Category: Other

We’re taking a long weekend for the Thanksgiving holiday and will be back on Monday, November 28!

Hi Doctor,

Thank you for the great blog. I was curious about your big-picture opinion — do you think it is possible/likely that a significant breakthrough in treating MPB will come along in the next decade? I was wondering about your perspective on this, based on your experience and what you hear from colleagues / journals / etc.

We can hope that this will happen. Knowledge is increasing logarithmically, so whatever breakthroughs we have seen in the past 10 years should be 10 times that number. There is work going on in cloning and the financial rewards are certainly there to make the required breakthrough. This means to me that something will happen sooner rather than later. But if I had cancer, I would not wait for a cure while it grew in my body. I would treat it when I made the diagnosis. The same applies to hair transplants — you could wait until it all falls out or you can treat it with drugs (like finasteride) or surgery (like a hair transplant).

This blog is very informative, but I really think you should tone the humor down. I notice you make a lot of jokes about balding. There is nothing funny about it!! Especially not today, when there is quite a strong stigma about receding hairlines & thinning hair…i.e. (the creepy old man stigma). People kill themselves every day because of hair loss and I truly believe that there is a strong correlation between suicidal behavior and hair loss.

I think people who are affected by the disfigurement of hair loss, may also suffer from other health problems due to how the extreme stress of the condition affects their entire body and their activity levels. I for one, have experienced major health problems since I started losing hair. I guarantee you most people who commit suicide have some type of hair loss.

If the person losing hair feels disfigured because of the condition, it is one of the most serious medical issues one can suffer from because of how it wreaks absolute havoc on everything and tends to cause a “domino effect” where other organ systems get affected and fail over time (perhaps prematurely) due to the extreme stress hair loss causes. 2% of the male population doesn’t bald….that’s 40,000 people out of a city with 2,000,000. If you think about it, in today’s society..that’s not really that rare; plus, those are the people that are more likely to get the good jobs, be treated favorably, etc.

It’s survival of the fittest at it’s worst! I’ve noticed it is EXTREMELY hard (almost impossible) to get hired for a new job or get a supervisory position if you have any thinning/balding. These are all reasons why there is nothing funny about hair loss and why I hope every day that there is a treatment that can truly halt progressive hair loss.

I never make fun of people who are balding. With close to 10,000 posts on this blog, there are times we feel the need to inject some light-hearted humor. If I have offended anyone here with a particular post, please let me know! In the end, I have great respect for them and empathy for their experience. Only about half of the male population will experience some type of balding, but every part of us is connected. Our overall health reflects many organ systems and our mental health influences our body functions.

Hair loss is one of those things that men have no control over. For some men who take charge of their destiny, they exercise for better body health, eat well to prevent various diseases from impacting their body, don’t smoke, and educate themselves to shape their professional lives; however, other than taking a pill that may or may not control their hair loss, balding is a process that undermines a man’s self esteem. For some men, it even gives them the sense of hopelessness. I believe that is what you are talking about. This is why I love my hair restoration medical practice — I can help men manage their hair loss process, in turn giving them back their self esteem.

Hello, I was wondering if you recommend blow drying, towel drying, or air drying hair when one is suffering from male pattern baldness and is thinning out/losing hair? For purposes of getting ready in the morning, air drying is not really an option. Thank you!

If your hair is coming out because of the balding process, you must be gentle with the drying process. Do not rub your hair with a towel. Just pat it dry. When using a blow dryer, be sure not to use it on a hot setting, as it is best with low heat or no heat at all.

Dr Rassman

As a hair transplant patient, physician, and clinical scientist, your site is a model of providing responsive, measured, accurate, educational (and sometimes humorous) information about alopecia. How you have the time to do this essentially volunteer service and your other activities is just amazing. I am a believer in freedom of speech and comments on your blog run the entire gamut of the well-informed to the misinformed. Such is life. Indeed, even posts with far-out, alternative ways of looking at things can be of value.

However, over the past year, one particular blogger has made continuous personal attacks on you ranging from the naïve (questioning your cardiovascular fellowship based on a conversation he had with a “friend”) to the absurd. It is non-stop. He makes similar personal attacks on others who objectively disagree with him and seems to have a bias against intellectuals, those familiar with clinical data, those who understand the biopharmaceutical industry, and anyone who does not think that Propecia is not an evil drug and that Merck is days away from “being in great trouble” for “hiding” data (paraphrasing).

Most of his posts invoke conspiracy theories. His arguments are littered with enough semi-scientific information (never substantiated) to make the scared and uninformed reader possibly confused. However, my biggest concern is the almost incessant stream of misinformation from this blogger and the significant amount of time others have to respond (only to receive the inevitable name-calling response). Several sources have also suggested that this blogger is a shill for a website involved in recruiting Propecia patients in a class action lawsuit. In the name of constructive censorship (common on blogs), isn’t it time to put his abusive posts to rest (i.e., ban him from this site).

