ciaus

Assuming you are doing the new hairline, don't get the front and sides cut any time soon and practice hair styles where you comb your sides forward and your front forward and over to the side. How many work days are you taking off initially after the procedure? or are you working from home and worried about family/personal social situations?

Firstly, one of the potential causes for hair loss that we DO have control over is stress -so take it easy and stay positive for starters and judging by the pics of you pulling the hair back, I assume you are addressing the frontal hairline? Do you have photos with the markup of where you want your new lines to be already? -if not you can open any pic on your PC (assuming you have a Windows PC), and for example, use the 'Snipping Tool' program (just search for 'snipping' in the Windows search bar) and drag/select your photo with the mouse -it will create another image of your picture that you can draw on with your mouse. See my example below of how I'd scribble in Mr Jude Law's new front and temple points

Found this from https://donovanmedical.com/hair-blog/oral-minoxidil-top-10

I admire your discipline and attention to detail. Have you had much success with your current regimen? -just maintaining, or maintaining and regrowth looking to improve? or trying to stop a new slide? Sorry no personal experience, in fact had to google RU. Found a nice education overview for anyone else like me, has a mixing guide section, page link is below pasted text. RU58841 powder mixing guide RU58841 solution can be bought premade if you want. It will work exactly the same but if you want to mix it yourself and spare some money and have the extra flexibility that comes with it you will need to mix it. This is actually very simple to do and consists of the following steps: Getting legit pure RU58841 powder Having a scale that goes by 0.1 or even better 0.01 grams Having your vehicle ready where you will mix the powder in. The powder is dissolved in ethanol so make sure the ethanol content is at least 30% and you should have no problems dissolving the RU58841 in the vehicle. For instance it can be mixed in Kirkland minoxidil, neogenic, P&G solution or K&B solution. Every 1% of RU represents 10mg/ml. So let’s say you have a Kirkland bottle of 60ml and you want to make a 5% RU solution into this you want to have 50mg/ml x 60 ml = 3 gram. So you add 3 gram to the Kirkland minoxidil and shake it really well. Another example let’s say you want to mix a 3% RU concentration in 10ml of K&B solution you want 30mg/ml x 10ml = 300mg in total. == from https://www.hairlosstalk.com/news/treatments/ru58841/

Think of the millions of guys that have taken this over the decades who accidentally got women pregnant -if there was any kind of birth defect pattern, etc, it would have emerged and lawyers would have lined their pockets by now. Don't let mom touch the pills and try to enjoy what remains of the peace and quiet for the next 20 years.

I've been taking it for about 14 years never had any issues. Its been around for decades, taken by millions, including in higher dosages for prostate issues. The more dramatic you make your approach the more likely you are to psychologically manufacture symptoms that have nothing to do with the actual drug. The internet is overflowing with garbage and paranoid musings, use it to research and self-diagnose at your peril. Best place for medical advise is still your doctor. Best approach is to step back and relax, then take it day by day, pop a pill in the morning or whenever, and get on with living your life instead of trying to detect any hint of a potental side effect.

It depends, if we are talking about work done on the front/hairline area finasteride usually doesn't provide much improvement there so you are essentially seeing the results of the hair transplant. But for the middle and crown areas it's definitely more difficult to evaluate if they only started the meds around the time they had the procedure. So there you have to go by testimonials where the patient states they were on finasteride for months/years before the procedure, and look at those before/after procedure pics. In a perfect world everyone would maximum their med results first, but that's just the nature of the way the problem is addressed. Alot of guys put off dealing with it through hair styling etc until it gets pretty bad and then break, go see a doc wanting improvements yesterday. And by that time very few are willing to delay further to take meds and evaluate when they can go under the knife and specifically address those problem areas in a calculated way.

Sorry about that, I see your point, more subtle and judicious use of humor is better.

Hopefully it was better than what this guy had to deal with. But then at least he's not looking at his head!

