el guapo

I agree with Ken. Recently I visited a major SMP clinic and checked out their results. The guy I met with there is quite famous on the forums and had his treatment done with the clinic. Looked great in photos - not so much in real life. Although I one what to look for I thought it was a bit too obvious from my liking.

Where are you based? Probably a good idea to go to someone close if a good options is available. There are plenty of SMP practitioners out there but only a few good ones it seems.

I can tell you first hand how the meds stop working after about 5-8 years but then again you will find out on your own eventually. Ive been there - done that... In regards to diffuse thinners - yes of course they produce great results. Most of them do. The problem is that as a diffuse thinner you will keep on loosing hair. A lot of it .And that is absolutely guaranteed, unless it is not genetically induced hair loss. And the only thing that looks worse than a bald head is a bald head with a few rows of transplanted hair at the front. You can argue with me all you want - I don't really care. All I can do is pass on information which is what this forum is for. If you choose to use that information or ignore it is completely up to you.

How is that "patently false"? Besides speaking from my own experience all you have to do is read on this forum for long enough... I doubt anyone who have used mess for 10 years or more have completely halted their hairloss. It generally works got a few years before the hairloss picks up again.

Please elaborate. You are not being very helpful.

Meds do not work long term. They slow down the loss for a few years before it picks up again. They will very rarely help you grow back any hair. If you have a HT now in your hairline for example you will end up with a very odd looking fringe of weirdly placed hairs growing in front of a large bald spot. HTs can look OK on some patients with very thick donor hair and non diffuse thinning. Most fail over time. Just look through the diaries on this for and you will see what I mean. I get your point with SMP. It can look awful. But it is the only treatment currently available that can look completely natural if done by a top practitioner. ( if you don't mind a very closely shaved head) I've seen many HTs and several SMPs. I think most HT patients wish they can go back in time and just live with the hairloss. The SMP patients are happier but I can't imagine the shame of being called out one day of having tattooed your head...

As a 23 year old I would advice you to hold off. I have been on this forum for 10 years now and from my limited experience you are not a good candidate. Diffuse thinning is hard to fix with a HT and you may even loose more hair than you gain due to shock loss. Getting a HT that young is very likely to make you disappointed down the line as your hair loss continues and you run out of donor hair. I know I sound negative and someone else here may have a different perspective on things. If you don't mind a shaved head perhaps its worth looking into SMP. Seems to do wonders with diffuse thinners but of course it limits you to a shaved head which for some defeats the purpose of doing anything in the first place.

They have their own forum where you can see a lot of results from their NYC office. Like with most things, it comes down to the practitioner you end up with. His do get a lot of good results but they also get a few just OK results. Make sure you do your research.

Good answer. Thanks Ken. So with hat in mind, who can you recommend for small dot sizes? I have seen so many results from Hishair where the dots are just a little bit too big to stand up to very close scrutiny. Who was your practitioner btw?

In regards to the dor size... I have rad several diaries on the HisHair forum and the dots do look big and unnatural after the first session. This is always the case. But I have never seen a case where the dots did not shrink significantly. And yes, it is the second session that completes the look and make it look natural. However, I am wondering if HisHair is using the same dot size for all their cases? Like a one size fits all approach. If this is the case I would imagine that although it may look perfect on some heads it would look less natural on people with fine hair and smaller follicles.

There are no cases of SMP from Hishair that has "migrated". And its impossible for their ink to turn blue. I have researched SMP quite a lot. HisHair seems pretty good with mostly good results. Yes it often fades but thats because they are rather careful in their approach so it may take a few sessions. Vinci I am still unsure about. They have some result son their website which are awful. From HisHair results they are mostly very good. Some are average.

I've been on these forums for over ten years. I've seen many results good and bad. Even from good doctors held in high esteem on this site. Even the best doctors using the latest technique cannot consistency get perfect results. In these cases my best guess is that maybe half are great, several "ok" and maybe 1/5 or so have no growth or bad scarring etc. With patients that haven't done proper research online I would imagine that the proportion of bad results can be very high. Maybe close to 9/10. If you asked how many patients have good results after day ten years I would say that number is close to zero across the board.

I agree with fueonly. Take meds - see what happens. The meds will usually eventually wear off and stop working and its very rare for hairloss to not continue. But you have a lot of hair so just leave it for now. Another idea would be to ask forum members that had a HT at your age if they are happy with their decision 10 years down the track. My guess is pretty much no one will say yes.

I agree with fueonly. Take meds - see what happens. The meds will usually eventually wear off and stop working and its very rare for hairloss to not continue. But you have a lot of hair so just leave it for now. Another idea would be to ask forum members that had a HT at your age if they are happy with their decision 10 years down the track. My guess is pretty much no one will say yes.

