup, the doctor should be able to see the MPB and discuss treatment options much more up front. Hair loss can be quite troublesome, socially and psychologically, for young men.
And so much of it seems rather avoidable, especially with today’s medications. Rogaine and Propecia seem to really work, for at least 10 years if not more, at holding onto and growing back some hair. It may be very valuable for a 25 year old man to halt his hair loss for a good 10-15 years, his younger years, and then start balding slowly again once he hits 50 or so (if the medications stop working).
That would give you your hair for all your younger years, and that is very valuable.
General practitioners really need to get up to speed on this stuff. They could help a young man avoid a lot of uneccessary suffering.
It would also give a young man a darned reason to even go to the doctor! So many complain that young men do not go to the doctor but young men do. But that is because young women typically establish a relationship with their doctors because of their reproductive health needs. Young men are fine and good and healthy so they don’t really need to go to the doctors. Of course, this becomes bad later, as men wind up not going to the doctor even when they are older and need treatment.
Hair loss could be a way to get them in the door and establish a doctor-patient relationship.
I somewhat agree with the reader when he says there is no cure for hair loss but there are ways to prevent or prolong it as many readers have pointed out. I for one have been on finasteride for quite sometime and it has helped slow down hair loss but not stop it to the degree i would like. I have thought about getting a transplant but because I am still losing hair it is not a viable option. However, I do think my hair characteristics would be ideal for getting a transplant because I have wavy hair.
Sometimes, I do feel there is a conspiracy against trying to find a cure because that would put a lot of docs out of business as well as the billion dollar hair industry spent on useless lotions and potions to fight baldness.
The conspiracy does sound plausible until you realise that the drug company that released a full term cure would make more money than just about any other medication available. I’d put the might of drug company profit seeking ahead of the hair transplant surgeons collective to be honest.
Besides even with a cure for MPB I think hair surgeons would still have some work doing cosmetic readjustments for people who just didn’t like their hairline naturally/burns/injury and age (senile alopecia).