ciaus

Yes its a minority, read the horror stories at your own peril. They just help increase the probability that you'll manufacture side-effect like symptoms from the paranoia they inspire. But it sounds like you can't help yourself when it comes to things like that. Worrying about getting minoxidil on your cat is a new one. Supplementing hair transplants with SMP is a good strategy more guys should consider. And millions have been using finasteride for years with no issues, myself included. Try to get a more practical grip on where your mind wanders, use the internet for non-medical entertainment, and stick with approved drugs under the supervision of your doctors.

I agree that is an issue, though I wouldn't blame it all on dishonesty. You have to appreciate how difficult it is to get someone to come back just to take pictures. Alot of people travel to get SMP done just like they do for hair transplants.

Re-drawing your battle lines early in the war like this is a great strategy. Not only to protect fragile egos , but it also gives your doctor less guesswork and more surrounding reference hair for the most natural result!

You've got the blonder hair color working in your favor, reducing the contrast with your skin color. If you had brown or black hair it would be even easier to detect the thinner areas. Maybe go full blown Swedish bikini blonde color and you might be able to reduce the skin/hair contrast some more. Otherwise a couple dashes of hair fibers each morning should do the trick. You appear younger in the pics, which usually makes anything that appears as pre-mature aging stand out more. Try to take consolation that eventually you'll be considered ahead of the game in terms of hanging on to your hair. And as you continue to mentally mature it will also become easier to not dwell and obsess on things like this.

Nope, the only benefit of the shorter length is that its more difficult to apply any pulling tension from your hands or anything else that comes into contact with your head, like headwear. And its more difficult to notice or see the buzzed hairs when they do shed because they are so much smaller than longer length hairs.

Hate to agree with the more pessimistic outlook, but I agree with the docs that think you're not a good candidate. You're hair is too long in the pics to effectively judge your donor area based off just looking at the pics. And that frontal pic here is showing your lateral humps are pretty much gone already, on your way to the most severe norwood 7 pattern. However if you have realistic expectations, not concerned about others knowing you've had work done, just want some basic coverage and are ok with still having obvious thinning and good amount of baldness in your crown, you can try to go that route. I would strongly consider trying to avoid this whole mess though, shave your head and see how you and others like it. Much easier, less stress, less money.

Be very careful about trying to get medical advice from the internet, that goes for people with and without depression. There's alot of bad information that can make your situation worse, and personal stories that can't be generalized to apply to you. Its important to understand there are unique biological factors that go into determining how hair loss progresses in each of us. The best advice is to continue working with your doctors to track and address your issues. Don't burden yourself with trying to sort through what's legit on the internet too.

Good strategy and advice, guys that read the anti-finasteride propaganda often stop at the first hint of side effects, whether real or imagined. Its important to track your health overall, because around the time hairloss starts becoming really noticeable is often when the body has also started to decline generally from aging. And its tough to hold on to those frontal hairs even with finasteride or dutasteride, alot of us still have to address that area with transplanted hair early on.

This is something to consider too, instead of just SMP or a HT. I replied on another thread earlier this morning where the guy already has SMP and was thinking about getting it removed before the HT. They can complement each other well if you choose talented practitioners in both areas. And you would need less touchups for the SMP because its functioning as a permanent concealer under the hair to make everything look more dense. Check out this thread below from one our members, he's saving alot of grafts and money for now, that can be used later if needed.

Alcohol has less of a time window to do its damage when it comes to hair transplants. It relaxes and expands your blood vessels and reduces your blood clotting capacity, not good when the doctor is cutting into your head or when your body's repair processes are underway in the immediate days post surgery. Smoking has the opposite effect, it constricts the blood vessels. Which reduces the oxygen carrying capacity and nutrients that can be delivered, which is of course important for your transplanted hairs to successfully root into their new blood supplies and thrive. But who knows if that reduced capacity is enough to make a difference, some guys report never stopped smoking and still get great results. But if you happen to be the worrying or obsessive type, and this is your first rodeo, it may end up being alot less of a mental hassle to just abstain.