About your family history of hair loss, I have that on my mom's side too. I'd probably be alot worse off if I didn't do anything like my cousins and uncles. Like some others have been saying stay on the fin and minox -esp the fin. It works by lowering the levels of DHT in your blood, one of the factors in hair loss we do know about and have a treatment for. But because our body chemistry and hormone levels change over the years unfortunately its effectiveness is not always going to be the same either. And you may have some factors causing your additional loss now that we just don't know about yet. All we can do is what we can while we can, as knowledge and treatments advance. Conserve that donor area as much as possible, being only 30 you got alot of years ahead of you -and that's also alot of time for new treatments and hopefully a cure. Stay positive!

He pulls off the pre-op buzzed look pretty good when looking at you straight on. Great work overall, really like the temples. Personally I prefer the buzzed/shaved look especially if you have the face shape for it, and its so easy to maintain in terms of styling. If that were my head, I'd keep the hair line along the top, fill in the front density a bit, and strengthen, bring forward the temple a bit on the sides.

Its fine 7-10 days after to resume your hair styling routine, so no issue with you being 2 months after.

np, and I think alot of the variation out there too is probably just some of the docs writing up more strict instructions because they know some of their patients are going to try to cut corners, maybe start doing something a few days earlier..which could trashe the results, and then the patient protests with some little white lie about when they actually started doing something, then posts about their bad experience online, bad publicity, hurts doctor rep, etc.... And then there's the differences in physiology we all have, healing rates, how vulnerable to damage the hair follicles are when being surgically moved around the head. Exercise is great for the body and mind/mood, but I would just take it easy for the first month so you aren't worrying down the road if the results start to come in a little slow that maybe you screwed something up in the initial weeks.

pretty sure he's abbreviating the days of the week, little less brevity here .. Mon Wed Fri or Mon Fri

Bravo! and we need more temple work! lol was just talking about this in another thread earlier today. So many guys get the top of the hairline addressed but not the temples, which doesn't look natural.

Personal experiences, good and bad, are great to share, some of the primary reasons we all come here, but can't say I agree with dropping yours in this thread at this point @ruca2 Only days after there's nothing he can do but wait regardless, which is hard enough. Maybe you already started a thread somewhere back when you had your procedure/experience, if so great -that's the better way to get that information out. And if you are offering it in somebody else's thread it should be to warn them about not getting the work done with that doctor in the first place, or after they are actually start to see the bad results coming in. --Just my opinion/2cents

From the same doc post op page I pasted in your other thread, I wasn't on an excercise routine during mine so can't say from personal experience. But the main problem is the blood rushing throughout your blood vessels, including those in your sensitive donor and recipient areas that have delicate man-made wounds trying to heal. You should refrain from exercise such as running, cycling, and weight lifting, as well as activities such as golf, baseball, soccer, etc. at least THREE days after your surgical procedure. Such activity, when enjoyed prior to this critical period may result in bleeding and loss of grafts, as well as intense swelling around the eyes and forehead. Vigorous physical activity should be avoided for one week after surgery. Do not bend over or engage in any lifting for at least 48 hours after surgery to avoid bleeding or excess swelling. Keep your head and upper body elevated above the level of your heart during this time, especially when sleeping.

Giant blood rivers, corn rows, trying to sneak on a plane, business tripping international man of mystery ..there's the beginnings of a book or even a movie in all this. LMAO good luck and take care

There was actually a recent topic from about a week ago with post procedure blood here

yea 1mg is what they found would still give the hair retention benefits, so they got a drug patent to sell you less of the same drug for more, calling it propecia instead of proscar. https://www.keeps.com/learn/finasteride-1mg-vs-finasteride-5mg “There are dose-ranging clinical studies that show finasteride 1mg is just as good as finasteride 5mg,” explains Dr. Jerry Shapiro, one of the Keeps medical advisors. “So there’s no reason to prescribe a higher dosage.” In other words, finasteride 1mg is wholly sufficient. Finasteride 5mg will not help you treat male pattern hair loss any better than 1mg would. You may be asking, “Then why does finasteride 5mg even exist? What’s the point of it?” Because while finasteride 5mg isn’t necessary to treat androgenic alopecia, it’s highly effective in treating another medical condition in males. According to Keeps medical advisor Dr. Antonella Tosti, “Finasteride 1mg is approved for treatment of male pattern hair loss while finasteride 5mg is approved for the treatment of prostatic hyperplasia,” which is an enlarged prostate gland. In fact, finasteride was initially developed to treat prostate gland enlargement and prostate cancer, not hair loss. It wasn’t until 1997, five years after the FDA approved it to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia, that it was officially approved to help stop male pattern baldness. Bottom line: “Finasteride 5mg is not more effective than finasteride 1mg in the treatment of male pattern hair loss,” Dr. Tosti says.

