I am 18 and female, what is wrong with me. Possibly Trangular Alpecia

Thinning hair in young women can be caused by many condition, far to numerous to list here. You need to see a doctor who specializes in hair loss in women to find out why you have this problem. Is this in your family, are you are birth control pills, do you have other medical condition that I need to know about? These are critical questions that a doctor must know to determine the diagnosis. A physical examination will be critical in assessing your situation as a capable doctor will use a hand microscope to look at each area of your scalp and hair. This as well as many blood tests are requires to arrive at the correct diagnosis from which treatment can be started and many of them are listed here: https://baldingblog.com/2009/03/13/woman-with-handfuls-of-hair-that-come-out-every-morning/. The pictures look like a genetic condition called Triangular Alopecia because it is on both sides in roughly the same place. A Hair transplant usually solves this problem.

 

 

18 year old female

I’m Worried About This Shedding I’m Seeing After Starting Minoxidil

Dear Doctor,

I am 28 yr old male. I have been losing a few strands of hair here and there for the past couple of years. However, it aggrevated in the past six months or so, with visible thinning of hair on the crown and receding of temples. I consulted a physician and a dermatologist. My reports about anaemia, thyroid function and blood sugar levels are normal. I was informed that I am suffering from genetic male pattern baldness.

I have been prescribed Minoxidil 5%, twice daily, Propecia once daily with Nizoral 1% twice a week. I have been on the above regime for a month. However, I have observed dramatic hair loss in the past month. I am loosing about 300 hair everyday. The most worrying part is that there are times when I loose a bunch of two to three hairs with a single white bulb at the bottom.

I am told that the use of Minoxidil can cause such increased hair loss. From your vast experience, can you confirm if such increased hair loss is common in the first month of treatment?

Also, assuming that this increased hair loss is pursuant to initial reaction to Minoxidil – will the hair lost in the past month grow back to their original length and thickness or is the best case scenario that only small thin miniature hair will replace them?

Thanks

I’ve had some emails over the years of reporting on this site from people asking about minoxidil shedding. I’ve written about it here.

I can’t say for sure how long it’ll persist or if those shed hairs will regrow, but it seems to be a temporary thing that lasts about a month in those that see this initial shedding and the hairs usually do return.

18 years old, what to do?

I have have a really bad, receding hairline with dense hair and no crown problems. I was going to start minoxidil and add finasteride in 2 to 3 years since I still haven’t finished my puberty. I really want to try to recover my hairline, the thing is, I am okay with getting a HT in a few years.

I often prescribe finasteride to 18 years old men. This drug often works very well with a high degree of reversal. If after one year it doesn’t reverse, add oral minoxidil to your routine and worst case, add microneedling 6 months after than it it doesn’t work. Actually, I don’t think that the first or second will fail. A hair transplant is out of the question for at least 7 years and by that time, if you don’t treat it now, you may bald far more than you see now.

Impotence After a Few Days on Propecia — Is it The Drug or Anxiety?

Hi

I’ve just started on finasteride, and I’m wondering if it is possible to see side effects (impotence) after only a couple of days on the drug. I’m not sure if it’s just my anxiety and over-analysis causing the problem, or if it’s actually the drug itself. I’d really really appreciate a private answer.

Thanks!

(24 year old male)

What you’re experiencing may be due to anxiety and what I generally tell my patients is to continue the medication for a month and try to ignore the erection problem if it is there. I do not know anything about you. I would need to get to know you to assess the anxiety element. The power of suggestion could certainly be in play here.

If you got the drug over the internet, this means that there is likely no professional guiding you on your problem. Consider seeing a good doctor if you do not have one… or if you do, then go back to him/her and ask the questions you posed here.


2010-07-06 11:51:40Impotence After a Few Days on Propecia — Is it The Drug or Anxiety?

1mg vs 5mg Finasteride for Hair Growth

Has there been any studies that have shown any increased hair growth taking proscar 5mg daily vs propecia 1 mg daily.

