Vitamin A & D and Female Hair Loss

(female) regarding hair loss. I have tried it all, propecia, rogaine, the works. what i’d like to know is, I take loads of vitamins and supplements. I have hashimoto’s which I read I should take among others Vit.A and/or omega 3 fish oils. I was taking 5,000-10,000 of A and 400 iu of D. Then I thought I should get my a & d from fish oil instead. I take (2) 2500 Vit a and 250 vit.d a day.My question now becomes this. Would I need to take the same amount of Vit.a & d in the fish oil as in a regular a/d capsule which is from say carotene. I know a & d can become toxic and causes loss of hair and I’m wondering if that is my problem. What is a safe amount?? And which/ or both do you suggest.

As a rule, a normal healthy diet should provide you with ALL the essential vitamins and minerals for a normal healthy person. Millions of dollars are spent on marketing supplements to a health conscious society and it gives a skewed perspective on our health and subliminally gives us the message that we need to take these extra supplements to make us better (lose weight, grow hair, increase our sex drive, build muscle, feel happy, get smarter, reverse aging, etc). As long as things are not done in the extreme and it seems to help, there is nothing wrong with taking supplements. But there is no hard medical science to support majority of the claims.

With respect to Propecia, it is only FDA approved for male pattern hair loss in men. It is not approved for women. For more information on the use of Propecia in women, see: Treatments Available for Female Hair Loss. With respect to Rogaine, you can try it out, but it would take about a year to notice any benefit. I do not know if you had tried it for a year before you abandoned it. With respect to vitamins and supplements, if they work for you, then I see no reason to change the regimen. With respect to your thyroid condition, you should follow up with the doctor who is overseeing your treatment and follow his recommendation. It is not something you cure with just supplements.


2006-11-17 14:21:52Vitamin A & D and Female Hair Loss

Vitamin A and Hair Loss?

I have heard that too much vitamin A can cause hair loss, is this true? My multi-vitamin contains 100%DV and I recently found out that a medium sweet potato has over 400%DV. There are other items in my diet as well with small amounts of vitamin A.

Too much of a good thing can be bad, and yes, getting too much Vitamin A can produce hair loss. But, I doubt natural foods such as sweet potato can cause you to lose your hair, nor any ordinary supplements with Vitamin A in it.


2006-10-25 09:11:49Vitamin A and Hair Loss?

Visual Differences Between Balding and Maturing Hairlines

Is there any difference in visual or physical characteristics between a balding hairline and a maturing one? Does one do something different than the other? Or will early balding look exactly like hairline maturation and vice versa?

Most men who ask this question are in their teens and twenties who see slight recession of their frontal hairline. Yes, it may be a sign of early balding, but each and every patient is different and only time will tell. Sorry. The difference between early hairline thinning and hairline maturing can be difficult to spot just by looking. Read through this older post about juvenile and mature hairlines (with photos), as it could provide some help.

You can also follow up with your doctor for miniaturization study and/of hair bulk measurement if he/she has the HairCheck tool available.


2011-01-20 09:08:57Visual Differences Between Balding and Maturing Hairlines

Virtual Reality Hair — The Adhesive Makes it Sticky

DenverChannel.com – Company Claims Hair In An Hour, No Joke

From the article —

“It’s paper thin, it’s a membrane. The hair is injected or looped through it so once it’s on, you can’t feel any types of bumps or ridges like conventional hair pieces used to be,” said Alan Humphreys of Virtual Reality.

Just to be clear, this is not a hair transplant with permanent hair that grows. It is a taped-on hair product that costs $3000 to $6000 per year. At times it is difficult to tell the difference between wigs and medical treatments or surgeries (just look at the ads in the Yellow Pages and you will see what I am talking about), but in the case of this product, even the article has quotes from people on the street that provide mixed reactions. At least this news article is balanced.

Violin Spider Bite

This spider is also called the Brown Recluse Spider. It often hides in boxes that you store away the the basement. This bite can cause you to lose an arm or leg. The picture shows what the bite looked like and what the spider looks like. My wife saw the spider land on me one day (she has a photographic memory and acute vision) and tried to tell me before I wiped it off of my arm. Too late, the spider bit me and in a day my arm swelled but I did not get the necrosis shown on the picture on the left so I did not need surgical excision of the bite venom. This is a dangerous bite, but other than swelling and a fever, I did OK but it caused pain for about 3 days and it took a week for the swelling to go away. Some people have been known to die or lose an arm or leg from such a spider bit. This happened to me in Los Angeles, California but the spider is wide spread in the United States. The patient in the photo shows that a surgeon removed the area of the bite because the skin died (necrosis) and this surgery was needed.


