(female) i have finished chemo four weeks and i can see signs of hair growth. is it true that my hair may change colour and texture?
Many women with chemotherapy will have hair loss during the treatment, and the hair is pushed into its telogen cycle which usually lasts 3-8 months after the chemotherapy insult. When the hair comes back, it may not return to its full density, but the type of chemotherapy and the full recovery is poorly documented.
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My 12 y/o son had a ringworm in his head when he was an infant. The doctors prescribed medicine to be taken orally, and the ringworm went away, however his hair will not grow in that spot anymore. Is there anything you can recommend to promote hair growth in this area? This is affecting his self-esteem.
Ringworm is usually successfully treated with medication and does not generally cause hair loss. Maybe there is some deep scarring that had caused hair loss around the area of infection, as I have seen some cases where this has happened in childhood and then the patient comes to see me as a young adult with that history.
My best advice is to see a physician or a surgeon who specializes in hair transplants. Hair transplantation may be an answer, but your son definitely needs a good diagnosis first. A 12 year spread indicates that the hair will not return, but I would generally not treat it with transplants at that age unless it bothers him, though that may occur further into his teens.
Hello I am an 19 year old african american male that has small patches of missing hair on my scalp. When i was about seven years old I contracted a sever case of ring worm on my head, due to picking at it, when it healed i was left with small patches if missing hair. Since then, i have always had hair styles such as braids, afro, and now dreads mainly to cover the few small spots. I am now wanting to cut my hair and in some spots small patches still appear, how can i fix this?
As long as you are not still picking at the area (which is either trichotillomania or dermatillomania), you can consider a small hair transplant surgery to put hair back into the bald patches. If you are still picking these areas, any transplanted grafts will be lost from the picking.
Hi Dr. William,
I have been on steroids (Wysolone) for 6 months as I was diagnosed for Lupus Nephritis. I have lost hair significantly. Now the steriods have stopped, i need to know will the hair come back or is there something that I can try to stimulate hair growth.
Thanks
Lupus is one of the medical cause of hair loss. Corticosteroid (Wynsolone) is another potential cause of hair loss or hair thinning (as well as other side effects). The only medical option you may have at this time is topical minoxidil (Rogaine). As your hair loss was not a cause of male pattern baldness (I am assuming you are not male), drugs such as Propecia will not help.
Unfortunately there really is no drug or other treatments to grow back hair completely. There are many products out there that claim to grow hair, but I would take caution as there are no such products.
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i was wondering if a person like myself with DUPA had a strong beard would if be possible to transplant it to the scalp and if so how much coverage would i get?
Such a transplant (beard to scalp) would technically work, but to what master design is the question! The character of beard hair is different than scalp hair.
You’d need to come in for a consultation and let me look at the many variables. With your goals clearly defined, we can discuss not only using beard hair, but perhaps even leg, chest, arm, and pubic hair as well. I generally do not recommend body hair transplants, but in a case of DUPA (diffuse unpatterned alopecia), things are different. Generally though, the hair of DUPA patients is so thin that you may not get what you need from other body parts.
Does a guy with diffuse unpatterned alopecia have the same chance of responding to minoxidil than a guy with male pattern baldness? thank you for your time sir
Since topical minoxidil is not specifically for treating male pattern baldness (it can potentially grow hair anywhere on your body), there is a chance it could work for diffuse unpatterned alopecia (DUPA). There are no firm studies to prove or disprove this theory, though. It is worth a try, but you need to stay on it for a full year of two applications a day to know if it is working.
Both you and Dr. Bernstein mention in various places that it will be ten years before hair cloning will be available as a successful treatment for hair loss. If and when this process becomes available to the public, would it be effective for DUPA patients as well? Or would the process still require a stable donor area?
I am a 19 year old male experiencing DUPA. Assuming propecia does not work, I think all of us with DUPA are wondering whether there is any effective solution we can look forward to, or if we should just shave our heads and get on with our lives.