The 1mg dose is just as good as the 5mg dose for treating hair loss. This was determined when the drug company (Merck) did effectiveness testing. I am sure you can get it from the FDA. For urological problems, the 5mg dose is more effective. The question is really about how much finasteride binds to the hair follicles themselves. We know for prostate problems, that there is different binding dynamics than with hair follicles. I am not familiar with any study that directly compares the 5mg dose to the 1mg dose, but I would suspect that like any bell curve, the 1mg recommendation applies to those individuals in the center of the bell curve and that some people most certainly would be better with a higher dose, possibly worth trying if the 1mg dose is not adequate to meet the needs of the patient’s problem. See Pattern-Baldness.com for more.

In the News – Are Bald Men More Virile?

Snippet from the article:

“The suggestion that bald men are more virile than their well-thatched contemporaries is probably an old wives’ tale, but it must be conceded that old wives are likely to be unusually authoritative in this matter.”

So said the esteemed British dermatologist John Burton back in 1979 when the topic was first explored in the medical literature. Burton was notably balding at this time.

Since the time of Hippocrates it has been known that eunuchs do not go bald. This link between masculinity and baldness was confirmed by the anthropologist James Hamilton in the 1940s when he studied the hair patterns of prison inmates in the United States. He was particularly interested in the sex offenders who had been castrated by the authorities as part of their sentence.

Read the rest — Are bald men more virile?

So are bald men more virile? Spoiler alert — The answer is “no”.

In the News – CEOs Would Rather Be Bald than Short!

I was recently interviewed by USA Today reporter Del Jones for an article about balding CEOs, and I’m pleased to see that it was printed on the cover of the Money section of today’s issue!

From the article:

CEOs say being bald doesn’t impede success and, given a choice, it’s better to be bald than short. So widely held is this conventional wisdom among top executives that when asked to choose, most CEOs say they’d take 2 more inches of height over a full head of Robert Redford hair.

Even most bald CEOs, including many who are both tall and bald, would choose to be taller. “Lack of hair can only mean the brain is busy with more important functions,” says Murray Martin, the 5-foot-8 CEO of $5.7 billion Pitney Bowes, who is being generous when he describes his hair as “thinning.”

Full text — USA Today – The bald truth about CEOs


2008-03-14 09:01:31In the News – CEOs Would Rather Be Bald than Short!

20 Year Old Wants Hair Transplants to Fill in a Surgical Scar, But There’s a Family History of MPB

I am a 20 year old male and was wondering what type of procedures there are, if any, to have hair grow where a scar is from surgery. My freshman year of college at Indiana University I was playing basketball and collided with another player resulting in a depression in my right orbital bone above my eye. To fix the depression a plastic surgeon had to peel my face off to get access to the depressed bone resulting in a scar going from one side of the head to the other. My family having a history of baldness I was wondering if its possible to have hair grow over a scar. Thanks for the help.

I would want to see photos or meet with you in person. I have had one patient with that type of deformity and his transplanted area (including the eyebrow) did correct most of his problem, but everyone and every scar is different. Let’s start off with some photos though, as that is probably most convenient for you. Send them here and reference this post when sending, please.

Having a hair transplant to fix a scar is reasonable provided that you know what would happen to you if you should bald. That means to me that you should, at a minimum, have a Master Plan for your worst case scenario understood.

In the News – Fake Doctor Claimed He Could Cure Hair Loss

Snippet from the article:

Timothy Syed Andersson billed himself as dermatologist to the stars. Andersson, known to his patients as Dr. Syed, had a wall of photos at his home office in San Francisco’s Lakeshore district, showing him with actress Julia Roberts and actress-model Elizabeth Hurley, Nobel laureate Linus Pauling and other notables.

His Web site boasted of his research that had led to cures for everything from stretch marks to hair loss. San Francisco prosecutors say it was all a lie.

Read the full article at SFGate –Fake doctor fleeced patients, prosecutors say

As the article points, this guy was a con man with fake credentials, Photoshopped images, and was indicted in Sweden before fleeing to the US 14 years ago. He set up shop here and he was able to bilk people out of thousands of dollars each for treatments that were total BS. Shameful.


2010-02-04 15:31:35In the News – Fake Doctor Claimed He Could Cure Hair Loss