I would be careful with aloe gel -like the 'pure 100%' aloe gel kind, I have some of that for like sunburns, etc, and it hardens a little into a clear shell as it dries, you need to wet and rub it a bit to get it off. I would stick with keeping the scalp wet, the jojoba oil is an interesting idea, may work better than the water towel, maybe alternate with the water and oil.

glad to help, and keep that towel as soaked as much as you can -while up walking around maybe put a sweat headband or any strip of absorbent-like cloth you can tie around the bottom of your forehead to keep the water from streaming down and getting into your eyes -and for times when you are sitting/laying down, make a recliner position to tilt your head over/back so the water would drain off down behind you into a catch bowl while you watch tv or listen to an audiobook And don't give up on a skull cap hat, said you have a few days, esp if you have amazon prime, just took a screenshot of this could be delivered tomorrow.

Pulled this from the ht doc site I used, since you are coming up on 5 days you can resume more normal shampoo-ing, though I'd still be very careful of course, run slightly warm water over your head/put a wet towel on your head for hours while you are around the house, to help soften and dissolve the blood patches, hopefully they will then rinse off. Do not wash or disrupt the grafts for 48 hours after surgery. After this time shower and wash your hair by lathering the shampoo in your hand and lightly applying to the grafted area as well as the donor site. Rinse with cool water and light water pressure. These precautions should be taken for 5 days after your surgical procedure. Thereafter, normal shampooing may be resumed. It is advisable to use a thick moisturizing conditioner daily on the grafted sites as well as in the donor area. Apply carefully, and let the conditioner remain on the area for 5 minutes, then rinse gently. This will significantly decrease scab formation. Apply light pressure on the grafts with a towel or gauze pad after exiting the shower. This will absorb any blood that has formed on or around the graft sites. https://www.wolfhair.com/hair-regrowth/hair-transplants/procedure/post-op/ For not getting hassled with getting on the plane, if your head still looks like this you may want to look into getting a 'skull cap' type hat, search on amazon, where it doesn't look so unusual for you to wear it indoors and no reason for them to ask you to take it off, not like you could be hiding something under there.

I agree your hair looks pretty good now, the amount of improvement vs risk comparison is not in your favor. Do you have any pics of your temples from the side when you were younger? Alot of guys ignore the temples on the sides, just focusing on the top, and its one of the dead giveaways when I'm looking at someone's head that they've had some work done. I'm not a doctor so can't give you graft count, and obviously not an artist but I'm going to try that job anyway , l wouldn't just do the top like in transplantedphil's pic above, I would want the temples filled in a bit too so that you have a new meeting point/widow's creep. But anyway, I find it curious that the doctors don't do more temple work -maybe its just a difficult spot to put grafts in, or maybe they are suggesting it and the patients don't care.

Like has been said, finasteride and rogaine work for alot of people (more in the middle/crown areas), especially if you are considering something as dramatic as hair transplants to address your loss. While the sexual side effect is a real thing for a small minority of guys, even in those cases some of these guys are psyching themselves out knowing that its a possible side effect and being stressed out about their hair loss. If you are well into your middle years and your loss has not progressed further for years, you may be able to get away with just doing 1 or 2 procedures and not worry about taking the meds. But they can be very instrumental in preserving your donor area by minimizing the number of hair transplants you'll ultimately have to get to acheive your goals. Minoxidil (rogaine) is more of pain because you topically apply it, foam or liquid, foam definitely better. Finasteride is just popping a pill once a day, easy peezy -and don't worry about the potential sexual side effects so much you actually give yourself sexual side effects! lol