ciaus

Science tells us the brain takes about 25 years to fully develop -observation suggests probably a good bit longer than that.

I'd say 28+, with mental maturity being as important a factor as your emerging MPB pattern. Yea our 20s are great in terms of physical energy/looks, but its also the time when we are the most stupid and prone to get into problems, having just taken the mommy/daddy training wheels off and being out on our own.

Don't waste your 30s,40s,50s,60s...living with and trying to fix the mistakes in your 20s.

2 hours ago, jimcraig152 said:

Jermaine Jackson thought of this before you did too. So it is not an original idea

Woah had to google JJackson, based on search results seems like that is supposed to be some kind of PAINT. What people will think of, actually makes Trump seem pretty tame.

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I am a stylist, and I am confused by Jermaine Jackson's hair. There is a technique called "the Blackout" where color is painted into place and allowed to dry into the hair (usually for thin edges), but Jermaine looks like he has spray painted his entire head. Note to Jermaine: Try a lace hair system. His stylist should be fired.

Yea can't say for sure, but hairs that are already thinning/miniaturizing are more vulnerable to shockloss, your day of pic here shows those areas were thinning a bit already. Hopefully its just the temporary kind and its back in a few months. Have you been taking finasteride and/or minoxidil for a while before the transplant? those help strengthen your vulnerable hairs and reduce the chances of shockloss.

Starting or resuming minoxidil after the transplant may increase the likelihood of no shed. There was a study below with some results and suggesting further study. The study has them starting the therapy within days of the transplant though, which is risky in terms of potentially damaging the grafts by touching, etc during the applications if you are doing it yourself. Maybe if you live or are nearby your clinic where you have the procedure done they can apply it the first 5 days when the grafts are most vulnerable. **But then if you have used minoxidil and know that it makes your skin itch somewhat, be aware that you are already going to be fighting the urge to itch from the healing process anyway. There's also low dose oral minoxidil, but you would want to run that by your doctor because it can potentially have cardiovascular side effects, especially if you are overweight, already have high blood pressure and taking a med for it.

In general though, this is only going to put you ahead of the curve by a few months, probably not worth it to try, maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones anyway based on your physiology and good handling of the grafts throughout the whole extraction/insertion process.

Twelve patients, aged 21 to 60 years, with varying Hamilton classifications of androgenetic alopecia (male pattern baldness) were treated with a 3% solution of topical minoxidil. Therapy began 48 to 72 hours after hair transplant surgery. Two patients demonstrated hair growth in the grafts without the shedding that usually occurs 2 to 4 weeks after surgery. (In untreated patients after hair transplant surgery, regrowth begins 3 to 5 months after surgery, after the shedding period.) A review of the literature--and personal discussions with surgeons whose hair transplant experience spans 25 years--revealed no evidence of a similar report. In addition, two of the remaining 10 patients had regrowth less than 4 weeks after postsurgical telogen effluvium.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3558912/

Shifty, if you put your regimen in your posting signature, every time you would make a comment on somebody's topic it would increase the topic posts page count by 1!

How about adding these instructions to your last testament and will for your tombstone:

Hair lies Shifty with his hair thanks to...

<insert regimen as of last day>

Maybe its just the lighting/angle, but your scalp looks pretty red. Do you feel any pain or itchyness there? May want to get that checked out by a dermatologist, hair thinning can be caused by inflammation too.

Thanks for sharing, your 16 month pics showing nice face framing, definitely makes you look younger and yet still middle-aged appropriate. I see in your story that you haven't taken any meds (finasteride and minoxidil) and only became aware of them about 10yrs ago. How concerned are you about further loss, like in the crown area? Do the doctors think you have enough remaining donor and a loss pattern that you can probably just do additional procedures? Or are you not that concerned about loss in the crown? -Personally I'm in that camp, while I'm holding on to my crown with fin/minox, if I were to lose it later I'm not sure how much I would try to do with it since its not only a very common thinning area for middle-older aged guys, its not a spot people see when they are interacting with you face -to-face and doesn't effect how your face is framed, which are my primary concerns.

I would say its not advisable, unless you are already the rebel type in terms of appearance (exotic piercings, inks, hair dyes, handfuls of hair gel, clothing adorned with feathers, rhinstones, random holes) mental picturing a dennis rodman-like figure

Thanks for sharing, man sorry about how things have turned out so far, stay positive. And we get a pretty steady stream of young guys coming on here asking if they are starting to lose, wanting to run off and get a transplant etc, its good to have stories like yours to try to help steer them onto the best path.

3 hours ago, marcussoni said:

But i dont have burning sensation pain, I have a strong pain that feels like someone is pulling out my hair and also parts of my head are still feeling numb or like I dont have any feeling(I read alot about nerve damage), and also have numbness and pain in my neck....