My heart goes out to you. If the medications do not work, there is little to offer other than the use of concealers. Hair cloning can not be predicted for a time line. If/when cloning becomes a reality, these types of questions can probably be answered, but it is way too early to guess as to what future technologies could do.
Hello Dr. Rassman,
First of all I’d like to congratulate you and your partners for your wonderful work on hair restoration. Also, I really felt relieved when I came across your website, because I always kind of felt alone since I first started experiencing hair loss (which was about two years ago).I am 22 years old and although my hair loss story is not a very long one, I think it is a little bizarre, and here’s why. About two – two and a half years ago, in about March 2006, I first started having a lot of dandruff, which was of the dry type though; my scalp skin was dry and felt normal. So, I did not really pay any attention to it, I would just shampoo twice or three times a week and I thought I was alright. Then in the summer, I suddenly started losing hair. I was terrified because I was always proud of my hair – I would even buzz it and still my scalp would show through very little. The dandruff became flakes, the skin dried off completely, and everytime I shampooed (with a zinc pyrithione shampoo) my scalp would get red and irritated. It was a case of “bad seborrehic dermatitis”, my dermatologist told me. So, I had to shampoo with a coal tar and salicilic acid shampoo. So far so good, I thought I would keep it under control like this. But the hair loss continued and I was left with little hair, compared to my previous strong thick hair. Even today, the scalp balance is totally screwed up and if I don’t shampoo one day, my scalp gets oily in a weird way, it kinda looks like something between oil and sweat. My hair has become fine too. Now about hair loss: I had some diffuse thinning, most of it came back although finer and oilier, but lately I see some temple thinning which is quite alarming. I shampoo with Nizoral 2% but I see very little difference, I am trying to dry my scalp to a normal level and it always oils up again. My questions are:
- Is the dermatitis killing my hair , causing MPB?
- I recently started using Minoxidil, is it any good if the scalp is possibly still infected by dermatitis?
- Will propecia, considering I start using it, have any effect on my hair/sebum/hormones on my scalp?
Thanks a lot, I would really appreciate if my mail is posted, I am sure it would help many guys in the same situation as me.
I had Tinea Capitis as a child and i would pick them off of my scalp leaving these scar spots. I was wondering how much it would cost to fill in most of the “bald spots” also if i get them filled in would it be possible for me to cut my hair and the hair that was transplanted will regrow?
Iam 19years old Male, You have permission to use my pictures if needed.
First, thank you for allowing me to publish your photos. This is an extraordinary case, and one that is ideal for follicular unit extraction (FUE), where we can re-arrange the hairs from one place to another.
What I’m wondering, though, is whether you’re going to experience male pattern baldness. There is a genetic test that will tell you if you carry the balding gene, and it would be worth getting tested. If you do not have genetic MPB, then I would perform FUE all over your head, redistributing the hair from one place next to the balding areas, one at a time. If you are carrying the balding gene, then we would have to rethink the strategy. Cost might become an issue, as there is a great deal of cumulative balding, and although the fees are generally charged per graft (group of hairs), I could work with you on pricing due to the unique nature of the case.
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You’ve mentioned the condition Diffuse Unpatterned Alopecia (DUPA) as being the miniturizing and loss of hair on the sides and donor zone, and that your pretty much screwed if you got it.
What I want to know is if (DUPA) is a stable condition or is it a progressive condition, meaning will a person with (DUPA) eventually lose all his donor hair or will it just become thin and stay thin?
DUPA can be stable once it appears… or it can be progressive. The other day I met with a young man who clearly had DUPA a year ago with 50% miniaturization in the donor area. When he came in this time after being on Propecia (finasteride) for a year, the miniaturization rate was down to 10% (a figure I’d call normal). Successful treatment for DUPA with finasteride is in the minority of patients I see, but his hair loss needs reflected a Norwood Class 3 pattern, so he might become a candidate for FUE if the process remains stable.
