ciaus

Very interesting, so if I'm understanding correctly from the video, Dr Bisanga considers patients with 20% or more of the donor area having miniaturization/thinning not good candidates for HT. What role does finasteride play in Dr Bisanga's evaluation in scenarios like these: 1-If a patient is at say 30% thinning in the donor and they get on finasteride and respond well, comes back in a year (or few years, 5 yrs etc) and the detectable thinning drops to %10, etc. --and the patient is willing to stay on the finasteride forever -would Dr Bisanga re-classify them as a good candidate, or consider them borderline and agree to the procedure but only on the condition that they accept the probability of at least some loss down the road,.....or would he still consider them a bad candidate and not agree to operate on them? 2-And then what about the people that have already been on finasteride, maybe minoxidil too, for years, making it more difficult to accurately evaluate the scope of vulnerable areas. -During consultation if he learns that someone has been on these meds for years, does he bring up this topic and try to get some pictures, honest evaluations from the candidate on how much worse their hair was before the meds -and has he ever disqualified someone based on that?

Up to a point the sharpness of what you are cutting with will help, but then there's the pressure to make the cut and the cohesiveness of the materials inside the pill that cause powdery chips and dust to break off. I cut 5mg pills into 1/4s with this aircraft aluminum, twin blade, blah blah overkill cutter to make sure I minimize crumbs and maximize clean cuts, and occasionally there is still a little powder and crumbing even with this sharp cutter. I would expect 1/8s to be a good bit more messy and 1/16s to probably look almost like you just crushed the pill. You might be able to get some kind of custom dosage through a compounding pharmacy in your area, but I have doubts about how much of a benefit these small dosages will actually have for you, especially if your hair loss is fairly aggressive or even just moderate. And this screenshot below of the cutter, the pill is not the right color but looks to be the same size as a 5mg finasteride pill, here in the USA anyway. So its not like you have some big vitamin tablet-sized pill to slice and dice down.

Interesting topic, I would guess the donor and recipient area size increases on larger heads would cancel each other out though. The important factors as always would be the hair characteristics like thickness, straight/curly, color contrast with skin tone, etc that create the illusion of coverage.

I'll start by saying people with a handful of posts starting discussion threads like this, about trying a product, are usually the people actually selling or trying to profit from those products. When i used concealers started with toppik but found this on amazon and switched, called xfusion, its alot cheaper and works just as good. If you price compare topik is going for about $25 per 12 gram container. If you convert ounces to gram here there's 28 grams in an ounce, so that's less than half the price of toppik.

Merck is the company that initially developed finasteride, they called the 5mg formula Proscar for prostate issues. And later they tested and patented the lower 1mg dosage called Propecia too for hair loss. For years guys have been pill cutting the 5mg pills into 4s to get 1.25mg dosages a day to save money, a whole lot of money back when Propecia was still on patent. And even still today relatively speaking 5mg pills are much cheaper than 1mg. I started doing this over the summer. I wouldn't advise going over the 1.25mg dosage cutting 5mg pills, especially if you are already very worried about possible side effects. You're more likely to psyche yourself out into mimicking side effect symptoms. And in the cases of these people already psychologically suggestive to manufacturing symptoms I would start off no higher than the 1mg pills, consider pill cutting later if you are interesting in that after you confirm you can handle the 1mg.

I don't know Melvin, these particular duplicate topics might have more to do with DenverBuff1989's personal activities than forum glitching!

I agree, good decision, you have a great proportional head shape, ears that stay close to your head throughout their lengths, well defined facial features in the eye/eye brow/nose area, and rounded out with a nice beard along the bottom.

Uh, actually finasteride was originally invented to help a bad prostate, not cause it to go bad. Like TorontoMan said, unless she has some medical tests you took backing it up I'd drop her and replace with a male doctor if possible. One mom is more than enough for any man

Lets start the Hair Club Party, Voxman in 2024!!

I think you probably shouldn't, considering how long you've been asking on the forum and after getting replies like @kirkland has provided. You're looking for a level of certainty and precision that's probably not possible. And I'm assuming you've reached out to Milena Lardi too, or at least one clinic that has an artist that trained under her and uses her pigments, since you say you've been seriously considering it. I'm probably going to get some SMP to help camouflage a thin FUT scar, leaning more towards a longer lasting ink. Assuming that enough of the ink is able to stay successfully suspended in my skin for at least 2 or 3 years between touch ups will be acceptable to me. Other inks used in traditional tattoos have more harsh ingredients than SMP inks and there's no epidemics of people with body tattoos dropping dead or suffering from debilitating illnesses. And if the ink doesn't fade fast enough, or doesn't look good enough, then I'll get it lasered off. In my opinion, if you need more certainty than that you're not a good SMP candidate for the foreseeable future. Best advice is to stay in contact with a few legit SMP clinics to see what additional research and studies come along in the coming years that may be enough to make you feel comfortable.

10 days grafts are secure, 3 weeks is plenty of skin surface healing time, cut/buzz away thereafter.