And about that pain and numbness -numbness is more common and some guys have it for some months after the procedure worse case, but the strong pain sounds off -were you awake during the procedure? do you remember how well they numbed you while they were working? If its still happening after a week or so, I'd go to your primary care doctor and get that checked out, if he can't help maybe refer you to a specialist.

Looking at your pics, you have good facial features and head/ear shape, like you said you don't have problems with the ladies -did you ever try shaving it all the way down? Seems like that would have been a good option for you. Are you planning on getting that smp job lasered off at some point? Even if you covered the area with transplanted hair, that smp is probably going to detract from the naturalness, especially in harsher lighting situations.

Check this guy's story out at the link below, he had an initially terrible smp job too, then went through getting it lasered off, and then went to a legit shop to get it done right.

And about losing grafts, there's usually some bleeding too when that happens, Melvin made a video here about determining if you've lost grafts:

You need to see a doctor to get a prescription for Finasteride -I'm in the USA and over the years I've gotten prescriptions from my primary care doctor, dermatologist, even from my hair transplant doctor. Since Clasceterone is not FDA approved yet there are no ways to get it through a doctor currently that I'm aware of.

This guy did and posted his results, looked pretty impressive

35 minutes ago, jimcraig152 said:

For instance, patients asked why he doesn't map out the donor site for symmetrical extraction. This was the answer Melvin got from him. No one has gotten an answer from him yet as to why he places graft incisions in row/grid patterns.

I read that reply in the link about maintaining virgin areas in the donor for future surgeries. I would only be cool with that if I knew that I was going to be getting consecutive additional surgeries to address loss already present. No way I'd agree to it on an open-ended basis so that x number of years down the road he has an easier time doing extractions. That's going to effect how much you can buzz your sides down, which is like one of the main reasons you bother with fue instead of fut.

Based on your pics looks like you could be headed towards the most aggressive pattern - norwood 7. Even if you were taking finasteride hair transplants will be pretty risky for you long term as far as giving you a good result. There is a topical DHT blocker that doesn't have the side effects like finasteride, it will probably be FDA approved in a couple of years, wait and try that, see if it stabilizes you, and if so maybe then look at hair transplants again.

https://www.hairlosslearningcenter.org/topic/is-clasceterone-cb-03-01-hair-loss-cure-weve-been-waiting-for/3462

Come on, good advice is timeless!

Hopefully someone in a similar situation takes these words of density management wisdom to heart.

Not familiar with the salt spray and thickening cream, but the concern about styling products is that they will effect the scalp skin's absorbancy potential. You don't want to be crossing your fingers that the minoxidil solution will be able to penetrate through any styling product residue that gets on your scalp skin. And you want to make sure that the minoxidil dries on its own, that liquid is the vehicle for delivering the minoxidil into the skin so no blow drying, and then styling products.

I used topical foam minoxidil for about a year and had to stop it due to skin irritation. During that time because the foam absorbs so quickly I would start with a dry scalp and then wet my hands a bit and run my fingers through my hair so that the hairs have a bit less potential to absorb the minoxidil -and when the hair is a little wet it clumps together more making it easier to see and directly reach your thinning scalp areas, then apply the foam and let it dry on its own, then I would put on dermmatch, toppik,then hairspray it.

After the minoxidil dries you should try to gradually wet your hair by running your hands under some water, then run them through your hair without touching your scalp -and repeat that until you gradually dampen your hairs enough for applying that spray and cream.

Thanks for sharing these details, I'm surprised to read that you were actually knocked out during the procedure -was that recommended or encouraged? Did he discuss the option of remaining conscience? Were you restrained at all to minimize movements? The risk of involuntarily moving around or jerking when one of the techs or doctor is doing something would be a major consideration for me. I would always opt for suffering through being awake to make sure I didn't make any disruptive movements etc.

Maybe its just the lighting/shape of your head/and camera angle, but it looks like you may be thinning pretty far back already. Being that you are just 25 and only started the minoxidil and dermroller a week ago, not enough time for them to work yet, I would stop them until you get a microscopic scalp analysis first to check for the extent of your thinning. If your donor area in the back is already starting to thin too then hair transplants are probably not going to be a good option for you. If you wait to have your scalp checked after you've been doing treatments like minoxodil for a while it will make it more difficult for the doctor to determine how bad your thinning actually is.

Weird medical conditions aside, if you are losing because of male pattern baldness, and it looks like it from your pics, minoxidil and dermarollers are not going to help you much in the long run if you don't take a DHT blocker. DHT is what is doing most of the damage and its flowing through your bloodstream. The more sensitive your hair follicles are to it the more you are going to lose, and that comes down to your genetics. The longer you wait to address the DHT the less likely you are to get any re-growth -and that is the case for most guys, it just halts or slows down their loss rate.

