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Pangloss

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Everything posted by Pangloss

  1. Hmm, no replies. Well, maybe someone can at least tell me: I am assuming that when you pluck a hair with a tweezer, that follicle goes into telogen. Is that true or not true?
  2. Doesn't everyone fear accidentally losing a graft in the first few days after surgery? I have never lost a graft, but I know the anxiety of fearing loss is a problem and can even make it hard to sleep, which is the last thing you want, since if you don't sleep well you're more likely to have an accident and bump your head or worse. When you're asleep, or half-asleep you have no control over what your hands do and might not remember that you have fresh grafts in your scalp. I did bump my head a day or two after one of my surgeries, which panicked me, and I went immediately to the doctor and he said the grafts bled a little but did not come out.
  3. I understand that body hair's main disadvantage for transplanting is that it has a short anagen (growth) phase and very long telogen (resting) phase. But in the past, when I have had my back hair waxed at a salon, it always started growing back in only 7 to 10 days. I also have a lot of annoying hairs in my ears and on my ****. I pluck them, and they are always growing again in 1 to 2 weeks. I realize that, possibly, the new growth is hairs that were in invisible telogen, and not the same hairs that I plucked. If that's the case, I must have zillions of latent telogen hairs, which seems unlikely in my ears. Other possibility is that the hairs were broken, not plucked. But I can feel the difference between when I break a hair and when I pluck it, and usually my plucks are successful. One more possibility is that, for genetic or other reasons, I have a MUCH shorter telogen phase than the average. This would be an advantage for transplanting these hairs to my scalp, even though it's a hassle when trying to keep my body hair well groomed. Does anyone have similar experiences?
  4. Interesting that the grafts came out easy. Had your doctor used abdomen hair before or was this his first time? He didn't have any issue with the jelly-like nature of the abdomen making it harder to punch?
  5. Thanks SL. In my case, I do have good strong chest hair, but a greater abundance of good strong terminal hairs on my abdomen. My estimate of the survival rates comes from reading a lot of studies on BHT. They all give different percentages of survival, but stomach is usually lower survival rate than chest. As for back hair, Dr. Umar wrote “the author noted a relatively higher graft transection and trauma rate during extractions of hairs from the back regions of the torso. This is attributed to the fact that the reticular dermal layer in the region is the thickest of all body regions; for this reason, back hairs should be routinely avoided in BHT.” I have so many of these body hairs, and I hate them, because these days women like a man with a smooth body. I can clip the ones on the front with a clipper, but I have to go to a barber to cut the back hairs, which can be embarrassing. I live in SE Asia, and Asians don't have any upper body hair, so I really look like a monkey to them. So I figured, well, if I can transplant them to my head, that would be a great solution, and no need to constantly clip or contempate laser hair removal. But if the survival rate is low, transplanting them is a waste of money. I'm fascinated that your transected chest hairs grew back. Did the transected hair also grow on your scalp? Were all 300 of your test grafts transected? And how many of them grew back? Seems like someone should investigate this as it might be a way to multiply donor hairs if you can systematize a way to transect them correctly.
  6. Thanks Melvin. I don't mind clipping the existing hair very short if it will help the surgeon, though I'd rather not shave the scalp. Smaller procedures, like over several days, all for the hairline area, would be helpful? But that means more needle sticks with the anesthetic. Do these needle sticks damage follicles (especially unseen telogen follicles)? Isn't adding density to existing transplants a routine thing? Surgeons don't just do the hairline one day and proclaim it "finished", then a year later the mid-scalp, all done in one sitting, then later the crown. People are always coming back to add density to existing transplanted areas, aren't they?
  7. Thanks for the replies. Gillenator, I like the mittens idea. I wonder where I can find mittens in India, which is where I most likely will go for my next HT. They might be hard to find, as people in India don't tend to have snowball fights. sl, thanks for your suggestion. I think I like mittens better than washing gloves because they are padded, so it would be impossible to scratch out a graft. Is it bad to cover the scalp, because it needs to breathe in order to heal? I am just suggesting covering it while sleeping because that's when the greatest danger is. Another idea I have to address the fear of bumping one's head: wear a padded hat when going out or even around the house. Maybe just put a piece of foam rubber inside a regular hat. Any thoughts on that?
