Month: August 2013

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Hair Loss InformationIf I Take Propecia After a Transplant, How Will I Know If My Hair Growth is From the Drug or the Surgery? – Hair Loss Information – Balding Blog

I just had my hair transplant. Going on Propecia in case of any shock loss. My question is how am I gonna know how much of my hair transplant is coming in thicker vs any hair I gain from taking Propecia both a year from now?? Thank you in advance

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Propecia is great to take to prevent shock loss, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee regrowth of the hair you had previously. I would expect it to hold the remaining hair and protect from shock loss, though. The transplant growth will start coming in at 4-5 months and maximize after 8-12 months. That is the way you should see the difference from the impact of the transplant. Going on the drug before the transplant is what I recommend in most young men as a prevention for shock hair loss, and the additive effect of the drug with the transplant can only help if it brings back any hair.

If you do have regrowth from Propecia and your hair transplant grew in at the same time, I’m not sure how you would really know which hairs was which unless you had a visual examination of the hairs to see if they grew from a transplant site or not.

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Hair Loss InformationNot Hair Loss News – Is Low Testosterone Just a Well-Marketed Disease? – Hair Loss Information – Balding Blog

Snippet from the article:

American men aged 40 years or older tripled their use of androgen replacement therapy (ART) between 2001 and 2011, including a greater than 5-fold surge in use of the hormone testosterone as a topical gel, according to a recent analysis.

Jacques Baillargeon, PhD, from the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health and the Sealy Center on Aging, both at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and colleagues report their findings in a research letter published in the August 12/26 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.

Dr. Baillargeon and colleagues studied prescription drug claims data from Clinformatics DataMart, which tracks employment-based commercial health insurance plans. Some 10.74 million men aged 40 years or older were included in the study population.

During the study period, androgen use rose among men 40 years or older from 0.81% in 2001 to 2.91% in 2011. “By 2011, 2.29% of men in their 40s and 3.75% of men in their 60s were taking some form of ART,” Dr. Baillargeon and colleagues write.

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Read the rest — Low Testosterone: Medical Problem or Marketing Tool?

Published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the authors note that sales or these testosterone therapies have more than doubled since 2006 and are forecast to triple to $5 billion within the next few years. They also suggest that the rise in prescriptions was driven by pharmaceutical companies’ marketing efforts to consumers; or in other words, making money for some drug companies may overwhelm what is in the best interest of the public.

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Hair Loss InformationCould a Tight Cap Reduce Blood Supply and Speed Up Hair Loss? – Hair Loss Information – Balding Blog

Hello, I’m a 20 year old male. I wear a cap almost everyday. Is it possible for the tight part of the cap (front band) to reduce blood supply to the hair thus speeding up androgenic alopecia? I have a large head so caps fit reasonably snug and sits where my hairline begins. If this is plausible, how tight are we talking? or could the build up of sebum/sweat irritate the scalp causing miniaturization? I’d really appreciate a doctors response as it’s causing a great deal of anxiety with the question un answered and I’m getting mixed views online. Thanks.

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Wearing tight caps or having a tight scalp does not speed up or cause male pattern baldness. This is more of an old wives’ tale or urban legend.
The only exception is that if you wear your cap so tight that it causes traction hair loss around where the cap is touching your scalp.

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Patient Results Follow-Up – Crown Restoration with 1870 Grafts (with Photos) – Hair Loss Information – Balding Blog

This is a follow-up of a patient we posted about a couple years ago. He recently came in for a visit and we took some updated photos of his crown now that more time has passed since his hair transplant.

He had a 3.5″ by 3.5″ very thin area in the crown, which was transplanted over 3 years ago with 1870 grafts. I measured his hair bulk as well and it showed that the transplanted area reflected 50% of the donor hair bulk. The results speak for themselves and I personally identified with him, as that was my status before my ~2400 grafts in my crown.

Click the photos below to enlarge.

After (1 procedure of 1870 grafts) on left // Before on right:

 

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Hair Loss InformationDoes Creatine Increase DHT Levels and Would That Accelerate My Hair Loss? – Hair Loss Information – Balding Blog

Hi doc. I read in a leading fitness magazine that the sports supplement creatine increases DHT levels by up to 56%! In fact they think this may be why it works so well! Does this mean it will seriously accelerate my hair loss? Pretty much every guy who hits the gym takes this stuff, so we need to know! Thanks.

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Creatine is known to increase hair loss in some, possibly by driving up the DHT levels. The last research I recall reading about it noted that in 3 weeks of use among 20 athletes, DHT levels were raised. That study was obviously very tiny and further research should’ve been done. Bodybuilders may also add steroids with the creatine, which is just compounding the problem.

Is it worth taking? Only you know the answer to that question.

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Hair Loss InformationNot Hair Loss News – Does Fish Oil Raise Prostate Cancer Risk? – Hair Loss Information – Balding Blog

Snippet from the article:

Omega-3 fatty acids have been shown to have many health benefits. But they may have risks as well, including an increased risk for prostate cancer.

