ciaus

Its always a risk, and its why the crown area is usually addressed last. If you've haven't already, keep a record with annual/occasional pictures of your crown so you have something objective to go by -not good trying to evaluate and make decisions based on memory when its something that gives you anxiety like this, the mind can play tricks on you. Maybe try out the concealers and if they give you a decent appearance of density for now, give it a few more years and use your pictures to see if the spot grows much. The later you wait the more data you and the doctor will have to make good decisions on.

the more existing hair you have in the area where you are putting the transplanted hair, the more likely you are to have shockloss. Your bald spot is pretty sharply bordered by much denser areas so its certainly possible you could have some around the edges of that bald spot. But that's something else that those concealers -dermmatch and toppik fibers, can help with. They can give you that additional appearance of thickness while you recover from the shockloss. You should play around with them a little, have them on hand, would help to give you some piece of mind at least in case you need them.

keeps.com is another one

I agree with others, if you've already addressed your front hairline and your happy with it, everything else but that spot in the center of your crown looks pretty thick from that camera angle, so it looks like the meds have stabilized everything else. Makes we wonder if you had started the finasteride even earlier if at least some of that crown spot could have been saved too, it looks really bare. Maybe too bare to get much benefit from concealers like dermmatch and toppik, but you may want to still give them a try if you haven't already. Maybe with the right hair length and some fancy combing with hairspray or styling gel you can give that spot the appearance of more density now. The forum moderator made this topic below on dermmatch, he has thinning in the crown over a wider area than you, but he still has a little hair there too. Check out the topic link below, he posts a video showing how he applies it from start to finish.

I didn't do any jumping, and I qualified my position in the next sentence that there are cases where taking the meds wouldn't be worth it. Come on, in the slightest? We are talking about different means to the same end -approximating the appearance of a full head of hair as closely as possible. And yes ethical doctors recommend doing both to help achieve the best overall results. -And that's the catch, ethical doctors, which are unfortunately so rare that forums like this need to exist in the first place. The testimonies on this forum clearly demonstrate some guys will need less overall procedures thanks to the meds, or even no procedure at all for the foreseeable future, go check out Shifty's big thread on his success with just the meds. And that means more money can go to better and more important things in our lives! Thank you again minoxidil and finasteride. And bah humbug to all the guys that are too inconvenienced to take the time to apply you daily!

I take fin and will continue to do so. Excepting the elderly and those with underlying health conditions, Covid is so overhyped for the rest of the population. When this 'pandemic' is completely in the rearview mirror I predict its going to be one of the biggest over-reactions in recorded human history. Alot of guys that take finasteride for not just hair but prostate issues are usually in their middle years age-wise already, so old enough that their bad lifestyle habits have had the time to produce the underlying health conditions like heart disease, diabetes etc, that can make it more severe if they do catch it. The real message that needs to get out is to eat healthy, exercise, get enough sleep, practice good stress management....but that doesn't pay the big bucks.

Thanks for posting that link, I've been using 1.25 then switched to 2.5mg oral minox the past few months. Haven't noticed any skin wrinkles or eye circles but good to know there's some easy solutions for those.

And if you can use finasteride and minoxidil without any health side effect issues and get results/maintain, I'd be suspicious of anybody in the hair transplant business telling you these meds are not really worth it, etc. There are particular cases where that can be true, but never forget these are the very people who make their living by surgically transplanting hair. At the end of the day these medications cut into their bottom line profits.

I'd go with the doctor #2, the one wanting you to wait and consider finasteride. I'd stay away from any doctor willing to 'strengthen the vertex' on a 23 yr old. Your crown area is the most difficult to address with procedures and usually saved for last after getting your front/middle areas addressed and stabilized.

The pictures in direct sunlight look really good with the lighter density at the very front that gets thicker farther back, impressively natural.

Think hard about trying the head-shaved look if you haven't already. Its a look that can improve with age as your face matures too. I can say from personal experience that I wasn't crazy about how I looked buzzed down back when I was younger going into the service, but now in my middle years (43) during covid I've been shaving down working from home and not to brag, but my head, face shape is more angular and I can honestly say that I like it and had I known back then I probably would have just stuck with shaving it instead of messing with HTs and meds. I'm considering a procedure to do some scar repair and just do the buzzed look from here on. Maybe lower your expectations and if you do anything procedure wise, just enough FUE to give you some light coverage and frame your face a little and keep it at a buzz cut length. But again I would just try the shaved look first and consider how you may be able to age more into it too. The medications, hair transplants, hair transplant scars, and hair loss concealers are major long term commitments, of time and money, and there's worrying about people noticing, etc. And you have a very aggressive hair loss pattern and many more years to potentially lose more even if you respond pretty well to the medications for the foreseeable future -they don't perfectly halt the hairloss just slow it down (hopefully alot of slowdown in the best case scenerio). If you are still leaning hard towards the hair transplant route I would recommend seeing a reputable HT doctor BEFORE you start the meds - have them do a scalp hair follicle miniaturization analysis, evaluate your donor area, because if you are thinning in your donor already as well, or just don't have much in that area to begin with, then HTs would almost certainly not be something you want to risk. Sorry for being so negative and cautious, but you are still so very young and have so much loss already. And you have a virgin scalp with no scarring, which probably doesn't sound like much to you now, but that gives you the freedom to just shave it down and face the world as you are without worrying about people staring at your head/scars all the time. There's alot of disappointed guys out there that have tried the hair transplant journey that would give up alot now to somehow go back to having that.

