TheGman

Encouraging! I went to Dr.Demirsoy this summer too, a month before you, it's good to see more Demirsoy patients documenting their evolution.

The shedding is coming, brace yourself.

Why did you choose Demirsoy? How long have you been booked for?

Once again: I though grafts would bleed like crazy if you ever lost them! and that they'd be just as strong as the others after day 9. This is freaking me out!!

I thought nothing could have happened if there was no blood.

Day 40.

Back to square one, and actually a bit further down. There is almost no hair left, some have grown, some have not. Will use toppik a few times a week now, without spray, and I'll wash it off at night.

I had developped some early signs of pimples and my surgeon, upon viewing the pictures, recommended me to apply some antiseptic lotion.

I have been applying the antiseptic lotion a few times a day, with a cotton pad, and left it on for several hours, sometimes before going to sleep. My recipient area looks slightly better it seems.

Here are some pics of my current situation:

And now with some antiseptic cream on, applied with a cotton pad. Switched to minox once a day, only until my scalp starts looking better, soon!

Dr Demirsoy told me to wait one month and a half before I could get some impacts on my head, I'm a very active MMA/grappling competitor, so I still trained a little with very low intensity, I'm planning to start becoming more careless as of this week if that's okay. I forgot what the reasoning was behind so much caution, but I care about the hair more than about my upcoming tournaments!

Here I am, back to my public life, the next months are going to be the toughest!

My surgeon told me to avoid shaving or buzzing for 3 months.

Now that the shedding is over after 39 days my recipient area just looks ridiculous. Most of the transplanted hairs fell as expected. Some of the hairs have grown thicker than the natives, some never grew and did not fall either. I would love to buzz the whole thing for a while but I'll follow my surgeon's instruction to the letter. However I think buzzing as soon as possible is the most appropiate strategy to enjoy a natural growth, don't you think so?

And why should I wait so long, aren't grafts supposed to be fully secure at 10 days max?

thats unlikely. its extremely rare that FUT will benefit someone over FUE these days. a few years back that argument could be made but considering FUT does NOT include BHT then FUE will yield more grafts then FUT on average considering one has thousands of more available grafts from the body and face.

 

AND one has to worry if they are gonna be one of the thousands of unlucky ones that now have a disfiguring scar in the back of their head which is TELL-TALE sign that you had a HT that will now require FUE to repair it.

 

makes far more sense to get FUE from the beginning. its already been proven on a yearly basis now that FUE can harvest just as many grafts as FUT from the head with virtually zero evidence of a HT and thousands more from the face and body.

 

there are far better option then Dr. Path. price is usually why ppl like the OP have chosen their given doctor not skill and results. yea Path is decent just not great. there are plenty of GREAT HT surgeons that are affordable.

 

this isn't like getting ur car painted. if they screw ur car up u just sand down and re-paint. screw ur head up and ur screwed for life!

FUT is only better if you are very sedentary, and certain about keeping your hair fairly long for ever. The yield does appear to be still slightly more favorable. Don't count FUT out if you are confident you've stabilized your loss and enjoy long hair.

I think the main concern with RU (apart from the fact getting it and creating the formula is, to my knowledge, technically illegal) is just a lack of genuine data on how well it works and how safe it is, as well as no truly established guideline on how to produce it (i.e. the best solution, concentration etc.).

 

Most men who try RU are, frankly, men who are probably also using minoxidil, finasteride and often "boosting" that with dutasteride, saw palmetto and various other vitamins and oils. More power to them if they want to do that, but it makes it very hard in most cases to truly know how much benefit RU offers, and it's also potentially damaging to your health too.

 

Of the few studies/abstracts that have come out, it seems that RU is at best maybe comparable to finasteride. It possibly has a lower side effects profile due to the way it works, but if you're planning on combining the two that wouldn't matter much anyway.

 

Personally I don't think I'd try it. I've heard nothing to suggest it's seriously unsafe or anything, but I don't much like the thought of concocting my own, not really tested anti-androgen - especially if there wasn't at least seriously good scientific evidence it had a really beneficial impact. The concept of using both is sound but it just doesn't seem practical and nobody really knows about the safety or usage aspects. It seems like an awful lot of work and energy for little more than a hope.

