ciaus

Oh my goodness I hope your excellent barber hasn't seen this self haircut! It being your first transplant I understand wanting to be extra cautious, but its been 21 days. The grafts are secure by day 10, then another 7-10 days to be extra safe. I've gotten haircuts on the 2nd~3rd week after my procedures and never had any issues.

Cutting a 5mg pill into 4 will give you about 1.25mg dose a day. I started with 1mg dose pills but I've switched to cutting the 5mg pills to save alot of money, still no side effects like before. If you didn't get side effects when using the 1mg dose you probably won't have them on 1.25mg either, its not that much more. And 1.25mg is not going to work better than 1 mg, the pharmaceutical studies found the 1mg dosage to be the best for getting the hair loss prevention benefits.

Unethical or misguided. If you still have some hair in the thinning areas, or the loss has been pretty dramatic over a relatively short period of time, like a few years, those are the optimal scenarios where medications like finasteride and minoxidil can work to stabilize hair loss and possibly even get some re-growth too . That being said, there are some unfortunate individuals who are beyond the help of the meds because their loss has been very aggressive and extensive.

UNLESS its one of those law enforcement level pepper spray peppers and you stagger around the room and bump your head on the wall!

Or better still, read the reviews for "Xcellerate 35" on amazon instead of at the link by 'krishnan' so that you don't waste your money too.

Love the 'members' with single digit post counts recommending products. Click on that member link at your own risk. Google searched and amazon page where its no longer being sold has reviews that tell the expected story. Go ahead and you too can be the next person to write a 1 star review!

Minoxidil dilates your blood vessels, which means more blood flowing in the areas that the doctor is extracting and placing the grafts. More bleeding can cause the surgery to take longer, effect graft survival, and healing in the immediate days after the procedure esp if you bump your head, etc. Stopping 1-2 weeks before the procedure and re-starting 1-2 weeks after is the general rule of thumb. And about finding it interesting that the clinic would tell you this before you have reached a final decision on whether to go with them. Thats not surprising. An unethical clinic wants potential patients to accept this advice and stop as soon as possible, or not even start, because if you do ultimately decide to go with them they are going to profit from any additional grafts you'll need on this surgery and others down the road.

This has come up before, users coming on here asking about clinics recommending they not bother using minoxidil. I find it interesting that people don't see the obvious potential for conflict of interest on the part of the clinics when it comes to this. Ethical doctors/clinics will tell you the best results are achieved when you use all three options together -finasteride and minoxidil to stabilize your loss and maximize your coverage with existing hairs where they are currently, and then transplants to achieve the remaining appearance of density that you want. But then there's the more numerous unethical doctors/clinics, who know that Finasteride and Minoxidil work best together to maximize hair fullness results. And the better you respond to them the less hair transplant procedures you are going to need now and/or in the long run. And those procedures that you do have are probably going to be smaller too. And that means the clinic earns less profit from surgical procedures. At least all but the most short sighted and greedy will tell you to not bother with Finasteride too. They know its the more important of the two since it protects the hair from DHT, and if the DHT destroys too much hair, additional hair transplants become pointless because you won't have enough donor hair to get decent coverage.

I've never done dermarolling myself, generally aware of how it works. Check out these member threads below, they use minoxidil and dermarolling with success. In terms of the particular side effects you started the topic about -puffy face/weight gain, bad skin and excess hair - and by bad skin you mean wrinkles and dark circles, dermarolling wouldn't effect those. But depending on how sensitive your skin is and how soon before/after applying minox you do a dermaroll session you could increase the likelihood of these other generic potential side effects: skin irritation, inflammation, burning sensation

Just as important as running out of hair for other places down the road... Is realizing that your face is going to change shape as your bone structures mature, your nose gets bigger and droops, your lips get thinner, your eyes get bags, your cheeks deflate....etc, and an 18 year old hairline on top of all that is going to look pretty silly and out of place! And in spite of what you think in your teens and 20s, you WILL STILL care alot about how you look in your 40s,50s,60s...

If you want results, don't let what you don't like deter you from what works. Minoxidil pilot study showing of 12 participants, 2 never shed the transplanted hairs and 2 more that did shed started new growth within a few weeks instead of the usual several months. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3558912/ In general, I would only take what your clinic gives you or explicitly approves after you ask them. Ingredient lists are nice, but especially for hair growth potions, etc, unless you send them off to a chemistry lab to be analyzed you can't say for sure what's actually in them. I looked at the "Sanguisorba Officinalis.." and had to look again, swore I read Officenails