Just a little light headedness the first week, which I got too when I did try the topical minoxidil years back- i was applying it to my crown and front hairline/temple area then.

all these minoxidil haters, it's enhancing the hairs that finasteride is protecting and this is the thanks it gets! I agree taking minoxidil alone is pretty much worthless long term, but if you take it with finasteride they work well together. I've been taking low dose (2.5mg) oral pill minoxodil daily because the topical formulas irritate my skin and I've noticed it thickening up all my hair on my head and face.

$$$$$$ -Propecia is the original patented forumulation, even though its off patent the company Merck still charges too much for it. And I don't know about this minoxidilmax site, when you click on the "ABOUT US" link you just get this little blurb about dedication and that veteran and noobs alike will be glad they discovered this site, pretty sparse and suspiciously vague. And the "CONTACT US" link only has a web email form, no phone number, and some address in canada. I'd be careful, sounds like this whole operation may be little more than someone else doing a little home 'compounding' in their basements.

Yes the meds only work for as long as you use them. If everyone knew how much hair they were ever going to lose over the course of their life, and that they would have plenty of donor hair to tranplant into those areas, then most people, at least the ones that could afford the transplant procedures, probably wouldn't bother with the meds. But the unfortunate reality is we don't know how much we are ever going to lose, and eventually even some of the hair in your donor area will minituarize as well. And again with stopping minoxidil the shed is just temporary.

I'm in the US and when Propecia went off-patent I switched to whatever 1mg generic the pharmacies around me have been dispensing, never had any issues.

I don't know who your 'they' are, but I have had procedures and taken topical minoxidil and currently take the oral version of it. My procedure instructions were 7-10 days before and 5 days after stop meds and vitamins that could effect bleeding. Since minoxidil enlarges your blood vessels that means more blood flowing, more potential bleeding during the procedure and in the days after the procedure that could damage the grafts.

Minoxidil dilates the blood vessels in your scalp increasing blood flow to your hair follicles, more nutrients delivered by blood is probably what helps to thicken up the hairs, and an enzyme effect that increases hair growth cycles so that more hairs are growing at the same time also helps to give you a fuller head of hair look. Docs generally say to stop 7-10 days before the procedure and you can restart about 5 days after. You may have a temporary shed but the result is not permanent, you are not 'losing' your overall results. Its not like if you stop Finasteride for even days, which causes your DHT levels to go back up increasing the attacks and actual damage to your hair follicles.

Your left side pic here is impressive, if that's how it looked right before this second procedure I would leave that as it perfectly is. But I agree your right side here below definitely needs some more density -was this taken at the same time as that left pic? I would have been itching to have a second pass done on that when that picture was taken. If you grew out your front hair some more and combed it more left to right instead of straight back, the ends of the hair from the left would lay on top of that thinner area and give you more coverage. Anyway, thanks for sharing and looking forward to your progress updates. -ps can we hope for a youtube video struttin to Stayin' Alive?

About a better drug, keep an eye on clascoterone, the FDA just approved a 1% solution formula for treating acne and there's work being done to get a stronger solution approved within the next few years to treat hairloss. Its not a pill, you apply it topically like rogaine, etc. While finasteride works at the horomone production level of dht, clascoterone works at the other end up in your scalp in your hair follicle receptors, preventing the dht from binding to those receptors. Since it doesn't mess with your horomone levels you'll probably have a better chance of tolerating that. Also since you said in your previous post that you make some pretty good money, in the meantime you may want to look into trying topical finasteride, some guys that get sides with the pills have been able to tolerate a topical formula, though I hear its more expensive than the pills. And I don't know if you've ever tried daily concealers like Dermmatch or Toppik fibers, but they can be used pretty effectively to help give the appearance of more hair density if you have some actual hair to work with. They could be a factor in your overall plans, getting an acceptable density with the transplants and then supplementing that with the concealers to accomplish your overall look. Here's links to recent forum topics on clascoterone and dermmatch

About system level automated blocking, while I agree the goal of reducing conflict and stress is good, it can fall victim to the unintended consequences of good intentions. Like the potential for confusion/frustration and potential contentiousness because only parts of the discussion are visible to some of the participants. The other people that aren't blocking that person will be reading and sometimes reacting or steering the conversation based on those hidden posts. You might find yourself doing some extra refereeing Melvin. -Just my 2cents.

I agree with Melvin, it looks like you've gotten the transplant during a period when your natural hair loss is also aggressively progressing. Reading your posts about how stressed you are, completely understandable of course, but this could also be a contributing factor to your hair loss. Its important to have a healthy diet, get regular sleep, minimize and manage all the stress you have as best as possible too.

I bought the last decent wahl clipper on the shelf back when they were going the way of bread and toilet paper. Just buzzing myself back down every few weeks, may have to try that with some beer next time to really test myself... job has everybody working from home rest of the year and already announcing all of next year will be at least optional work from home if not necessary. Looks like you are in pretty good shape too. I have a rower and bowflex max at home that I jump on regularly to help release those endorphins, maintain my sanity.

Yea the 1% is for acne, there's a hair loss version called Breezula, 7.5% strength seems to give best results. Blocks dht at the receptor level on your head instead of lowering the dht that flows through your body. https://hairverse.com/clascoterone-breezula/ //// Right now, Cassiopea has completed phase II trials for the drug. But they are waiting to finalize the development process with the Phase III program and FDA supervision. The company still awaits FDA approval for its phase III trial design and to grant them a special protocol assessment. Eventual approval by the FDA will depend on the results from phase III analysis. The trial cannot start unless the FDA first gives the company a special protocol assessment. With the current trajectory of things, Cassiopea projects that the phase III project will begin soon. Hopefully, the trial will be completed by 2022, and the formulation will possibly hit the market in 2023.

I'm thinking he picks up a watermelon and holds it head high while shuffling towards the exit?