The first guys that were using minox also made their own mixture and it was part of the game. RU was not approved because of safety issues with pregnant women I believe. They didn't want to face the lawsuits in case of an impacted baby.

Yes I'm maintaining just fine on FIN and minox, but I just had a hair transplant, so the stakes are higher now, would love to avoid a second one for as long as possible. I'm also planning on injecting some testosterone in the future, so I want to use a topical anti-androgen to compensate.

I don't mind making my own RU I already make my own anti-aging creams and tbh I really enjoy it. Expanding my labarotory to topical anti-androgens is exciting. But of course if it's useless, I won't bother!

38 days post-op and some of the hairs didn't grow at all and didn't shed either. A few grew stronger and faster than the natives. Most shed. The most worrying is those hair that didn't really move.

Some are of the opinion to take the supplement until the growth has fully manifested.

About a year then? My skin has cleared a little bit. I'm using tretinoin against wrinkles and acne.

I can deal with this, but the anxiety of a poor result is clearly the hardest. I suppose the early stages of growth will be the most worrying.

I booked myself two weeks in a shithole in the London area to hide, and I was asked about my FUE by a group of Turkish guys who were very curious. It didn't bother me at all. But where I live it'd be impossible to be open about it. I have a very conservative family and I work in a macho environment. I can't wait for month 3, I should be back to where I was pre-op...

I hear you on the scar. A lot of people get bent about the scar, and it never really concerned me too much. Maybe I'll eat those words, but we'll see. For now, the shock loss and shedding are the daily grinds. If I was a borderline HT candidate before doing this, I definitely need one now bc I'm friggin BALD in my frontal! tick tock...

Man you can see how much balder I've gotten it's much worse than before the transplant, I feel like a nw5. But it's part of the game. I pretend I have a skin condition to the very few people that have seen that disaster. How about you?

I know Rahal is very conservative with concealers. Demirsoy told me to wait for 2 months...

I did it with Rahal in Ottawa.

Yes I just saw your pics!

Great choice, he's the one I would have loved to go to if I lived in North America. FUT is still a viable option as long as you don't buzz your sides, I was still hesitating at the last minute.

I just had a FUE hair transplant and now that I've joined the dark side I have to make sure I'm using the best treatments available. I don't want to book another procedure anytime soon and I would love to thicken up the thinning areas around the crown and mid scalp.

Been on fin+ Minox for several years. Never been serious with niz, reluctant to stick with it because of all the sulfate(looking to have straight hair).

I remember DecadeTwo advocating the combination of a systemic and a topical anti-androgen.

It's easy to find the dozen of threads compairing finasteride and RU but how about using both in the hope to see some thickening?

Thank you for your replies.

Finasteride should be your first line of attack. I'm wondering if adding RU to fin is a good idea personally.

If you are after regrowth minoxidil is also a must!

I'd say a good donor area is one with average (white person) hair shaft thickness at 100FU/cm and could be better or worse based on your characteristics.

This was me before the procedure

11 days after

There's no hard and fast rule, unfortunately.

 

I presume you're talking about FUE (as the donor area remains largely unchanged apart from a thin scar with FUT, even after two or three sessions, so long as it's well closed and the laxity is there). I would say that 8,000 grafts would be an extremely good yield from FUE. The norm is much closer to 5,000 - 7,000 grafts. Most men should be able to get 4.5 to 5k grafts, some men will be able to get 6.5-7.5k. I would imagine some could get 7.5k+ but that's definitely more of an exception than a rule.

 

As to when it starts to look thin, it varies from man to man. Men with higher densities of follicular units per cm2 will generally be able to take more donor before it begins to look thin. Men with good hair characteristics (wide diameter, curly, coarse etc.) will also be able to use more before the donor area begins to look weak.

