Balding Blog

You have a terrible complication that caused you to lose a lot of your donor hair. Maybe with time, it will come back. Go back and speak with your doctor since your donor area is in trouble. You may have been donor area may have been over-harvested, or this could be shock loss since it is in the first month. If your hair comes back, you will see it return around the same time as the recipient area grafts start to grow. If the donor hair does not return, then Scalp Micropigmentation is the only solution available to you or to anyone in your situation (see: https://scalpmicropigmentation.com/).

Question for you. I am 41 years old. Been on Finasteride for four months. From the tip of my hairline to about 3 inches back has miniaturized slightly. I have noticed that it no longer grows in length. Is this common? I have to buzz cut the rest of my head to match that front part every few weeks. What could be the reason for this? Why don’t those follicles grow anymore…it is like they have paused the growth cycle at the front?!

Great question. When hairs are going to die, sometimes they just stop growing or the growing slows down almost to a crawl. These hairs will eventually fall out and contribute to patterned balding. Drugs like minoxidil (topically) or finasteride can reverse this process.

This woman had hair loss and went to a surgeon a few years earlier who recommended surgery. Her condition is a clear diagnosis to a doctor with experience, a disease called Fibrosing Frontal Alopecia, which will cause any hair transplant to fail. Although this occurs more in women then men, it does occur in men and an astute doctor who is knowledgeable is critical before you get a hair transplant that will fail if you have this condition.

 

Over 20 years, this patient lost a lot of hair and as it was filled in, he ended up with a total of 7635 grafts, 2000 to achieve the goals shown below. His last procedures is show here, which reflect before and after pictures on moving his hairline down and filling in the crown. Clearly, he did not dye his hair in these after pictures.

 

hey dr. wrassman, i know there’s probably no chance you respond, but i wanted to just look for advice.

i’m 19 years old, about to turn 20 in january. my hair has been thinning and i’ve been a diffuse thinner for years, so the thinning is making it slightly worse as time goes on. i want to take finasteride so badly but the side effects scare me. i know they’re present in about 4% of men, but the recent reveal about merck lying about their side effects claim freaked me out as well. would you mind helping me calm down and explaining everything to me?

Most of the guys who take finasteride think that they are just taking their daily vitamins. That is my experience as I take it now and my son’s experience as well. This is completely your decision. If you don’t talk yourself into side effects, then if you get them you can just stop taking it. I don’t believe that PFS ever appeared in a normal person taking finasteride for a short time and then stopping it.

I get emails every day from patients who had their surgeries from all over the world and couldn’t get their doctors to return their phone calls. One man today told me that his doctor always returned his phone calls when he had questions BEFORE the surgery, but will not now return his calls. Some doctors think that you, the patient, is here for them to make money from. They sell you their services, treat you well until you go forward with the surgery. Then it is the next patient, not you, then gets their attention. Immoral doctors behave like this!!!!!!!

For someone paranoid about balding, but currently too poor to do anything about it aside from fin/min (oral+top) and derma-stamping, is there any way to somehow save donor area hair for the future? I worry that if financial security ever comes, it’ll be too late as far as my donor area is concerned. Any cheap solution to this? Do I just scalp myself and toss it in the freezer? (Kidding).

The donor area remains intact in most men throughout their early years until 60. After 60, some men start losing their donor area hair. This is a normal process and nothing to worry about. Freezing hair for future use sounds extreme to me and not practical today.