Balding Blog

Hi Dr. Rassman,

Thanks for this site. It has helped me with several of my questions on multiple occasions. My question is this: I followed one of the links on your site to Bernstein Medical and noticed that you have some pictures in your before and after sections that are of exactly the same people. The caption on his site reads: “view results of patients treated at our New York and New Jersey facilities using Dr. Bernstein’s pioneering hair restoration techniques.” Your website says that the pictures are all of NHI patients. Why do you have pictures of many of the same exact patients, and how does a customer know which patient was treated by which company?

These pictures are a big part of helping me decide where to get a transplant, and it is confusing seeing the same pictures on both sites so I really appreciate your answer.

Thanks.

Dr. Robert Bernstein was part of the New Hair Institute from January 1995 – December 2004. These patients were treated by Dr. Bernstein and the NHI staff during these years. When Dr. Bernstein and I divided up the practice, the NHI staff in the east coast offices (that he and I trained) stayed with him. I had no interest in opening up another office at this time and have been trying to simplify my life with less offices. The split between Dr. Bernstein was only a business separation, as we continue to work together, sharing everything we do in this field. Any breakthroughs that either of us make are shared or jointly developed. We have continued to write scientific and clinical papers together for publication. I believe that Dr. Bernstein and I are doing almost identical work and that is because we developed almost everything together and published what we did so that the world knew it was a joint development. The patients that are shown on both sites were done by Dr. Bernstein, but they were actually patients of the New Hair Institute when Dr. Bernstein was working exclusively with us. Therefore, the photos should be on his site as well as NHI’s site.

In my daily research, I came across 2 articles worth mentioning…

• WISTV.com – Health Alert: Laser hair growth
• NBC4.tv – Laser Hair Growth

When I read the stories in these links, it was clear that I, the reader, was being hyped. But when you are desperate for hair — losing more and more of it each and every day, depressed when you run your fingers through it and notice that there is less today than yesterday, see the hair go down the shower drain or come off on your fingers when you shampoo, and when you see the person in the mirror you immediately wonder, “Could that be me? NO WAY!” — you take notice of each and every story out there that could possibly lead to the solution. Are you getting the picture here? Put these thoughts in your head and then read those above ads posed as actual news and all of a sudden, there it is, the cure you have been looking for. Yeah, right. The hope offered by this Arizona-based hair center is about as refreshing as a glass full of air. At least it says they offer a money-back guarantee. I have reviewed the limited published results of these hand held lasers and there is no evidence I could find that indicates that they actually work. Hey, maybe I am wrong — I’ll continue to hold onto hope but I am not going to get into a fight to get my few hundred dollars back when the reality of this hand held laser hits me and I find out that the business entity that made the guarantee is in bankruptcy. That would just make me lose more hair thinking less of the guy in the mirror and more foolish.