 

Your strategy is the best one - taking around 2.5 - 3.5k grafts means you can give your donor area time to heal and, when you come to plan a second procedure, you and the doctor can have a good examination of the donor area and a good doctor can make a proper recommendation about how many grafts you have left before the donor begins to look thin. Sometimes it can be surprising - after healing a man's donor area may look surprisingly strong even after 3-4k grafts getting removed. Other times it may look weaker than expected and a more conservative second procedure may need to be planned.

 

The odds are you should have at least another 2-3k left in the donor area before it begins to look thin, but that is just going by the odds and you need that confirmed by a doctor before really planning out the second procedure. You'd be a lucky man to have another 5k available by FUE but it's not totally impossible, just rare. You'd probably have at least another 3.5-4k available via FUT if you were willing to consider that option.

 

Overharvesting from the donor is a real problem so the best doctors will urge caution and be realistic. You should still have a fair bit left for a second procedure, but it's worth erring on the side of caution and finding a good doctor who will be optimistic but also realistic about how your donor is looking and what could be realistically achieved from a second procedure.

Thank you for your thorough answer! How long should it take for me to get my maximum density in the donor area? I need to be able to plan a smallish procedure for the future(around 1500 grafts) while keeping a normal-looking donor area. One of my sides looks over-harvested but it's only been one month.

Gary Numan

Bizarre godfather of synthpop http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2Fgp%2Fentity%2FGary-Numan%2FB000APVFHC%3Fie%3DUTF8%26ref_%3Dsr%5Ftc%5F2%5F0%26qid%3D1272443530%26sr%3D8-2-ent&tag=baldingcelebr-21&linkCode=ur2&camp=1634&creative=19450 started losing his hair quite young and talks about it candidly in his autobiography.

He had 2 hair transplants in the early 80s which he describes in fairly graphic detail. The hats he wore as part of his image around this time helped mask this. The surgeries didn't go particularly well and he claims to have had another procedure in 1993.

But there is no way that he got his current density from hair transplants, and what you're seeing now is surely a hair 'system'. This still from 1993 shows his old hairstyle, which is an unusual looking mixture of 'plugs', dye and judicious styling.

I have wondered why he appears to be so open about transplants but not the hair piece. Part of the reason may be that transplants are an expensive sounding, futuristic solution while there is still some stigma around wearing a toupee.

source: Gary Numan | Balding Celebrities

This has to be the worst toupee I've ever seen, noticed it right away on his facebook page(like his music) when I wasn't really educated about wigs.

37 days post-op, and I have seen some small pimples and bumps emerge on my recipient area.

Muzaffer gave me an antiseptic lotion to use in case of this.

I have started applying it to be safe, using a cotton pad, will do it once a day and carry on using minoxidil. Am I doing it right?

Gman, hang in there dude. I'm exactly 9 days behind you (had fut with about 3000 grafts to exactly the same area done on 7/29). The shedding and native hair shock loss have been BRUTAL for me. But we took the plunge and now we just need to roll with it. Keep me posted and I'll do the same... good luck with it

Awesome man who did you do it with?

I keep wondering about the density, and I know the worst is to come: anxiously waiting for the first results to thicken up will be very stressful. I'll only be 100% relieved when I get a good haircut with a straightening treatment in a year from now!

I'm 37 days post-op, and I have seen some small pimples and bumps emerge on my recipient area.

My surgeon gave me an antiseptic lotion to use in case of this.

I have started applying it to be safe, using a cotton pad, will do it once a day and carry on using minoxidil. Am I doing it right?

Supposedely nothing bad can have happened if you did not bleed.

By day 11 you should have removed your scabs though.

The wrestling gear left a ton of crust during the shedding but it was dead skin. Not scabs.

Lewis Hamilton:

That hairline is very straight and high, like most HT's.

How about Johnny Depp??

I just had a 3261 grafts procedure, and I'm considering my options for the future.

It is said that a good donor area can hold as many as 8000 available grafts. But what does that mean?

When does the donor area start looking thin? What's the issue when you start extracting that many grafts? Is the appearance of your donor area a good reason to refrain from further procedures?

Thank you for your replies!