In a nine-year prospective study, scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle took annual blood samples from 834 men diagnosed with prostate cancer and 1,393 men who were cancer free. The study, published online in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, controlled for more than a dozen cancer risk factors.

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Read the rest — Omega-3s May Raise Prostate Cancer Risk

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My Hair Loss Seems to Start in the Middle of the Top of My Head – Is It from Doing Yoga? – Hair Loss Information – Balding Blog

Hello,

Firstly I’d like to thank you for this excellent and informative blog – there are so many other sites that confuse or alarm or try to sell useless products.

I’d like to know where male pattern balding usually starts. I have been looking at my scalp for signs of balding – I have no receding at the temples or the front (apart from having an adult hairline), nor do I have any thinning at the back of the crown – the other usual place you see early signs of balding (at least in everyone I have looked at). However, if I part my hair down the middle it looks like the parting is quite wide at the area in front of the point of the skull. Like early stages of thinning directly in the middle of the top of my head. This seems an unusual place to begin – I haven’t seen this on anyone else.

Incidentally this is the exact place where I put a lot of pulling pressure during my yoga practise – there is a ‘bridge posture’ that puts the whole weight of my body pulling on my hair at this point. Could this be some form of traction alopecia?

What do you think? Have you ever seen any balding like this before? There is very little balding in my family (father and his father full heads of hair, same with both brothers). Only my uncle on my father’s side and my mother’s father have any balding, both in different patterns, and both late on in life.

Thank you in advance.

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You should see a doctor. Good bulk measurements can identify genetic hair loss early in the process. Traction alopecia caused by a ‘pulling’ of the hair from such activities as you described is also a possible cause for hair loss.

I have seen men start their hair loss process where you report your loss is, so the answer to the question is that a really good examination of your hair and scalp is necessary. There’s simply no way I can tell via the internet if traction or genetics is causing your loss.

Traction alopecia may produce some broken hairs with blunt ends, some new growth with tapered ends, some broken mid-shaft, or some uneven stubble — and a doctor with good optical instruments can see this on an examination of your balding area. There is no substitute for a good doctor’s examination.

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Hair Loss InformationNot Hair Loss News – Eat Less, Live Longer – Hair Loss Information – Balding Blog

Snippet from the article:

Scientists have shown a link between long-living calorie-restricted mice and the types of microbes residing in the guts of those mice. The finding, published last month (July 16) in Nature Communications, suggests a novel mechanism of living longer by establishing the right kind of microbes in our gut through a low-calorie diet.

“[The study] underlined the effectiveness of the healthy modulation of the gut microbiota along with diet specificities,” Jean-Paul Vernoux, a professor of food toxicology at the University of Caen in France who was not involved with the study, said in an email to The Scientist.

Caloric restriction has been known to extend life span in a variety of organisms, including humans, though the molecular mechanisms of this effect are not known. Recent research has begun to outline the role of the apparently innocuous microbes of the gut in modulating metabolism and immunity of their host. Based on these findings, Liping Zhao of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and his colleagues wondered if caloric restriction may prolong life span by modulating the type and composition of gut microbes.

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Read the rest — Eat Less and Live Longer?

Mice on a low-cal diet live longer. How does that translate to humans? We’ll see.

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Hair Loss InformationNot Hair Loss News – Using Nanoparticles to Fight Cancer? – Hair Loss Information – Balding Blog

Snippet from the article:

Researchers at the University of Georgia are developing a new treatment technique that uses nanoparticles to reprogram immune cells so they are able to recognize and attack cancer. The findings were published recently in the early online edition of ACS Nano.

The human body operates under a constant state of martial law. Chief among the enforcers charged with maintaining order is the immune system, a complex network that seeks out and destroys the hordes of invading bacteria and viruses that threaten the organic society as it goes about its work.

The immune system is good at its job, but it’s not perfect. Most cancerous cells, for example, are able to avoid detection by the immune system because they so closely resemble normal cells, leaving the cancerous cells free to multiply and grow into life-threatening tumors while the body’s only protectors remain unaware.

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Read the rest — Researchers use nanoparticles to fight cancer

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Hair Loss InformationIn the News – Finasteride Makes Prostate Cancer Screening More Reliable – Hair Loss Information – Balding Blog

Snippet from the article:

Men being screened for prostate cancer can dramatically reduce their risk of unnecessary treatment by taking an already-approved drug, a new study shows.

Although doctors still hotly debate the value of prostate screening, most agree that the PSA (prostate specific antigen) test leads some men to be “overdiagnosed” and even “overtreated,” because it detects many tumors that won’t ever turn deadly.

Many men are unaware that some prostate tumors — while technically malignant — are essentially harmless, growing too slowly to ever cause trouble in their lifetimes. Men are actually better off if these tumors are never found, says Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society.

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Read the rest — Drug makes PSA screening test more reliable

This is a seven year study of 19,000 men that showed taking finasteride makes the PSA test much more accurate.

The article goes on to say that the study found that “men on finasteride were 43% less likely to be diagnosed with a ‘low-grade’ prostate cancer — the kind most likely to lead to unnecessary treatment“, though there was no difference in survival rates between those that took finasteride and those that took the placebo.