Month: January 2023

Dear sir, I am 46 yrs old and recently have had blotching hair loss on face and scalp. it is baby smooth and it seems to be speading in different areas. can you please explain? thank you

With such a brief description it is impossible to offer any help or try to explain what is going on. Atypical hair loss has many differential diagnoses (such as alopecia areata) . You need to see a good physician for a full medical work up to explore medical causes of hair loss. In some cases hair loss can be a sign for medical problems.

As men get older, the risk of producing children with a variety of defects rises e.g. Autism, Schizophrenia. Although this risk doubles, it is still very small (in the order of 1 percent rather that 0.5 percent). To balance this negative, men over 40 are likely to produce children with larger brains. Having older parents may also be beneficial as the maturity of older men may provide children with a more stable home environment. Also, the sperm of older men may have mutations and may possibly play a role in the evolution of our big brains. We have also recognized that children with autism have bigger brains, suggesting greater processing power. But autism has significant defects in using this greater power with a significant decrease in social skills.

This article was taken from a feature article in New Scientist Magazine, written by its editor Michael LePage.

Yes, ever since I have been seeing the wonderful results of microneedling on Reddit, I have become a fan of it, especially for the men under 24 years old when hair loss is more easily reversible.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32202088/

Of course, taking medications for life as one must for finasteride and dutasteride for hair loss has never been evaluated for long term safety (decades). The authors raise the alarm, but we need data here. There is a balancing act, to get the immediate benefits of these drugs vs suffer long term ill defined harm yet to be made clear. I don’t know the answer but I thought my readers should be aware that this is a relevant issue for those on long-term use of these drug. In a study of finasteride use over 20 years ago published in the New England Journal of Medicine with men over 55, there was a decreased incidence of prostate cancer in those who took finasteride by 25% compared to a control group. As prostate cancer is the leading cancer in men, this was an impressive finding.

Dr. Rassman, I implore you to avoid making slanderous comments about another physician’s character online. Go ahead and criticize the result – but calling a physician ‘immoral’ is unprofessional, at best.

I have been outspoken for many years, at meetings and in written comments, even in published materials. Many years ago, I was heavily criticized when I told hundreds of doctor at a meeting about a surgery that was commonly done that I though was inappropriate and deforming. The result of those comments resulted in almost all of the doctors in litigious countries, to stop doing this particular surgery. Donald Trump was a victim of that surgery and from what I heard through medical channels, he was very, very angry with his results and lives with those results today (as everyone can see).

Some doctors must be held accountable and when a person comes to see me and they tell me their ‘horror story’ I do my best to make sure others are aware of their story so that the few rotten applies in our profession will learn that they can be held accountable. I called this doctor immoral because he lied to the patient, promised something he didn’t deliver (a partly failed transplant) and significantly overcharged him. Like any other trade or profession, not everyone behaves morally. When they cause harm, there is always the court system to protect the innocent. I have occasionally volunteered as an expert witness in such cases. As you should note, I did not name the doctor involved.

Hello Doctors, great blog here! The myths/ facts regarding hair fall and its treatments keep increasing. Are there any foods or protein out there that help growth, or nourish roots, or delay hair fall? Or is it simple genetics and hair will recede/ fall whatever one may do?!!

Thanks for the information.

Regards

There may be foods that add to the genetic elements that produce hair loss, but these foods have never been identified scientifically. Many people make claims both good and bad (just as you pointed out), but you should not blindly trust what you hear.