It depends on the ratio of hair to smp in the thinning areas, you're correct that it can look weird if the hair thins out enough. But its an achievable level of hair density alot of guys can maintain with additional hair transplants as needed. Its actually something more guys should be considering as a long term strategy, especially if they have a more aggressive hair loss pattern, or are afraid of or can't use finasteride. @EvoXOhio has posted his pics over in the SMP section of the forum and it looks great.

If you use the forum search in the top right using keywords like marijuana, cannibas, pot, etc you'll get varying answers ranging from days to months, doctor recommendations, personal anecdotes. Here's a link to one of the longer threads

Nope, and if it was the person that came up with it would be very rich and famous. All we know now is not everyone ends up as a nw 6 or 7 with a questionable or inadequate donor. So if you've got the money and enough luck of the genetic draw to have a slower and less severe loss pattern than those guys, its possible to maintain adequate coverage throughout your lifetime with just additional transplants. How much better doing PRP is than doing nothing is probably not much, considering how long its been around and how few people do it. But if you've got the money to spare there could also be a placebo effect you are benefiting from as long as you keep the faith.

You should be fine. Additional DHT conversion from higher testosterone isn't going to be enough to devastate good hairs taken from your donor area within months. Unless you went to an unethical doctor that extracted hairs from outside your donor area. And even young guys with the most aggressive hair loss take at least a few years to lose their vulnerable hairs that are outside the donor area. You could help protect your hairs by getting on finasteride to lower your DHT. But you do start off your topic describing yourself as sexually active, so just be aware that a small minority of guys do get sexual side effects if you didn't know that already. Some of those are legitimately caused by the drug, others are just paranoid about the potential of side effects and psych themselves out into manufacturing the symptoms.

That's understandable, just keep remembering its the finasteride and dutasteride that's doing all the heavy lifting in terms of keeping your hair follicles working enough to produce the visible hair that the minoxidil is just enhancing. Minoxidil doesn't actually address the underlying causes of hair loss, without blocking DHT its just a way to make your hair look its best until the DHT completely wipes it out.

And as long as you stay on the finasteride you're not actually losing any ground, you're just not getting the optimal thickening and growth cycle synchronization that the minoxidil does. Worse case you can just go back on the topical if your body isn't processing the oral effectively for whatever reason.

2.5 is good, I do that too. 1.25 is the minimal effective and 5mg isn't worth the additional side effect risk, even though its still low. The topical relies on enzyme activity at the skin follicle level, where some guys don't have much or no capacity for so they only respond to the oral because it gets processed in the liver. I'd give it more time, this could be due to more of your hair follicles actually being exposed to the medication now that the liver is doing the work.

This should just be temporary. Did you shed much when starting the topical? gain much thickness or has it just helped you maintain? And what oral dosage are you taking?

I just checked out that SMP place in the UK you referenced. While SMP is cheaper than hair transplants, their price scale of up to £900 for a whole head of work looks suspiciously low even for SMP. From my research SMP price ranges from $2000 for the smaller jobs on up to $5000 for a full head of SMP in the USA where I am. Converting dollars to pounds based on the current exchange rate that's a range of £1600-4000. With the UK and USA both being first world nations, I wouldn't expect to see that kind of a price range difference for legit service. And be careful with SMP in general, research it like you would a hair transplant. There's alot of people out there that aren't properly trained and using the correct equipment and ink formulas for this type of work. Its different from traditional tattooing. Also realize that while you do get quick results, you'll need to have 'touch ups' done every 2-5 years to keep it looking tip-top, depending on how fast your body breaks down the ink, how much time you spend out in the sun that can cause fading. The link below has SMP clinics by location, there's alot in the UK so I'd call around and see if you get the same price ranges.

