jfally

50 minutes ago, jc80220 said:

Thanks, both.

I don't want to use oral Minoxidil 'cause of the possible effect on your heart(!).

I'm still not clear. If I stop using Minoxidil for three months post surgery, will my hair loss restart at the point it was when I started the Minoxidil, or will any hair that would have fallen out if I wasn't using Minoxidil, fall out?

My surgery date is 6 days out.

In my pre-op instructions, I was advised to discontinue use of topical Min 7 days prior to surgery.

I take oral Min and was told zero reason to discontinue oral.

May I ask why you'd cease topical Min 3 mos prior, that was advice given by your Dr?

Team .5mg DUT/5mg Oral Min daily, checking in.

Zero sides, zero issues.

Funny enough, the less time I spend reading about possible sides or stressing, the better I feel.

Fancy that, eh? 

3 hours ago, Yabala said:

Thanks for the details guys. Tell me if l'm right or wrong but if l did understand the only interest in using finasteride for advanced Norwoods(5,6 and 7) is to keep my crown dense and high in order for me to undergo several hair transplants. Am l right ?

What class one is doesn't change the goal of meds, which is:

To stabilize hair loss and preserve the current state of hair.

Added bonus would be miniaturized hairs strengthening up back to terminal, and then possible regrowth in areas you currently believe are 'bald'.

NW 2, NW 4, NW7, anyone taking meds, is taking them for the same exact reasons. Stabilize/give best chances possible at halting hair loss. 

Would you rather have A) what those pictures show, or B) nothing on top at all, and solely the 'horseshoe' in the donor area?

If A, start up on Fin + Min or Dut + Min.

If B, don't take the meds.

If you decide against the meds, and opt for a HT once a NW7, a large # of your finite donor grafts will be used recreating what you possible could've saved with meds.
---

Even with the meds, there are no guarantees, but current medicine/science agree that meds give us the best shot at preserving what we have, and some people get an added bonus of various level of regrowth.

-Source= Me, a guy with just slightly more hair than you but very similar hairloss pattern, who halted loss via meds and is scheduled for a HT next week

🍿

Outstanding man, WOW!!

Thank you for updating man!

Our hair texture is near identical and your before is near identical to my current.

I'm scheduled with him in August and if 6 months after that, my progress is like yours is here, I'll be elated. One can read ad nauseam how the crown is often the very last place to grow/thrive, sometimes after 12 months, your crown progress is freaking nuts for 6 months.

It already looks phenomenal and is very fiber-able to look fully dense, I've got full faith that the next 6 months comes super close to if not all the way negating the need for fiber in the crown.

Congrats man!!!

Edit: How many total grafts and what was breakdown for crown/hairline? Forgive me if you've posted it I couldn't find the #'s in a text post it may be in the vids.

48 minutes ago, GoliGoliGoli said:

Like many others, I began my hair HT journey by putzing around on Google and the Tressless Sub-reddit. By the grace of God I found this site, which led me to Nader. So it's nice to see this come full circle. 

Same same same. 

Huge congrats, well earned!

Im booked for August and cannot be more excited. 

As a potential patient of his, I'm pumped to see this.

Shy of being fully recommended by this forum officially (as the goal of this post is), anyone doing proper vetting will find he is amongst the best of the best, as did I.

Honest thoughts/fear: I'm in the process of getting a date scheduled for mine (full disclosure getting a second reply/firm date has been a work in progress since Nov) and my fear as someone else statedabove as the influx of volume. I love his approach and the fact that he takes as much time as he does with each patient, and that it's all 1:1, but he's been very open about how manual his inquiry processes are, so without finding a way to streamline that (take deposit for a consult call to weed out the not-serious peeps? etc), I'm not sure how it'll go. Amazing as he is at the craft, the business side of the business with timeliness expectations in the marketplace could very well sour his rep.

7 minutes ago, GoliGoliGoli said:

I have probably NW2 or NW3 level recession in the hairline. But imagine me getting work done on the front based on the below pic… this was taken today. Had I gotten work done on the front I would be nervous about the result and worried that I would look unnatural or worse than when I started. Whereas having focused on the crown I am 100% certain it will be an improvement on what I had before. So now I get to sit back and wait for the results come in without having to worry too much about how it will all turn out.

It'd have been in line with 99% of advice given here but in your mind, just as it'd be for me if I were in your shoes, it wouldn't have addressed the area that plagued us most, so basically all a moot effort that leaves us longing for the next phase.

I remember following your thread in Nov, cannot wait to see how things start to look in a couple months for you.

Dr Nader is who I'm going with and first email back from him he proposed 3k-ish into my crown but wants to look at my donor area first. 

Like you, my donor area is silly thick, to the point that barbers forever comment they cannot believe how thick the sides and back are and what a shame that the top of my head isn't like that.

"Gee, thanks..." lol!

1 minute ago, GoliGoliGoli said:

Hanging out around hair loss forums you notice that a lot of the advice is "one size fits all". People ask the same question numerous times a month, so communities develop "stock answers" that serve as a general rule of thumb because it would take far too long to delve into every individual's family history/medication status/rate of loss/preferred hair style/donor quality etc.

But everyone's hair situation and goals are different. So my point is, do your own research and use it to come to your own conclusions. Listen to what people on here say, but at the end of the day realize that you need to integrate that "stock answer" advice into your own base of knowledge to determine what's right for you.

Personally, I went in for my first HT two months ago and focused only on the crown. I could not be more happy with this decision. I would really be kicking myself if I had done work on the hairline at this point. But I also have a great donor so maybe just because this was the right decision for me doesn't mean it's the right decision for you.

