Balding Blog

The best way to treat an over-harvested donor area from FUE is with Scalp Microigmentation, something we do for patients who come to use from all over the world

I went to Turkey and had about 4,500 grafts. Now I can see that my donor area is see-through. I am now one month since my surgery and I want to know if it is going to get better?

You should wait a period of 6 months from the time of your surgery. If it is not better, you can assume that the surgery removed too many grafts that cause thinning in your donor area. If it does not recover, then the only solution for you is Scalp MicroPigmentation which works well to address this problem. See the link below.

https://scalpmicropigmentation.com/scar-covering/

Scalp MicroPigmentation can fix donor area depletion.

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.

You used to be a dairy farmer, correct? Is there a difference between dairy cattle and beef cattle? I always assumed they got milk from the females and meat from both males and females.

Can you clarify this? I’m asking b/c if they only use steroid hormones in beef cattle, then drinking milk would presumably be clear from any steroid hormones.

If you are worried about hormones in your milk, you can start with organic food stores and inquire about where they get their milk. I believe you are the same reader that sent me the earlier posted email about how steroids in milk (when used) get broken down by the acid in the stomach so it does not get absorbed into the body (see Growth Hormones in Milk).

From the Wikipedia entry for “cattle” —
Cattle raised for human consumption are called “beef cattle”. Within the beef cattle industry in parts of the United States, the term “beef” (plural “beeves”) is still used in its archaic sense to refer to an animal of either gender. Cows of certain breeds that are kept for the milk they give are called “dairy cows” or “milking cows” (formerly “milch cows” – “milch” was pronounced as “milk”) and their genetics are such that they produce high milk outputs whereas beef cattle are genetically created for their muscle mass.

Male bovine are called bulls (or steers if they are castrated) — and they do not have udders, nor do they produce dairy milk.

I have a history of severe depression. Will finasteride harm me?

With a history of depression, you need to discuss taking finasteride with your doctor. There are potential side effects with people who have a history of severe depression so great caution should be exercised when taking this drug and a close supervision of your doctor is important. I have written a post on this subject here: https://baldingblog.com/2017/05/23/finasteride-can-increase-depression-increase-actions-self-harm/

I had major hair shedding at age 19-20 all of a sudden. My father said he experienced the same (!) when he was young and he’s now 51 and still has a full head of hair, he just loses a lot (but he has a lot of hairs just like me). But his father went bald in his mid 20’s and because the hairloss was so agressive (you could compare it to the shedding of hair from animals at a certain period in the year) i thought for sure i was going the same way. So I visited 3 doctors/dermatologists and they all concluded it was genetic hairloss, although they didn’t seem to know much about how hairloss/hormones exactly work and were easily agitated when you asked a lot of questions.
Anyhow, i got prescribed proscar together with minoxidil (and nizoral shampoo) and took it for 1-1.5 years, after that I just stopped taking it, followed by rather intensive hairloss (which is normal, and it wasnt the same as when i was 19) i never saw a bald spot. Now at age 25 I still have all my hairs left, although I do lose a lot of them, there’s never a bald spot. I should have listened to my father who said he experienced exactly the same thing(!) when he was younger, he’s now 51 and he still has a full head, and yes he also loses a lot of hairs on a daily basis.(we both have a lot of hairs aswell).

Since i know for a fact that my father and brother both grew (2-3 inches, 5’9 and 5’11 respectively) after the age of 18 and i didn’t (i was 5’7.5 at age 15-16 and still am at age 24) i am very certain that massive hairloss was a testorone surge, and as such probably the start of a second growth spurt.
And i’m quite certain that because of taking proscar I caused premature closure of the growth plates (more production of estrogen due to DHT blocking?). Is this hypothesis correct Dr.Rassman? It’s really depressing to know that one small pill can mess your future up in such a grave way, as my height truly bothers me now. I thank you in advance for your effort.

I am not sure what you are asking. I assume that you lost hair after you stopped taking Propecia and minoxidil and that you noticed that more hair is falling out, yet you still have a full head of hair. Stopping these medications should not cause you to lose more hair than you would have ordinarily lost. I use the term ‘catch-up hair loss’ which means that your hair and scalp will behave the way it wound have gone without the retardation impact of these mediations on your hair. Now you are saying that you have a reasonable head of hair, but that there still may be thinning present and want to know if short term bursts of testosterone could cause hair loss. The answer to this question is yes, but generally when this happens, the lost hair is permanently lost. I have discussed many times on this blog, the need to have your scalp mapped out for miniaturization to establish a working diagnosis. If you have miniaturization in any pattern, you may still lose hair, so one would want this process to be an intelligent process with some metrics to understand what is changing on your head over time.

This patient had a localized harvest of his donor area with FUE. The area extended outside the permanent zone of hair which means that the patient has had hair moved from areas which are not permanent and that the harvest with FUE may have been too great. We see this complication of large FUE sessions, that some of these patients develop a ‘balding’ of the hair in the back of their head. I have spoken against over-harvesting for many years since I originally defined FUE

I am seeing more and more patients with depleted donor areas and thinning/balding in the back of the head where the hair formerly looked normal. This can be avoided in FUE by controlling the number of FUE grafts excised. It can only be treated with Scalp Micropigmentation which we do routinely in our office.

Can that numbing agent that the dental assistant repeatedly injected into my gums before she cleaned my teeth cause hair loss?

There is no connection between your gum anesthesia and your hair, but if you are stressed, you might induce more hair loss as stress is a factor for hair loss.