Wrinkles, Shock Loss

Did you say that scalp excercises and massages actually CAUSE wrinkles in your forehead?

Also, Im not sure if you answered my question regarding hair follicles, but if you have a hair transplant and hairs fall out due to shock loss and dont grow back….does that mean that the follicle is actually destroyed or is it still intact, but just not producing hair anymore.

Thanks for your help

Massages do not cause wrinkles in the forehead, nor will exercising the forehead muscles make that happen. You may be thinking about what I said when a person is trying to find out where their hairline was when they were youths. Wrinkling the forehead will produce a line at the top of the forehead muscles (frontalis muscle) and that line marks where a child’s hairline or a woman’s hairline starts.

‘Shock loss’ from a hair transplant may grow back if the hair is permanent hair (most women) or hair that is not at the end of its life cycle (such as an accident with a scalp wound in a non-balding man). When the balding process is at the end of the cycle for those hairs that fall out from shock loss, these hairs may not grow back. Miniaturized hairs which result from genetic balding are ‘weak’ hairs that will not live through a major stressful event.

When it does grow back in balding men, it is because the hairs that were lost are usually not at the end of their natural life cycle. If they grow back, then clearly there is life still left in them. Hair that does not return after shock loss in the male is for all practical purposes hair at the end of its ‘life’. With that said, I do not really believe that the hair is ‘dead’, but rather impacted by whatever the defect that causes male patterned genetic hair loss. Some day, hopefully in my lifetime, a medication will be produced that will take up all of the ‘seeds of hair’ that I believe are still in the scalp, closing the defect so that the hair will start to grow… in a way much like the classic tale of Sleeping Beauty, I suppose.

Sometimes ‘shock loss’ can be minimized by being on Propecia prior to having the hair transplant. Shock loss does not happen to all patients who undergo hair transplants, just some of them. Most people are quick to forget the robust nature of permanent hair which comes with the hair transplant process. Shock loss should be something that is explained to you before you get hair transplants. It is a part of the informed consent process and you need to know all of the risks involved when you undergo a hair transplant (or any surgical procedure).