Don't give up on trying concealers, esp dermmatch, when I used it I applied it to my front line hair and it worked great. Its fine for thickening up your hairline hairs like it does on other parts of your head, its just not for creating a hairline out of nothing or next to nothing. And it doesn't run when you sweat. You have real dark hair, that's good for dermatch and concealers in general. Darker hair, and darker colors in general, absorb more light than they reflect, and you want as little reflection to contend with as possible. The way lighting reflects off the portions of the hair that has concealer on it contrasted with how lighting reflects off hair that doesn't have any concealer is one of the main ways it becomes detectable to someone looking at you. Because you're not going to be able to perfectly coat every hair, up and down the hair, with the concealer. And if you try to do that you'll probably end up putting on too much concealer and then your hair will look "dull" and non-reflective, which is another main giveaway that you are using concealer. And lastly is getting a good color match with your natural hair of course. On amazon there's some cheaper products that look like they work the same way as dermmatch, never used them so can't vouch for them. Its $47 a container which is relatively expensive up front, but it will last you for months, depending on how much you put on etc of course. I would try the black based on your pic. Dermmatch and Toppik/hair fibers really work well together, kind of like finasteride and minoxidil, so you may want to try experimenting with sprinkling some hair fibers on after you apply the dermmatch. But since you aren't going to be applying styling spray, be aware that hair fibers are designed to stick to your hairs some of them may not, especially if you accidentally put on a bit too much. So I would bend over and shake your head a few times to make sure you shake off any excess. That way should you move your head etc in a similar way around your peoples you don't crop dust your surroundings. 😆 Melvin started two topics over in the concealer section on applying dermmatch with his example video. On his first topic that he didn't pin to the top I posted some tips from experience applying it that you may want to check out here

If you are already buzzing it down and plan on keeping it very short, including close to 0 on the sides maybe strategically transplant some around the top to help give a 3d effect to SMP. Or just don't even bother with SMP at all and keep your head shaved down and grow your beard out, that can be a really good combo. And its extremely low maintenance which is heaven to any guy that has struggled for years with getting transplants and using concealers to achieve the illusion of a full head of hair.

Its better to use fin/min for a year prior to see what you can get away with not having to transplant for now. Don't see your age in previous posts but you still look pretty young, and even guys that wait well into their middle years to get a hair transplant usually come back for at least one more. Think of fin/min as the brakes on your hairloss, nothing perfectly stops loss yet, and none of us know how much we are ever going to lose. Using them helps you to slow down the loss, hopefully alot of slow down so you have fewer and smaller hair transplants over your life. You never need to stop finasteride when you do get your transplant(s), minoxidil because it can cause extra bleeding you'll stop for 1-2 weeks before and after.

Come on now, you mean he'll only miss out on one more good time!

I agree with Melvin, the thinning that far down is concerning.

For anyone that hasn't seen "The Cable Guy", its a comedy from the late 90s with Jim Carey and Matthew Broderick. Matthew Broderick's character has a boss with a terrible hair plug transplant job. No one says anything to his face of course, and towards the end there's a hilarious scene where he gets emailed a video of Matt's character mocking it. Wish I could find better pics and a clip. https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/82abe032-50b5-4ef7-aa5f-67ad77434a27

Minoxidil will help enhance your vulnerable hairs but it won't protect them from the underlying cause of the thinning -DHT. That's why you want to use a DHT blocker like finasteride along with the minoxidil.

007 with hairloss in his sights, staring down the barrel of his latest bionic finger pistol! Mission accomplished!

I don't have numbers/%s, but its pretty rare. You'd hear plenty about it online and on this forum if it was a noteworthy risk. When there is some post op numbness it usually lasts 1-2 weeks, up to a few months. Never seen a post or heard of someone that actually never recovered from the numbness, but I suppose with unethical chop shops out there its possible. And this is more likely with FUT, where they cut out the strips of skin, rather than FUE which is alot less invasive, just extracting individual follicles.

If you are losing hair due to male pattern baldness and only taking Rogaine/minoxidil, its only going to help in the short term because it doesn't address the underlying cause of male pattern baldness -DHT, that's flowing through your blood and latching on to DHT sensitive hair follicle receptors. Finasteride and dutasteride are the DHT blockers, Rogaine/minoxidil is just enhancing those vulnerable hairs and extending their growth cycles until the DHT completely takes them out. Fin/Dut helps keep the hairs alive and Rogain/minoxdil enhances them. They complement each other and you should use them both if you want to maximize your results

1st rule of Hair Club: Hair transplants are kinda like Lays potato chips or pistachios, you never have just one!

Yea its the brand name the drug was given when it was created by the pharmaceutical company Merck. They named their 1mg formula specifically for hairloss Propecia. If you buy 90 Proscar pills and cut them into 4s, divide that buy 12 and it costs about $17/month, in the US anyway. Considerably more expensive than generic 5mg finasteride pills, but alot cheaper still than buying Propecia.

I have to admit I've looked enviously at some plates of food that were far better than the one in front of me ...so a food transplant doctor would be the one to fix that?

Looks like Mr Brady gave himself a scissor haircut there, even more bold than a self buzzcut!