Category: Age

Hello,
Well i am a 20 yr old guy. I started losing my hair since i was 16. By now i am a Class 4 patient with receded hairline from the front and at the top of the head. Many people have told me that hair transplant is not safe for a 20 yr old male. Is it true? ANd does it have any side effects. Kindly let me know on that.
Regards

At the young age of 20, you are experiencing accelerated hair loss. Your final pattern may be reflected in your family, so probe the entire history of hair loss amongst the men from both your mother’s and father’s sides. Having a hair transplant at this early age may lead to further hair loss, called shock loss, from the trauma of surgery itself. Thus, the net benefit of hair transplantion may outweight the hair loss experienced from shock loss and most (not all) 20 year olds are asked to wait for more time to pass. We can not determine the true pattern of your hair loss until you’re later in age. Hopefully, you have been using Propecia since the beginning of the balding process and this finding reflects a failure of the drug. If not, it is prudent to go on Propecia for now and wait for a response (in about a year). The drug can stabilize or reverse the hair loss in someone of your age. If you bond with a doctor and have been on the Propecia for a year or so, then you can discuss a hair transplant. Going forward along the surgery route requires that you develop a Master Plan for your future hair loss management taking your worst case scenario and balancing it with the worst case ‘donor’ hair availability (that is what is meant as a Master Plan for your hair loss).

i have a serious problem. i am 20 yrs old and about a month ago i noticed my hair falling out.i believe in this past month i have lost 35-40% of my hair. yet it is not coming from the usual places for a pattern baldness condition. i have no receding hair line at all and my vertex is fine. i notice it mostly on the top and upper sides. from my research i found in most cases pattern baldness elapses over a long period of time i.e years or more. is it possible to have such an accelerated case. About 6 months ago i underwent lasik surgery and about the time this started i had gotten a huge tattoo done that took 2 seatings of 5 hours each which were very painful. i also feel huge anxiety and very stressed even before this and worse because of it. currently i am on propecia for 4 days and rogaine for 4 days. i am awaiting blood test results but my doctor informs me the chances of this not being perminant are very small. i have no bald or balding family members on either side. this makes absolutley no sense, out of no where and so fast. if it really is pattern baldness and my symptoms continue at this rate all my hair will be gone before the medicine even starts to work. i eagerly await your comments on this letter.

It is normal to lose hair after a stressful event in one’s life – a process called “Telogen Effluvium,” but it is less common (although not unheard of) to have an accelerated case such as you describe. Since your hair is falling out generally all over, I doubt this is male pattern hair loss, especially given your age and prior history. So your doctor is right to do blood tests – fast hair loss like you have can be the sign of a more serious underlying medical condition. I can’t reassure you completely without seeing you and examining you myself, but you should definitely wait and see what the tests show, and calm yourself if you can (stress will set up one of those vicious cycles).

As for treatment, that will depend on the cause but you should be reassured that you are on the only two medications that we can prove work for male pattern hair loss. Propecia and Rogaine will take months to work, about as long as the hair would normally take to grow back, so don’t give up on those medications in the meantime. Take heart, hair can grow back! – It often does miraculously even after seemingly huge losses, and you don’t have any answers yet that should make you despair!

Hello I am 21 years old, male. My grandfather on my father’s side is bald and my uncle my father’s brother is balding, my father however did not go bald. He has a receeding hairline but he is 47 and i think its just his natural recession since he hasnt really lost much of his hair. I however have my mother’s hair, which is very thick/wavy and we have a lot of it. No one on my mother’s side is bald but im concerned becuase i recently shaved my head and I noticed that on ONE of the sides of my forhead my hair is a little thin and is blonder, yet on the other side its still thick and strong. I used to have long hair and I noticed that that side of my hair was thin as well. I dont really see hair fall out in my shower or my pillow but I am concerned that I may be starting to lose my hair. The funny thing is that I am not experiening the horse shoe loss, I just see a thining on one side. Is this a sign of early balding?

To determine this, you need to have the diagnosis of male pattern hair loss made with a good thorough mapping of your scalp for miniaturization. It is not unusual with male pattern hair loss that one side is ahead of the other. The side that is not bad, will unfortunately catch up with the good side. The hair can miniaturize first and then disappear without ever falling out. At 21, the Master Plan that you need to develop may not show the balding as far back or to the sides of the permanent rim of hair, assuming the you will go that far back (Class 7 Pattern). But the miniaturization measurement will show how far back the early part of the balding process is.

Propecia is the best treatment for balding in the young man. Get a diagnosis and then start the treatment quickly. There is a good possibility that if you are just miniaturizing your hair, at your age much of it may regrow or thicken with Propecia.