Month: January 2023

My practice has been 100% hair transplants since 1991 (27 years). That is all we do. I built a highly specialized team of people who I have personally trained. Many have been with me for years and once they are there, they don’t leave because the environment is great, the wages are good, the results are great and the patients appreciate everyone who worked on them. Since I only do hair transplants, I never get distracted by patients that come in for other reasons. My staff have been practicing and improving their skills every working day for years. We have no salesmen working for us and we do all of the consultations ourselves, one-on-one with each patient and give about an hour of our time which is free to the patient. Most of our patients do their research before coming to see us, so that they know who we are and why we are so highly rated. I have published almost every advance in the field over the past 27 years, from Follicular Unit Transplants, the Megasession, the FUE and we even invented the hair transplant robot with two patents issued to us and we licensed it to the company that built the ARTAS robot. We hold Open House events every month where you can meet our patients, one-on-one, see a surgery and get a free consultation with the doctor. I have been doing this for 27 years because I am proud of our patients and our work. Doctors who don’t do this full time can’t have the experience we do. We have performed over 16,000 hair transplant procedures since 1991 and the first FUE patients in the world was presented to the world through publications in peer reviewed journals. So, check us out on Realself and Yelp, but better than that, come to one of our Open House events so you can meet and see many patients who are examples of our work.

The best thing you can do is to get a HAIRCHECK test of your scalp which will document all of the hair loss that you can’t see. With this test, you can establish a metric which will allow you to make decisions, such as the use of medications if you are indeed balding. If you start taking medications, you can track your results over a year when you repeat the HAIRCHECK test again.

See here for a good example of this process with photos: https://baldingblog.com/2017/01/10/value-haircheck-bulk-measurements-two-patients-seen-today/

Most likely about to start meds; would appreciate advice from tressless

To determine if you are a good candidate for hair restoration, you need to know the following and put it all together (1) donor density, (2) degree of balding (you are advanced), (3) the thickness of your hair shafts (fine, medium or coarse, (4) the color of your hair compared to your skin (you have a high contrast between your brown hair and light skin which is not great) and (5) the degree of waviness of your hair (the more wavy, the better. If your donor density is low, the you might not have enough hair to cover the entire balding area and if you should continue to bald further, you may run out of donor hair before finishing. All of the hair in the center of your head is probably miniaturized and will sooner or later fall out. At 35, your hair loss should be slower. With all of this put together, your doctor can build a Master Plan for your hair restoration to account for not only the central hair that will almost certainly be lost, but the sides which may work their way down further than they are now.

Hi there, my question is as above. I have been lurking/debating a transplant for a few years now. I am getting back into researching who is out there now as this year I have more of the means to acquire one. In your opinion who would be among the best for FUE in North America currently? I remember Rahal for example being a big name a few years ago but unsure now. Thanks!

I just started taking Propecia and debated it for years. I started to feel the brain fog / dizziness after day one but I’m going to continue taking it to see if I stabilize if the symptom is just in my head from all these horror story posts I’ve read. I’ll update to let you know if it goes away over time. Although I am on birth control pills and have already messed with my hormones, would finasteride still be safe for me in treating my hair loss?

If you are a woman young enough to have children (even if you are on birth control pills), you should not use finasteride (Propecia) as if you were to get pregnant because the birth control pills failed you, you could have a child with sexual developmental problem while you carry the baby. This is not the case for men who father children who take finasteride. If for any reason you could not have children (example had a hysterectomy), the this drug is not risky for women.

People say that Finasteride loses its effectiveness. Is this actually true, since DHT levels are similar till 40? I don’t see the logic of why it would lose its effectiveness.

Studies comparing two groups (1) people who stay on finasteride vs (2) those that do not take it or stop it show that those on finasateride keep hair counts higher for longer. Some further studies by others seem to show that the spread between the two groups continue past 5 years and from my clinical experience I have seen it extend to 20 years. For those that take it and stop it, they shift to the lower curve fairly fast (3+ months) which I have also seen in my practice.

The concept of a nocebo (a psychogenic effect of a drug) has been discussed in the various studies which focus on the sexual side effects of the drug Propecia (finasteride). The significant ‘hype’ on the internet, has driven many people to the conclusions that if they take this drug, they will become impotent. As doctors, we must discuss potential and known side effects of any drug we prescribe, but what happens following the disclosures, the patients read the internet and find many, many panicky young men who report sexual impotence from taking the drug. Is it real? We don’t know but what we do know is that many studies from other countries have not shown the high sexual side effects reported in the United States. So is this a Nocebo effect resulting from panicky people who read bulletin boards and web sites which focus on this issue.

Dr. Robert Haber, a very respected hair transplant surgeon from Ohio, started to test the concept of a nocebo effect and the general side effects on sex drive and sexual performance using patients who came into his office. This is an early report of his initial findings.