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The celebrity chef was pictured earlier this month looking so puffy that his eyes were almost hidden beneath the swelling. He now claims this was just down to a "horrific" infection and an allergic reaction to a horse. Ramsay blames horse for 'hair nightmare' | Herald Sun

But you are. You're giving up your option to ever cut your hair shorter than a given length again (without displaying a linear scar), and you're committing yourself to additional future procedures to keep up as your hair loss continues. If you don't know the pattern of your future hair loss, you can't definitively state that you'll "still have plenty of grafts from donor hair for extra procedures." Keep in mind that Propecia is not a magic bullet. It doesn't work for everyone, its results are variable, and at best it only slows hair loss (it doesn't stop it completely). You can't know how well it's going to work for you long-term after having taken it for just seven months.

It's kind of like asking why you shouldn't spend all your money right now on stuff you enjoy instead of saving any of it for the future. Your circumstances will likely be very different in the future in ways you can't anticipate, and you'll find yourself regretting that you blew everything chasing ephemeral pleasures to the sacrifice of long-term happiness and stability.

Possibly, but certainly "available but very expensive" is a much better situation than "not available at all." And the first step to affordability is necessarily availability.

Indeed. One thing you need to keep in mind is that there are many men with thinning hair who still look reasonably good because their remaining native hair (although decreased in quantity and/or quality) is still providing an "illusion of density." There's nothing inherently wrong or bad with creating that same result through transplantation, as long as it's done with care to make the result appear as natural as possible.

My own hair loss wasn't noticeable to me until right before I turned 50. And yeah, until then I was thinking to myself, "I made it this far; I'm going to be one of those lucky ones who dies with a full head of hair." Still, I'm glad I had it as long as I did rather than starting to lose it in my 20s or 30s.

As the article says, "I'd love to sue the surgeon but the clinic has closed down."

Are you referring to general malpractice on the part of this doctor, or one specific case?

Here’s a summary of recent progress into age-related male alopecia, and each product’s commercial prospects, ranked in order of closeness to launch: Pharma’s 4 Best Shots at a Cure for Baldness | BNET

Since MPB has been in evidence for thousands of years, long before the advent of processed foods, man-made chemicals, air/water/soil pollution, etc., the lifestyle changes you'd have to make to avoid it would likely involve using a time machine and living in a cave.

But the point was that the original poster in this thread said "anyone considering an HT should look at a photo of this so they know exactly what's being done to them." If that applies to HTs, then it should apply to all other forms of surgery as well.

You could say the same thing about nearly every kind of surgery -- everything from appendectomies to nose jobs can look just as gruesome, if not more so. You need to focus on the result, not the process.

I asked one of the top HT doctors frequently mentioned here whether in his practice techs placed the grafts or he did the placement himself. He said that techs do all the placement because "they're much better at it than I am."

And there are plenty of forums that touch thoroughly on the topic that the U.S. government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and have the research to back up their claims. Most of us have a higher standard for what constitutes "research," though. And if you believe that, the folks at Immortal Hair are happy to sell you their "Immortal Hair Supplement Line" for "natural hair regrowth."

Japanese life expectancy increased by an astounding 13.7 years in the decade immediately following World War II. So just maybe an alleged post-war increase in MPB might have had something to do with a lot more men living long enough to experience it rather than dying before its onset.

Uh, not so. If that were the case, then men who experience MPB earlier in life would also commonly be exhibiting other signs of aging atypical for men of their age. Beyond the patently obvious symptom (i.e., loss of hair), what other commonality is there between the two?

Right, it couldn't possibly be the case that bald(ing) actors typically wore toupees.

If that were the case, then one should expect to see an increased incidence of MPB and/or a progressively earlier onset age of MPB across time. As far as I know, no data demonstrates this to be true. In the absence of controlled studies, all such anecdotal reports are simply versions of confirmation bias, akin to maintaining that an absence of tigers demonstrates that snapping one's fingers is an effective method of keeping them away.

I'd go see Dr. Alexander in Phoenix, which is a short plane flight or a day's drive from SoCal.

Indeed. I think that if prospective patients did as much research before all medical procedures as they typically do before hair transplants, they'd probably never have any kind of surgery again. You can find horror stories about every medical treatment, but you have to keep in mind how (un)representative of the general outcome they might be and what steps you can take to minimize the possibilities of experiencing them.

It's old scare stuff based on 1980s-era Bosley HT factories. If you do your research to become an informed patient and choose a reputable hair restoration surgeon with an established track record, virtually nothing on that site need concern you.

I wish I'd said that. Oh, wait, I did.

What discomfort, specifically? Post-operative pain? Scalp tightness? The difficulty of having to protect the grafts for the first couple of weeks?

Ah, but this is where capitalism works for you. The companies that market hair loss treatments (not cures) have to share the profit pie; the company that develops a hair loss cure gets to eat the whole pie.

Wow, an article based on a non-random sample of one. That's some pretty impressive scientific reporting.