  8. My transplants were done over 20 years ago. Now my side fringe has receded a bit and frontal hair seems to have thinned a bit. Do you risk existing transplanted hairs by planting new hairs among them in the hairline area? Might there be either temporary or permanent shock loss? Do you gain more than you might lose? Can the surgeon be sure not to accidentally damage the existing follicles when he makes the new slits? Thanks for any opinions.
  9. I read a post from one person who actually tied his hands to his legs so that he wouldn’t unintentionally scratch his newly transplanted grafts while he was sleeping. Is there another way? What about wearing a bandage, hat or turban of some kind for several days after surgery, just to protect the grafts from accidents, especially while sleeping? The first week after transplanting is full of anxiety because of this fear. Is wearing some kind of protective covering a good idea?
  10. Then there is the issue of back hairs. I also have lots of those, with similar quality to the chest/stomach hairs. But some doctors have told me that they don't like to use back hairs because the back scars badly. Yet I have seen, on some HT doctors' websites, before/after pics of guys who used exclusively back hair and got great results. What are your thoughts about back hair?
  11. Thanks for your reply, sl. Since the stomach is jelly-like, does that mean transection rates are always going to be higher compared to the chest? Another question: Dr. Bhatti, in one of his videos, said that the anagen phase of the stomach hair is considerably shorter than the chest hair. I'm having a hard time accepting that, since the hairs on both my chest and stomach are pretty identical and grow to the same length. Is it possible that anagen/telogen ratios might be very different in individual cases, and some men have a much longer anagen phase than average in their body hair? I also remember he said that anagen phase for cheek hair was very short, like 2.5 months, and that does not agree with my experience. I'm sure my cheek hair grows much longer than that. A good percentage of my stomach hairs seem to be double hairs, which is also a plus. Various studies I've read give success rates for chest hair at 60 to 70 percent, and for stomach hair at less than 50%. Can that all be attributed to greater transection in the stomach hairs since they are harder to extract successfully?
  12. Thanks for posting this, BeHappy. My stomach hair looks very similar to yours. And there is the strip north of the navel that SL referred to where the hairs are very straight, hence might look better to blend with straight scalp hair. On my chest, the greatest density is around the nipples where the hair is robust, grows long, but is curlier than my stomach hair. It would be great if you could maybe study the transplanted stomach hair closely, differentiate it from the beard hair, and estimate what percentage of the stomach hair actually grew. I know that's not easy to do...
  13. It would be very instructive to know which type of body hair was used, i.e., beard, chest, leg, abdomen...and what was the success rate and transection rate?
  14. Nice video, SL. A few thoughts: Why are chest hairs better than stomach hairs? You say on the video that you use chest hairs but not stomach because the stomach hairs and leg hairs are vellus hairs. Not true in my case. My stomach hairs are exactly the same as my chest hairs. They are good calibre robust hairs and they grow pretty long, I would guess at least 3 inches and I have to clip them all the time. Dr. Bhatti said in another video that stomach hairs have a much shorter anagen phase than chest hairs. If that is true, why do my stomach hairs seem to grow just as long as my chest hairs? I am interested in using my beard, chest and stomach hairs to add density to an old transplant, because I have a depleted scalp donor area and also strip scars I would like to fix. I have denser hair on my stomach than on my chest, though plenty of hair in both places. I'm also concerned about the higher transection rates and lower survival rates of these hairs. But why the distinction between chest and stomach when they appear, at least in my case, to be identical?
  15. I hope that the Sikhs will stop tying those knots in their hair. Has anyone talked to them about the problem?
  16. Interesting video, but one contradiction strikes me. Dr. Bhatti said that the hair on the cheek has only a 2.5 month anagen phase, which means it cannot grow long and should not be used. But later in the video he talks about having used the hair from the cheek of one patient. A 2.5 month anagen phase means that the hair would not grow longer than about 3 centimeters. That's certainly not my experience with my cheek hairs, which I'm sure grow much longer than that. Is it possible that the duration of the anagen phase varies with different people?
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