In another thread recently, someone posted pics of Henry Cavil with a NW2 hairline with no crown loss, versus Ben Afleck with a NW0 or NW1 hairline but a bald spot in the crown. 99% of the public would say Cavil isn't going bald, whereas they would say Afleck was. A receded hairline looks age appropriate, but a bald spot on the crown really ages you and tbh looks kind of "diseased" (To use a harsh word) in a way that hairline recession doesn't 

Really appreciate you taking the time to write this all out.

I agree with everything you said literally 100%.

I am super fit, beautiful wife, young healthy kids, everything about me is age appropriate other than top of my head which appears to be that of someone 50 years older than me. 

I get it and you get it!

4 hours ago, Hairything said:

Very interesting, I have a pretty similar hair status. There is often a debate about starting with the front zone(hairline) first, even in such a status. Does that make sense?

Furthermore, I would be interested in how old you are? Because I currently find it difficult to assess whether the hair loss will continue, even in my status.

 

Thanks helping guys.  

 

 

Yep, the one in-person consult I had, he mentioned the same. Start upfront then save donor for the back, later.

Here I am caring 3% about the front, 99% about the big ol bald spot in the back.

If I'm paying HT sums, I want to do it for what means the most to ME, which is the back, even if most start upfront.

Unfortunately this hair loss pattern seems to be much rarer than most so we have to take best advice possible then move forward in the way that makes sense to us.

I totally get the 'framing'/what others see when speaking to you' sentiment, but for me I don't mind my hairline much at all when its a bit longer, its the crown that affects my self-esteem largely.

16 hours ago, shiba1985 said:

to me it seems like your crown is too far gone to come back. i could bewrong. if u r not having any side effects though you still have great hair in front. so keep taking it to preserve. if you preserve the front, your crown can be transplanted a bit aggressively and then you will not have any signs of balding for the average eye. 

 

That's the plan. By no means am I looking for full coverage from meds alone, plan is to do this for an honest year, see where we are, praying the whole way, and hope things look solid to make me ideal candidate for a transplant that'll make the crown look at least 90% better. Thanks for your thoughts!

19 hours ago, Melvin- Moderator said:

I see slight improvement in the crown, but 4 months is still early. Keep taking monthly photos. Have you tried dermarolling?

Thanks for chiming in man!

Slight is about what I see as well. My wife is super excited each next week she looks closely in her salon with bright white lighting as she says the pores/follicles/whatever they are are now present whereas the crown used to look totally flat like palm of hand and she thinks it's working crazily well and urges me to stick with it.

All I see is a glaring bald spot when I pass a mirror lol.

I just started last week with .5mm dermarolling EOD and 1.0mm once weekly, most definitely open to suggestions for best practice there as far as depth-reccs and frequency reccs.

We'll keep going!

The daily continued effort isn't totally cumbersome, but it still does require constant effort, and I'm trying to decide if the juice is worth the forever squeeze, at least working up until a HT (hopefully late this year or early next year).

Here's my progress on 4 months faithful DUT + minox.

First 4 pics (w/ shorter hair) were taken late Oct, last 3 pics from today Jan 5. I started my meds regiment a month prior to these first pics.

Thoughts welcomed please!

https://imgur.com/a/9Amk8lS

Asking this sincerely in the least 'attempting-to-be-rude' way possible...

Why not ensure consistent hair length for each next set of pics to truly visually illustrate the efficacy of this whole thing?

Pick up the phone. # is listed right on their website.

There have been many posts, even a couple videos, with Dr Nader speaking very candidly about his Inbox volume (hundreds of new 'serious' emails, daily).

He recommends following up at least twice to bump your original email back to the top, so right out of the gates they know you're not a tire kicker they're allocating limited precious time to.

I went about 3 weeks without hearing back, called, left a message, email back that same day.

Updates?!?

Also, potato quality images here, but in 6 weeks of faithful med regimen I do think I see at least a 5% ish difference so needless to say, kicking myself for not having been doing this for the last 5 years now.

Update 5 weeks later:

I've been letting my hair grow and religiously using Min AM and PM daily, and have been on daily .5mg Dutasteride as well.

Wanted to grow my hair out more for the first time in years to see what it actually looks like longer, and how the thinning/balding areas look with more length.

In the meantime, I've been in touch with Dr Nader and plan to book a procedure with him soon as I hear back again, likely to be in April or May of 2023 at this point as he's booked out til then.

When I wrote to him using his online form, I submitted the original pics in this post plus a few other angles his form requests, and this was the treatment plan suggested:

"Based on this information, the donor area might be limited, and we would not recommend  extracting a large amount of grafts in one visit. This is what Dr. Nader recommends: based on the photos you sent, an average of 2,500 to 3,000 grafts for the crown and mid area, and if possible around 1,000 grafts in the hairline to reinforce it, while not moving it down. Then wait 12 to 15 months and evaluate if the donor area has healed properly and see if we can perform a procedure to increase the density in the crown area or hairline if needed."

That sounds pretty solid to me and is in line with lots of other posts I've been seeing in all my research.

Here's current pics that give more insight into my current state of affairs, again, main goal is to get my crown a whole lot thicker and beef up the frontal hairline however we can.

I will forever stay religious to the meds, before and after the procedure.

I cannot wait to see this come together man, wow!

Our crowns are very similar. I've emailed Dr Nader, first reply only took a day, now that I'm 100% in it's taking much longer (3 weeks now) to get a reply.

The anticipation is real, totally understand why response times are as long as they are with staff being minimal, hoping to get a date scheduled ASAP so at least then I can start the countdown.

Looking forward to future updates and happy to see/hear another great Dr Nader experience!

I'm waiting for a reply (and understand his response times are very slow due to nature of his staff size) but will more than likely making the trip to see him hopefully first half of next year. Excited to follow this thread and hopefully see more updates.

Updates?! 
 

great thread man, videos are superb thank you 👌🏽

Updates?!