Category: Other

Dear Dr Rassman, I am 55 years old with a reasonably good head of hair. I started propecia and rogaine 10 years ago and am happy with the results.

The hair at my crown/vertex area is a little bit thinner but nothing too bad. Here is my question as I have gotten older my hair has gone from brown to gray and is now turning white in some places. It seems as if the white hair is slightly thinner then the darker hair. does this happen?

If it is translucent white it can appear thinner, but I have not personally measured the white and black hairs with a caliper to compare. I can’t really tell you why it might happen, though it is probably just genetics.

How can you tell the difference between course hair and fine hair. Does course hair have a kind of messy, split end type of look, whereas fine hair feels very smooth and silky? Also, does course hair have more volume than fine hair?

Yes, coarse hair has more volume than fine hair. Split ends occur when you abuse your hair with straighteners, hot blow drying, and too much junk on your hair. Your overall treatment of your hair should include a good shampoo with a conditioner added. Letting your hair dry by itself is always best.

Dr. Rassman, I am a patient of yours from years past and remember you were involved in many things over and above your hair transplant practice. Can you tell me what you are doing now and how you keep everything in balance. There are only so many hours in every day, so how do you cope?

I am very well organized, depend heavily on computers and software to keep my non-surgical work efficient, and I have a wonderful supportive staff that keeps me prepared. My thirst for information is helped by reading journals and magazines which cover the entire field of science and scientific discovery (such as Scientific American and The New Scientist), and each day I get an email from LBN E-Lert to keep me informed of the latest worldwide news. I must constantly stay in contact with the world around me.

Along with writing for the blog almost every day, I’m a surgeon, business owner, and inventor. I need diversity in my life, so I have invested time and money into a biotech company with their focus on rapid disease diagnosis and screening — Maven Biotechnologies. The best way to explain the vision of Maven is to imagine a disposable bio-chip (like a microchip on a small piece of glass or plastic) that can precisely test a drop of your blood for hundreds of diseases, along with your reaction to available drugs for the treatment of these diseases in just minutes! Now imagine visiting your doctor, who inserts the chip into a small desktop device for processing, then presents the results to you in the very same visit. This animation will give you an idea on how Maven’s unique technology will eventually facilitate the development of personalized medicine, a rapidly evolving change in the future of clinical medicine.

One recent invention of mine that I’ve worked on with one of my patients, is the newly patented Ski Brake, which will make it much easier for adults to learn how to ski. One prototype has been developed and you can view a simple animation of how it works.

I live and feel every minute I am alive and am fortunate to have the health and the associates to make these dreams turn into a reality. This is no different than what Dr. Bob Bernstein and I did in the 1990s to change the way hair transplantation is done.

This post isn’t hair loss related, but it goes hand-in-hand with wanting to look your best.

My hair transplant patient, plastic surgeon Dr. Jon Perlman, got very excited when he explored a new, non-surgical way to treat fat build-up in the neck, trunk, stomach, and thighs. He started to offer this service and continues to be very high on the results he has now seen. So many men (and women) have just enough fat build-up to make them self-conscious and rather than undergo a surgical procedure like liposuction, this option may be attractive to some of you. Dr. Perlman offered our readers a 10% discount through the end of this year for anyone wanting to undergo this non-surgical fat reduction procedure.

I asked Dr. Perlman to explain how the technology works. He writes:

In the last year the Zerona diode laser has been developed for body sculpting and removal of unsightly fat collections. It works by applying a low power laser energy painlessly without any surgery or probes and “melts” the fat layer beneath the skin of the neck, trunk, stomach or thighs. During the course of multiple (usually six) painless Zerona laser applications, electron microscopy reveals the development of pores in the walls of the fat cells resulting in them emptying their fat into the interstitial fluid space. This fat is eliminated through the lymphatic system with patients noting a loss of 3”- 4” or more over a several week period of time. A few have even lost up to a combined 10” with this procedure and have been given a “jump-start” toward looking and feeling better and maintaining it by better diet and exercise habits.

More information and pictures about this exciting new technology can be found at this site or by calling 310-854-0031.

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Not exactly hair loss related, but interesting nonetheless —

Snippet from the article:

Fact is, FDA has found lead in all 20 lipsticks tested, in significantly higher amounts than those that caused a minor media uproar when the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC) tested lipstick in 2007. The FDA detected lipstick lead concentrations up to 3.06 parts per million (ppm), more than 4 times the maximum (0.65 ppm) measured by CSC.

Read the full article — I’ll take my lipstick unleaded, please

Oh boy. Should we think twice about kissing a woman with lipstick on? I wouldn’t jump to conclusions that leaded lipstick is causing hair loss, but it is a little odd to me that the FDA is fine with traces of lead in lipstick, yet the EPA wants it out of our environment.

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Hi Doc,

Just wondering about the hair cycle.

In a normal situation (ie with no MPB) how much time would you expect for a hair to go from when it falls out through to when the hair is back to its previous length (lets say 5cm?)

And when you say ‘the time it takes to notice a difference in amount of hair’ do you mean when the hair has returned to the length of all other hair on your head or just when it has cracked the surface? (because different people notice different things – some might look very closely to the scalp and see hairs breaking through whereas others may not be as observant.)

And finally, have you got any super close up pictures of what hairs look like when they are coming through. (I am 16 weeks into proscar (large amount of shedding from weeks 2 – 10) and am seeing an abundance of hairs coming through at my hairline and temples and I want to tell if they are miniaturised or not)

And as an interesting side note i read somewhere on your site that everybody has miniaturised hairs on there hairline even if they are not balding, at about week 12 I noticed my miniaturised hairline hairs begininning to grow and then are now getting to normal length when they had sat at about 2-3cm for months and months and are now 5cm+.

Sorry for so much writing, very excited about my progress!

I am pleased you are seeing some positive results with finasteride and are excited about where things are headed. It generally takes about 6 to 12 months to see the difference after starting the medication. With respect to hair cycles, our hairs are constantly cycling with about 90% of them growing (anagen phase) and 10% shedding/resting (telogen/catagen). The entire cycle varies with people, sex, and age. The cycle can be as long as 7 years, but normally averages about 2-3 years. The growing phase lasts several years and the shedding/resting phase lasts a few weeks to months. This is why it takes several months to notice any changes in hair after starting finasteride.

I am not sure what difference it would make to see macro photos of hairs as they grow through the scalp, but I’ll see what I can come up with.

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I was wondering about the Platelet Derived Hair Growth Factor. The cost, availability, & how long the new hair growth last. Thanks

I believe much of this is still experimentation and I am learning more as the articles get published. We can wait for the answers as to whether it is better… and if so, how much better? I don’t have the answers at this time.

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Today is Labor Day (the first Monday in September) in the US, so our office is closed for a long weekend. As such, we’re not blogging today, but we shall be back with more hair loss Q&A first thing tomorrow.

In just about 4 and a half years, there are over 7500 posts here on BaldingBlog, and I’m sure there are many articles you’ve never read. I know there’s a ton of content here… so to keep things interesting, we’ve added a random post option. Maybe you’ll find something interesting, perhaps even something hilarious.

Check it out — Random Post

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