2019-08-15 13:13:29Violin Spider Bite

Viibryd and Hair Loss

Is Viibryd more likely to accelerate MPB than other SSRIs? Thanks Drs

Vilazodone (also known as Viibryd) is an antidepressant medication and I have seen in my research that there has been hair loss reported with its use. I have no way to compare one medication to the other concerning hair loss.

Views on PFS

BTW, you are very ignorant about PFS. There are many cases of men who developed side effects and stopped the drug immediately, but they have not reversed years later. You haven’t even read the basic literature yet you so confidently opine on subjects of which you have no idea. You claim you have never seen it in the clinic (untrue) but then you haven’t even read about it. It’s a shame.

Merck’s clinical trials showed the same. Patients dropped out of the study immediately due to side effects and they had not still not reversed by the time they completed the study with remaining patients.

I will respond to you one last time. Since I have written over 10,000 prescriptions for finasteride on men of all ages, I can call on my experience (more than your first-hand experience I suspect). I also looked at another 10 or so doctors with the same prescription writing experience which translates into over 100,000 prescriptions for finasteride since it was introduced. All of these doctors stopped the drug on their patients when the patient complained about Sexual Side effects and that is why we, as a group, can state that we haven’t seen PFS in our patient population. THAT IS A VALID OBSERVATION. My one case does not qualify in this scenario as he developed sexual side effects in less time than it took to get PEAK blood levels for finasteride (2 hours after taking the pill) which tells me that it was psychological at that moment in time. Since this man continued taking the drug for more than one year after he was told to stop it AND HAD SEXUAL SIDE EFFECTS REPORTED THAT ENTIRE YEAR, BUT REFUSED TO STOP THE DRUG, then of course he may have induced PFS but there is no real way to tell as he was not trustworthy with regard to his own story. I have been respectful to you and expect the same from you in your writing. I have not only read extensively about PFS, but sat on panels and participated in meetings where PFS was discussed making me a bit of an expert with EXPERIENCE. I have never heard nor seen any report where a man had taken ONE dose and developed PFS, you can prove me wrong here if you have any facts to back up your claim but being dropped from a study does not relate to a SINGE DOSE response for inducing PFS. I am open to seeing your documentation.

I can’t comment on Merck. If the evidence shows that Merck hide results about long-term sexual side effects, I would be outraged as you are. Back in 2012, PFS was only just being discussed in the hair transplant community which at the time didn’t necessarily believe that it was real (I would have to check my notes on this date) but I believe at that time there was less public discussion about PFS as a syndrome, just patients complaining about persistent sexual side effects after stopping the drug, something I didn’t hear from my patients at the time. All of my patients, even back in 2012, were given a written release form which they executed with regard to the use of finasteride. All of the known side effects were not only discussed one-on-one between the patients and I when I wrote the prescription, but the document that they signed listed all of the known side effects coming out of the Merck brochures and the literature which I read. When PFS became a known entity, it was added to the informed consent document that each patient had to sign and I always included it in my consultations (I often took an hour with each new patient at no charge). I now believe that PFS is a real syndrome and any person who gets a finasteride prescription from me is made aware of this risk.

Look at this post: https://baldingblog.com/new-report-that-finasteride-does-not-cause-sexual-side-effects/


2021-02-16 07:28:50Views on PFS

Vietnam Veteran Kept Losing Hair and Getting Transplants to Keep up with the Hair Loss. His Hair Is Now Where He Wanted It to Be (Photo)

Self-esteem is what hair transplants are about for most men. This man kept up with his hair loss with 4 hair transplants over 20 years and married a younger woman. He now has 2 wonderful children and does not feel his age.




2019-02-20 07:24:10Vietnam Veteran Kept Losing Hair and Getting Transplants to Keep up with the Hair Loss. His Hair Is Now Where He Wanted It to Be (Photo)

Video Showing Implantation at a Density of 200 Grafts/cm Square (from Reddit)

I would bet that your normal density is not 200 follicular units per square cm. These numbers are unrealistic because it would deplete your donor area so much that as you continue to bald, which you will, you will have no hair to use in the donor area. These numbers, although they can be done as shown here, are unrealistic from a Master Plan approach to hair transplantation.

I was the first doctor to define dense packing of grafts in 1993-4, and I published it in the Hair Transplant Forum. However, I used it only on single hairs in the leading frontal edge. Today, I no longer use these number in the leading edge and I get terrific hairlines with a more reasonable density.

200 GRAFTS PER SQUARE CM!! THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN ABOUT. MHTGA from tressless


2018-07-19 05:46:57Video Showing Implantation at a Density of 200 Grafts/cm Square (from Reddit)