@jfede You may have a scarring alopecia, they are difficult to diagnose and treat, pretty rare. Even after being diagnosed with a biopsy I had some difficulties getting a doctor in my city willing to take me on as a patient. Ended up making the effort to travel and see a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic a few times a year for a few years. They see more of the unusual and rare on a regular basis. https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/cicatricial-alopecia/ Primary cicatricial alopecia refers to a diverse group of rare disorders that destroy the hair follicle, replace it with scar tissue, and cause permanent hair loss. Hair loss can be gradual, without symptoms, and unnoticed for long periods. In other cases, the hair loss may be associated with severe itching, pain and burning, and progress rapidly. Cicatricial alopecia occurs in otherwise healthy men and women of all ages and is seen worldwide.

thats an interesting informative link, one of the pics show some mustache area work. Seen some guys on here post about their transplants from the scalp to thicken their beards. Wonder how many would consider using SMP for more subtle thickening, otherwise it wouldn't look natural, or for someone that wants to keep little more than a constant 5oclock shadow

I didn't do any post-ops meets with my doc on either of my 2 procedures and he lives in the same city as I do. Most of what could go wrong, if it does, already happened during the procedure. Just take it easy and follow the instructions on the handout/website.

I disagree, all I see is yet another disadvantage to small foreheads. Less space for writing and drawing!

At 4.5 months everything is pretty much in the ramping up phase already or will be fairly soon. Starting minox now might cause a temporary shed for some of your hairs as it resets and extends your growth cycles.

There are some factors -like how old you are, how long have you been losing hair, how aggressive is the loss, are you taking any dht blocker medication like finasteride to help stabalize your loss. I would meet with an ethical skilled doctor and show them what you want to do and see if they agree. How we see ourselves and how others see us can vary widely. Feel free to post some pics here, we can give you some 3rd party feedback too.

I think what he means is lowering his hairline to a point where it has never been before, even during childhood. Yes you can, BUT the question is how natural it will look. Alot of younger guys looking to get their first transplant want to go in this direction. Its rarely a good idea, unless you have some serious proportional asymmetries in your head/face/hair, most attempts at this are going to look off/strange in the long run. You really need to consider that for the vast majority of guys, including the ones that don't have male pattern baldness, as they age have at least some hairline receding from what they had during childhood as their facial bones mature, etc., and that is what looks natural and the best for those looking at you.

Like has been said, no one can guarantee % results, but the even better question is what are the price differences of those options and how much of a corresponding higher "% growth guarantee" do you get? Bottom line is doctors and technicians are cut from a different cloth so to speak, in terms of intelligence, focus, ability, dedication. The more doctor involvement the better and everyone really knows that regardless of any option or guarantee window dressings.

First time seeing your thread, thanks for sharing. Thought it was a bit funny when you said she held your hand during the anesthesia needling, had to do a quick image search. And I must say my old fart doctor couldn't say he ever looked quite this nice.

I'm not an expert, just a patient that has had 2 transplants myself. Doctors are welcome to chime in, but these parts circled in red look concerning to me. And about when the grafts are secure, we all have unique healing abilities and recover times, but this link is to a study where they had patients actually came back in the days after the procedure and let them pull on grafts. There findings were 9-10 days post -op was the time when the grafts were secure and safe. https://www.bernsteinmedical.com/research/graft-anchoring-in-hair-transplantation/

Those look like dislodged grafts, hopefully all of them aren't coming off looking like that. Did you bump your head or wear a tight fitting hat since the procedure, or maybe wake up after sleeping and have any blood on your head? Sometimes you can itch or rub your head while you sleep and not realize it.

I would ask any parents/adults still around from that time, they should remember if you needed to get stitched up and how bad it was. Maybe even a paper trail at the hospital you were taken to.

There's a study here where 12 patients were started on minoxidil 48-72 hrs after the transplant, not only did it do no harm but 2 of the patients never had the ugly duckling phase and another 2 started regrowth in less than 4 weeks instead of the usual several months. But generally I wouldn't recommend that because unless you are in a controlled situation like this due to bleeding risk if you bump your head etc, and unless you are taking oral minoxidil some people will try to touch/rub the solution in and that could potentially end up dislodging the grafts. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3558912

About the finasteride, you will still get benefits from every other day doses, but how much is dependent on your unique genetics, how sensitive you are to DHT. While the drug is only in your body for a matter of hours, it's effect on DHT production lasts for days, I've read it takes up to 7 days for DHT production to return all the way back up to its previous level before taking the 1mg dose. On gauging how much hair you are actually losing , this may sound a little goofy, but it will give you a more accurate way to evaluate. Go to the store and get a "shower cap", they are primarily used by women when they take showers and don't want to mess up their hair, or when they sleep at night with some kind of treatment on their hair, etc. Hopefully you are on lockdown/working from home so you could wear it for like 24hrs and then when you take it off, do that over like a table surface and dump out any hairs inside the cap, also shake your head over the table area, gently run your fingers through your hair to help shake the rest off -you don't want to do that too hard and accidentally pull out additional hairs. Then count them up, compare how much more or less than 150ish you are.