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Clearly, whoever did this surgery, they did not know that the hairline should have single hairs and not be in a pattern. This is relatively easy to repair by creating a transition zone in front of this hairline.

Dr Joe Greco of Greco Med Group Florida claiming 80% success rate with infusing growth factors from ones own platelets into the scalp to regenerate hair. Really 80%? How can doctors make claims like this? Any safe treatment that had an 80% success rate would be duplicated all over the world wouldn’t it?

Anyone can claim anything. It may be true. I do not know. I cannot verify the claim personally. If these treatments do work, you are likely correct in stating that these treatments would be duplicated and offered all over the world – especially because it is such an easy and inexpensive thing to do. By that I mean, in essence, someone takes a vial of your blood and spins it down in a centrifuge to separate out the PRP (platelet rich plasma) from the red blood cells and injects it back to your body part (scalp).

I do know many doctors advertise Platelet Rich Plasma PRP therapy and discuss it in terms of regenerative therapy or stem cell therapy which definitely catches the attention of many consumers.

I also know that there are many articles and journals that publish positive results of these types of therapy but I have not found one that is truly a well designed research that has been replicated. What I mean by a well designed research, is called a Double Blind Randomized Control Study.

When reports come out that you get an 80% improvement, what does that mean? An improvement of what? If we get 90% of the hair to grow without it, does that mean that we can get 98% of the hair from a hair transplant to grow instead of 90% with it? There has never been a study done that shows value. We would have no objection to using PRP and may even do so one day, but as I believe that if a doctor needs to get an 80% improvement of their results by using PRP, then they have a problem in their technique and I would doubt that PRP would help them solve such a deficiency. I have seen doctors inject PRP into the scalp of balding men and women, but they do not do this as a charity, they charge for it, and charge they do. If we start injecting PRP which would be a push, we would not charge for it unless we demonstrated real value.

Scratching fresh grafts will remove them. Scratching older grafts can cause infections to develop at the point where the scratch was done.

One doctor told me this story as he believes that PFS is totally a nocebo effect. This is how he proved it to himself.

His brother was going to have a second hair transplant and believed that the finasteride caused him sexual side effects the first time he took it. So he refused to take the medication in preparation for a second surgery a few months down the road. His sister-in-law (the man’s wife) put two finasteride 1mg tablets into his daily shake which she prepared after he went to the gym without telling her husband.

So he took 2 mg per day for 3 months and told his surgeon brother that his hair miraculously was thicker and laughed that he didn’t have to take finasteride and experience side effects. At the three month mark, his surgeon brother told him that his wife had put double the dose of finasteride into his daily shake without telling him, in other words 2mg of finasteride per day. Not knowing that he was taking the finasteride, he had no side effects at all. So the idea that you can talk yourself into side effects was raised here. I know that there are sexual side effects with finasteride and I have seen that with my patients, so I am not suggesting anything to the contrary; however, there are some people who are just highly suggestive and worrying alone, can bring on side effects. No surprise.

Dr. Rassman
First of all I just wanted to say what a great blog you guys have!

I’m a 29 year old male with a thick head of hair and have been to the dermatologist recently and he said I have no signs of male pattern baldness but maybe going into a mature hair. I did the wrinkle brow test, but honestly my hairline even in old pictures when I was little was never really near my highest crease. How can you measure a mature hairline other than wrinkle brow? Because like I said my hairline never was like that even when I was seven years old.

I also notice that on top of my head I get hairs that are short and look thinner if I pull them out and the rest of my hairs are thick and coarse but all over my hairs seem to have different degrees and the dermatologist told me this was totally normal but I just wanted to ask you if it is? The lady that cuts my hair since I was twelve thought I was crazy when I ask her this, because she told me that she also has hairs that are thinner and thicker all over the hair and everyone does do to different hair cycles and its nothing to worry about. I do have a little OCD so I might be obsessing about something that’s totally normal.

I know the hair bulk test that you guys do is good and I told this to the lady that cuts my hair and she said if I really wanted to buy the Haircheck device that she would do it for me if I was worried and to ease my mind. I saw the video of the guy getting it done on my computer from the HairCheck website. In the video I notice they measured his hair in the middle and wanted to know if you can measure it at the hairline instead? Would the density in the front of the hairline be a little different than the back (donor area) even for a person with no signs of balding (MPB)? Do you always have to measure in the center or can you measure the left and right side head? Is measuring in the center the only way to do this bulk measurement test more accurately? Is there also a normal amount for a non balding person that the hair in front can be a little different than the hair in the back (donor hair) like percentage wise which would be consider normal?

Thanks for your time and hope to hear back from you soon! Sorry so long also You can publish this if you like too.

Movement of the hairline to the mature position is common by your age. Measuring the mature hairline using the wrinkled brow is really more of a loose “rule”. I’ve written about that here.

Hair cycling is normal as your follicles go through different phases of growth (anagen, catagen, and telogen), so yes, your dermatologist was correct that it is normal to have some hairs with different degrees of thickness depending on where it is in the growth process. If you want to know if you are balding just behind the frontal hairline, the HairCheck is good to give a number to compare one part of the scalp to the next. You can measure at the hairline, but you should make measurements in multiple parts of the scalp.

Prenatal exposure to pot is associated with differences in the thickness of the brain, particularly in the frontal brain, in preadolescent children. This was a study done with MRIS. This was written by Hanan El Marroun, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands and published online June 15 in Biological Psychiatry.

Children aged 6 to 8 years were invited into the MRI component of the program and the mothers use of cannabis exposure during pregnancy was measured with maternal self-report asking questions for each each trimester of the pregnancy. 113 nonexposed children; 96 children whose mothers smoked only tobacco during pregnancy; and 54 children whose mothers were studied during the pregnancy.

When comparing exposed to non-exposed children, those exposed to cannabis had “thicker frontal cortices, specifically, a thicker superior frontal area of the left hemisphere… and a thicker frontal pole of the right hemisphere” This part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, supports functions such as the ability to suppress responses and thoughts, attention, higher-order motor control, and working memory.