Actually the studies indicate finasteride blocks up to around 70% and dutasteride in the 90s% range. But the general point that it doesn't block all DHT is true and important for guys to realize. Because even if you do continue to lose ground, as long as its at a significantly slower rate, then finasteride or dutasteride can still be a very valuable tool for minimizing the number and size of hair transplants you need down the road. I wouldn't get too stressed about continuing to lose the frontal area hair, try to appreciate that you are holding on to it longer than you would otherwise. That area is usually the most DHT sensitive for guys. But if you start dramatically losing hair in the mid-scalp and crown areas too, that's when you need to start thinking about whether its worthwhile to continue taking it. It all comes down to your individual genetics, there is a very unlucky minority of guys whose hair is just too sensitive to DHT for the blockers to have a worthwhile long term impact. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10495374/ Methods: Men with androgenetic alopecia (N = 249) underwent scalp biopsies before and after receiving 0.01, 0.05, 0.2, 1, or 5 mg daily of finasteride or placebo for 42 days. Results: Scalp skin DHT levels declined significantly by 13.0% with placebo and by 14.9%, 61.6%, 56. 5%, 64.1%, and 69.4% with 0.01, 0.05, 0.2, 1, and 5 mg doses of finasteride, respectively. Serum DHT levels declined significantly (P <.001) by 49.5%, 68.6%, 71.4%, and 72.2% in the 0.05, 0.2, 1, and 5 mg finasteride treatment groups, respectively. https://donovanmedical.com/hair-blog/dutasteride-dht

One more thing, you have your hair in these pictures at one of the most unflattering lengths. Having it buzzed down like this makes any hair loss look worse. Grow it out, that's how hair transplants work their magic, creating an 'illusion of density'.

You're options are giving up on addressing your hair loss, continue getting more hair transplants, or starting to manage your hair loss at the source with a DHT blocker and re-evaluate in a year. And manage your expectations properly with finasteride, don't expect it to help you regain alot of hair. Some guys that jump on finasteride back in the early days of their loss are able to gain some of it back, but you've been loosing for years. Which means your best realistic hope is that it will stop your hair loss from getting worse, or slow it down considerably so that you need much less hair transplanted in the long run. Ruling out starting finasteride because you had side effects on nizoral and minixodil doesn't make any sense. Minoxidil just enhances the growth of existing hairs until you lose them and nizoral is a very weak DHT blocker at best. Even if you were able to take them both without side effects, they do almost nothing to treat the underlying reason you are continuing to lose hair. If you are going to bother with trying to address your hair loss with medication you have to start with a DHT blocker like finasteride or dutasteride as your foundation. If you don't respond well enough, or end up being one of the minority that gets side effects, realize its probably not worth bothering with other treatments. Microneedling, laser caps, nizoral, etc, are marginally effective when compared to blocking the DHT with finasteride.

You can start wearing a loose fitting hat on your way home after the procedure, its common for guys to do this and with their clinic's blessing. And you can safely buzz your head at 3 weeks as long as you have been healing normally. There's all kinds of unnecessarily longer recommendations online, and even on this forum and topic, to wait months and there's no evidence for it. On how difficult it will be to conceal, there's too many factors to predict unless you've already done a procedure like this before. How large your transplant is, how well your doctor can spread out the extractions in your donor, how well you heal in general, how light your skin is. And for SMP onto scars they recommend waiting at least a year for them to heal and fade enough so that the SMP artist can effectively blend everything together. If you have a decent amount of existing hair, which it sounds like since you say you are fortifying your hair line, look into daily concealers you apply each day. There are some that actually work very well like dermmatch and hair fibers. Check out this section of the forum about them for more info and topics from guys that are or have been in your situation too. https://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/forum/28-shampoos-sprays-and-concealers/

6 months is more than enough time, especially if you also use minoxidil. The dermarolling helps the minoxidil penetrate better for more effectiveness.

Believe it or not, Canada's first son and next prime minister is wrestling with the same question! He's finally finished puberty and fighting bravely along side you.