Hi everyone, this is my first post in the forum. I'm 24 and first noticed some hairloss last year. I've been lurking on various forums related to hairloss(including this one) and had a few questions regarding hair restoration which I wanted to ask. I'll first be giving some details about my case and my experience with meds.
Status of my hair and family history-
I currently notice some recession and thinning of my temples, with my right temple being more receded than my left. My father is a NW6 and started losing his hair pretty early on(he says earlier than me). But it kind of progressed slowly and he only reached NW6 by age 36. He is the only male from his side who has a NW6 pattern though. My grandfather is a diffused NW3 at the age of 79 and my uncles are probably NW3 at the age of 40(approx). From my mom's side, my grandfather is 80 years old and a clear NW4.
My history with finasteride and side effects-
So the moment I noticed the thinning last year, I immediately got on finasteride. I took it for around 2 months at the dosage of 1 mg/day. Tbh, I would have been ok with the mild sexual side effects, but I started getting this horrible foggy feeling in my head after I took the drug which then started effecting my performance at work. I also got some sensitivity in my chest. I tried powering through the side effects thinking it would resolve(reason I took it for 2 months), but then it got too much for me to handle and I stopped it. Then after doing some research online, I decided to start it at a lower dose- 0.5mg on alternate days. I was fine for a while, but then I started getting the chest sensitivity and cognitive side effects again. I then stopped taking the drug completely. I guess I'm just too sensitive to the drug🙁 .
My questions-
I'd read online that you can kind of predict your final norwood pattern based on analyzing the miniaturization. Is this correct? And when is the minimum age when you can do this? I'd read that (ethical) surgeons don't generally operate on patients unless they're above the age of 25/26. So is this like the minimum cutoff age in general to analyze your miniaturization and final pattern?
If the final NW pattern can be analyzed and found out, is it also possible to get an analysis and estimate of your donor area and its characteristics for the future like the number of grafts you'll have, hair shaft thickness, number of multi hair grafts etc?
I see a lot of cases where people with just some temporal recession get a large number of grafts like 2000 grafts etc dense packed and just on the hairline. But why is this so? I also see higher NW patients get a similar number of grafts, but it's more spread out across the bald areas. And their results look pretty natural too. Isn't it dangerous/risky in the long run to use so many grafts just on the hairline? What would someone who got such a dense packing do if they lost more hair in the future?
Related to the question above. If a higher NW case can get a pretty amazing result with a similar number of grafts but spread out more across a larger balding region, then why is dense packing done/needed?
I'm a bit confused with the terminologies used to describe the regions of the scalp. Eg: frontal half, frontal third, midscalp etc. Is there some diagram or something which can help me understand this?
I understand that the crown should be left alone in higher norwood patients. So how many grafts on average for some someone with avg. hair characteristics would be needed for covering the other regions(assuming the patient is NW5/6)?
How would you go about planning future hair transplants if you were in my state and knew that you would probably reach a high norwood state of hairloss at some point? Wait till you reach your final norwood and then do a transplant? Or keep doing hair transplants as you keep balding? What type of surgeries would you get? FUT then FUE?
Sorry for the long post and asking so many questions. But I'm new to this and want to plan for the future and not just jump into getting a transplant too early and regret it later.