The posts on my blog are opinions (of myself and contributing editors). The site is not meant for diagnosis or treatment and we’ve posted that disclaimer on every page. If any readers want a professional or personal medical consultation they can always contact us.

I do occasionally follow some of the comment threads and I realize that anyone can write false information, including making wild (and comical) accusations about me. I know there are a few people that are very vocal and leave comments on nearly every Propecia posting, and I think the average reader can decide what they want to believe if they actually followed those lengthy comment diatribes. If someone gets obscene, the comment is removed. It’s happened, but it’s not something I deal with too often. We do reserve the right not to post some of the comments we receive, but we do allow the great majority of comments through (besides spam and completely off-topic stuff).

If anything, I find the volley of comments entertaining, but perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it is time to limit the comments that are not meant to be constructive. It’s something I’ll consider, for sure.

Hi Dr. Rassman,

I was wondering if you had read the recent posting concerning Replicel’s technology and initial results that will be released Q12012.

Link: RepliCel’s cell-based solution to hair loss

The reason that I ask this question is to see if you had any ideas or guesses as to who (of the companies performing research in this area) might have the best odds of delivering a viable solution? I had heard that a few of the companies presented at ISHRS-Alaska and it appears they realized the initial approach (followed during the past 5-10 years) was the wrong route. Aderans is using the dermal papilla cells while RepliCel is employing the dermal sheath cup to produce the replicated cells for later injection into the patient’s scalp. Guess that we will have to wait until Feb. 2012 for the clinical trial results. One good sign is that they filed their protocols on the FDA website which allows their approach/results to be a bit more “transparent”.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention! This is a good read for our audience.

I really have no best guess as to which path will be the most successful, but like everyone else, I’m hoping at least one of the paths turns out to be successful. The more proven treatments available for those with hair loss, the better. I guess we’ll know more early next year when the early results are released, though the article says the study won’t conclude until August 2013.

Snippet from the non-hair loss article:

People who struggle with insomnia appear to be more prone to heart attacks than those who typically get a good night’s sleep, a large Norwegian study has found.

In the study, published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, researchers conducted a comprehensive health survey of more than 52,000 adults, which included questions about sleep quality. Over the next 11 years, roughly 5% of the participants had a heart attack for the first time.

Compared to solid sleepers, those who had trouble falling or staying asleep nearly every night were 45% and 30% more likely to have a heart attack, respectively, even after the researchers took into account age, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other factors that can contribute to heart disease. People who reported feeling tired or unrefreshed after waking up at least two mornings per week were also at greater risk.

Read the rest — Insomnia May Boost Heart Attack Risk

You can find the abstract of the study here. While the study concludes that the risk is moderate, it this is an important health issue that many of us just do not take into account.

Snippet from the non-hair-loss article:

A new Swedish study has shown that elderly men in the highest quartile of serum testosterone levels have around a 30% lower risk of cardiovascular events over five years compared with men in the lower three quartiles [1].

And the association remains even after adjustment for traditional cardiovascular risk factors and excluding those with CVD at baseline, say Dr Claes Ohlsson (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) and colleagues in their paper in the October 11, 2011 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Senior author Dr Asa Tivesten (University of Gothenburg) told heartwire : “This paper is an important start, because previously data have been inconsistent about whether there is an association between serum testosterone and CVD events or not. We now know there is an association, but we don’t know what is causing it.”

Read the rest at Heartwire — Study confirms high testosterone/lower CV event link in older men

It’s a bold statement to say higher testosterone levels equal lower risks for cardiovascular (CV) events. What we don’t know is if a man with low testosterone takes testosterone, will this reduce the risks of CV events?

Heart disease generally takes many, many years to develop, so this study implicates that the testosterone was always high, though the dates do not support it.

Snippet from the article:

It may look like a glorified salon chair, but a new Japanese hair-washing robot replicates the dexterous touch of a human hand to care for the locks of the elderly and the infirm.

Its creators at electronics firm Panasonic say the machine features the latest robotic technology and could help replace human care-givers in this rapidly ageing nation without degrading the quality of the service.

“Using robotic hand technology and 24 robotic fingers, this robot can wash the hair or handicapped in the way human hands do in order to help them have better daily lives,” said developer Tohru Nakamura.

Read the rest (and with a larger photo) — With 24 fingers, Japan robot washes hair

I dream of having my hair worked on all of the time, so I’d want one just to have a robot massage my scalp every day. Now, if it would scratch my back with some of those extra fingers… wow, a fantasy come true.