If you haven't already get with your doctor about starting finasteride, hopefully you respond to it well and are not one of the minority of guys that gets side effects. If you've already looked into finasteride and decided that they you don't want to try it there's another DHT blocker, Clasceterone, that will probably get approved in the next few years by the FDA. They just approved a lower dosage for acne. It works up at your hair follicles and doesn't effect your hormone levels, so its safer, less chance of side effects.

https://www.hairlosslearningcenter.org/topic/is-clasceterone-cb-03-01-hair-loss-cure-weve-been-waiting-for/3462

10 minutes ago, Umaan said:

I think i need time to focus on myself first. My health mentally etc. Look into taking finestiride. Be confident and hopeful in that and myself. 

I feel like I'm probably not even mentally prepared yet to be going through with a hair transplant. 

Good call, you need to appreciate how much you are still going to care about how you look as you get older. I'm 43, take care of myself, excercise regularly, and I don't notice much difference from how I felt when I was in my mid 20s.  

I don't know about your feelings on getting married, but look at how many of those end in divorce with the guy having to go back out and try to attract another mate -in their 30s/40s/50s or even later. Do you really want to be doing that when you not only don't have much hair, but also have tranplant scarring you need to conceal, because all transplants, even FUE, will leave behind scarring.

And DHT damage is cumulative, you can't just wait until the last minute and start taking it to save your hairs. Finasteride lowers the DHT in your bloodstream, it doesn't eliminate it, which means the remaining that circulates over time can eventually be enough to take out your hair.

1 hour ago, Umaan said:

I feel like my donar area is strong mate. Based on how my dads hairloss has been and his father's. Its always a strong.donar area and no hair on the top. 

Can't go by feelings or even by dad's side of the family. There's a number of genes that go into whether you will have MPB and how severe it will be, some are from your mother's side and some from your father's side. You may have several generations of similar loss patterns, but then based on the unique genetic combination each of us comprises, end up being that outlier that will end up having a severe norwood 6/7 loss pattern. That's why waiting until at least until 25 is so important, you want to see how your unique genetics play out.

And minoxidil without finasteride is not going to help you hang on to your hair long term. You need a DHT blocker to protect your existing hair. Minxodil alone is just going to thicken your hair and lengthen the growth cycle until the DHT in your bloodstream destroys the hair follicles ability to produce visible hair.

3 hours ago, anon707 said:

Why have you shared this?

I think he wanted you to see the story of another guy that tried to get HTs too early, the first one when he was 20. Learn from other people's mistakes when you can, very important life lesson.

7 hours ago, Doron Harati said:

In general I don't recommend Finasteride, it's hurting the libido, some pharmacist told me if the topical don't hurt the libido it's probably won't effect the hair loss either

I'm sure the pharmacist probably meant well, but if there was anything even approaching that kind of a widespread strong correlation between libido and results for finasteride, it never would have cleared the FDA trials. And alot more guys would have probably suffered or even died needlessly from prostate issues instead of taking the higher dosage of it in Proscar all these years.

Minoxidil doesn't create new hair, it only effects existing hair. In the case of your pic with the vellus hairs its making some of them thicker, maybe a little longer, so you are able to more easily see them now. Here's a link with some info about vellus and terminal hairs if you are curious.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319881

After 10 days the transplanted hair is secure, so the only thing shaving 8 months later would impact is how well you can evaluate your results.  Like @JohnAC71 said there's still time for improvement. I would be suspicious about any clinic willing to do a procedure only 8 months after a previous one -especially if its the same clinic.

Did you have much native hair in the transplanted area already and are you on finasteride to help prevent further loss? Could be that you are continuing to lose native hair or a shockloss.

I'm assuming you mean the little hairs like the ones I've circled here. You can see similar ones down on your forehead, those are just little vellus hairs, we have them all over our body, minoxidil will thicken some of those up a bit and make them more visible, but they won't grow out long like your scalp hair.

And that one pretty strong hair growing out of the higher up mole made me think of this recent topic started by our moderator, pretty funny pic in the first post.

It depends on how sensitive your hair follicles are to DHT, and the DHT levels in your blood. Even if you are able to recover a good bit of those front hairs in the coming months, you're still likely to lose them again in the long run because those front hairs are the most DHT sensitive for most guys. Unfortunately Finasteride doesn't work perfectly, it lowers the DHT in your bloodstream, but you still have some circulating around all the time that can slowly chip away at those hair follicles. For most guys the drugs are not a 'fix', they are more of a hair transplant management tool, helping you delay when you have procedures, and when you do have procedures they will be smaller and less frequent.