Category: Uncategorized

I’ve been reading more of the news items about yesterday’s publication of the two studies in Nature Genetics, and pulled some key quotes from various news sites that are worth highlighting.

From the BBC —

“Analysis of DNA from 5,000 volunteers with and without male-pattern baldness found two stretches of the genome linked with the condition.”

“One was the androgen receptor gene and has already been linked to male-pattern baldness. The other region is on chromosome 20 and is nowhere near any known gene.”

We’ve long known that genes were responsible for hair loss, but now they’ve finally been identified.

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From the Scotsman —

“Until now, the only known genetic link with male baldness was on the female chromosome, meaning it could be passed down to men from their mother’s father.”

“Dr Richards said so far they had only identified a cause of hair loss.”

In other words, the cure isn’t here and this is still the very early stage, so don’t cancel your hair transplant just yet.

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From the Wall Street Journal —

But dermatologists say that looking at hair shafts under a microscope can spot shrinkage years before it’s apparent. “We can pick it up when kids are teenagers,” says Robert Bernstein, founder of Bernstein Medical Center for Hair Restoration, a treatment clinic in New York. He agrees that medication can slow hair loss only if it isn’t too advanced. Once an area is devoid of hair, only a transplant can restore it.

This is what I’ve been talking about all along — mapping your scalp for miniaturization.

Men always worry about hair loss and young men are hung up on the 3-4% risk of sexual side effects of the drug finasteride; but form time to time we see the huge impact of this drug on hair loss reversal in young men as shown in this photos of a young man on the drug for 2 years. Many doctors are now not prescribing this drug for fear of being involved in the Class Action law suits brought by men who are suing the drug company Merck as they fell that they are part of the 3-4% of those with sexual side effects. Nevertheless, here are the pictures I am referring to.

I am a 20 year old male and I want to discuss about hair transplant. I Started noticing hairloss since around age 19 and since then I have been using rogaine to help me with it(about 7 months now), I have also just started finasteride a month ago. Although I only have a small amount of recession, I want to get a small hair transplant done so that my hairline looks good. I am a model/actor hence I am in front of the camera a lot and I need to keep my hair looking good in order to maintain a few of my upcoming roles. After doing a bit of research I came across the fact that hair transplant is usually done on people above the age of 25. But I am fine with getting it done two or even three times in the next decade as long as I can keep my hair! I also think it is worth mentioning that money is not an issue for me in the sense that having good hair would be an indirect investment into my career. What would you advise me?

Please look at these pictures: https://baldingblog.com/need-master-plan-think-hair-transplants-photos/ and see the need for a Personalized Master Plan that will not include a hair transplant until you are at least 25. This is clear because your balding will change and if you use us your donor hair now, then you might end up without enough to follow your future balding pattern.

Snippet from the article:

Stand up straight! And do something about that hair!” Annoying? Sure. But such parental advice may have made humans what we are today. Because our upright stance, and relative lack of hair, may have enabled our human ancestors to run far and fast enough to capture their prey. So say scientists in the Journal of Human Evolution.

The idea that standing on two legs and shedding all that body hair might have helped early humans keep cool on the African savanna was first trotted out in the late 1980s. But those early models had our ancestors standing still in a gentle breeze. Scientists simply didn’t have the computational power to assess what might happen when those early humans had to up and chase down a meal.

Read the rest — Upright and Hairless Make Better Long-Distance Hunters

The above article is actually a transcript of a podcast. The published model can be found here.

The head of the ‘Osterby Man’, a Germanic warrior of the Suebi who died around 100 AD. He was struck by a blunt object before being decapitated and his head thrown into a bog. His hair has been perfectly preserved, tied in the distinctive Suebian knot worn by men of his tribe.

Snippet from the article:

Doctors have treated a life-threatening blood disease by repairing flaws in the genetic code of a living animal, the first time such an ambitious feat has been achieved. The work raises the prospect of powerful new therapies that can target and repair the genetic defects behind a wide range of human diseases that cannot be tackled with modern medicines.

The new technique, called genome editing, holds particular promise for a group of illnesses that run in families and are caused by faults in genes that underpin the healthy working of the immune system, bone marrow and liver.

To demonstrate the therapy, researchers treated mice that were bred to develop haemophilia B, an inherited bleeding disorder that destroys the body’s ability to form blood clots. Normally, when the body suffers a cut or graze, proteins called clotting factors combine with platelet cells in the blood to make it sticky and form a clot that stops any bleeding.

Read the full story — Doctors make breakthrough in repairing genetic defects

This is fascinating… and while not directly about hair loss, imagine the possibilities for genome editing in the future.

Rather than obsess over your situation, meet with a doctor who is in this field of hair restoration and start building a Master Plan for your hair loss. I usually start by performing a HAIRCHECK instrument test on my patients to determine a baseline for the hair loss. Then, I start medications which would be appropriate for someone of your age. I follow the progress over a year or two. If the balding continues and gets worse, I might then consider a hair transplant but I must know you and you should get to know and trust your doctor over that time he treats you with medications. With trust, you can get your hair back and address your depression by taking action.

Balding gave me the final punch into depression, who else? from tressless