I have seen some very good results where FUE combines with SMP can help achieve that look. The SMP covers up the "missing" hair in the donor or sometimes event the scars. The SMP can also help with the illusion of density around the planted follicles.

I think this looks really good. You can often tell at 4 months if it's gonna home run and your growth is already great with more to come.

Hi Mickey Thanks for the reply. I have read your post on Fue vs FUT and its well researched and informative. God work. I did look into FUE myself back in 2007 but was discouraged by the scarring. I did meet with Bisanga in person who advised me that I was an OK, but not great candidate due to my thin hair. Its blonde though which could make up for it. I would never ever get a strip procedure done. You can never shave your head and hair loss will always continue at some point leaving you with few options down the track. I have opted out of FUE for a few reasons 1) Poor yield. Im a NW 4-5 so would need maybe 5000 grafts for decent coverage. FUE megasessions are notoriously unreliable going by results on this forum. Some are happy, some are satisfied but most receive poor growth. To ensure better growth I'd have to do up to three separate sessions over several years. 2) Ugly duckling face. Going around for 3-5 months looking like hell is not appealing in my opinion. I cant stay away from work that long. 3) Scarring. Although some patients have very minimal scarring a 5000 graft session would leave me potentially with a very awkward looking head. Not worth it. I like to keep my hair very short so its too risky. The only potential HT option I can see working is the FUE + SMP option. A thin but consistent coverage filled in with SMP may work. And as you say Gho is still not reliable. I have no money problems and could easily plow 200K into a treatment if I thought it would work but I don't. I have not uploaded any photos and Im not sure if it would help. I'd say NW 4-5 with thinning in crown and front. Some hair left in the middle. Cheers El G

Hey Guys Not sure this is the correct section in the forum for this post so please let me know if it not. And I'm sorry for the long post but I felt this needed some background to put my thoughts into perspective. I've been reading this forum for over 10 years now, following every new technique and doctor with great interest. I started back in 2003 at the age of 25 after loosing hair since I was 18. I fell for all the stupid gimmicks including sticking my head into a helmet with laser lights that obviously did nothing to slow my hair loss but quite a lot to shrinking my student sized wallet. Lotions and pills did little to slow down the inevitable and over time they became worthless as the effect wore off. After researching for about three years and traveling to meet surgeons and meeting patients I decided that hair restoration was simply not good enough and I was not mentally ready anyway. The results back in 2005 were mostly average and most patients seemed to regret their decision to go down the HT route. Having said that, some clinics like Hasson & Wong were already then producing great results but they were an anomaly. So I shaved my head, decided I liked it and I moved on. My confidence grew and I soon realised that most women don't give a crap about your hair or lack thereof. They only care about confidence which I simply faked until I had it. I went from shy and introverted guy with a bad comb over and my sexual encounters limited to autoerotic visits to the mens room to a bald guy with attitude. After shaving I had some really hot girlfriends and life was great... Over the years I checked back on this site sporadically. Although I was happy with a shaved head I still wouldn't mind hair : ) However, I still didn't see anything new worth risking and no real medical progressions were made in the battle for hair-loss. Until the 2014 world cup. Seeing the Dutch player Sneijders new hair shocked me. It was perfect and clearly a HT of sorts considering he had considerably less hair the year before. I immediately did some research and realised he had his work done by Dr Gho, they guy who previously earned the distinction of being the number one laughing stock of the hair loss industry. I checked his website which is still a master study in deceptive advertising with less than honest before and after photos. But there was hope so I started my research from scratch again and after being back for about a month I have come to the following conclusions regarding available procedures. FUE Fue has come some way since its early days ten years ago. Back then all FUE sessions were small (1000 or so) and the punches were way to big often causing massive dot scarring. FUE mega sessions these days are common and the punches much smaller. However the results are unreliable at best. The giant sessions combined with the smaller extraction tools seem to cause major uncertainties with several patients getting little or no growth at all. Just reading on the FUE results section of this forum is a big deterrent for FUE in my opinion. FUT Still the best for consistent results. However the scarring in the back of the head is a big no-no for me personally, especially since you will most likely get to a point where your hair loss has progressed to the point where no HT in the world can help you. Then you'd want to shave but I wouldn't want a big scar in the back of my head as a dead give away. SMP This is interesting. Ten years ago I remember laughing at the idea of head tattoos. And back then they did look awful many times, disfiguring some patients for life with no hope of redemption. But the results I have been seeing recently are impressive. Temporary SMP from Malena Lardi especially look perfect in photos but still kinda hard to maintain with such quick fading. The more temporary solutions from HisHair look great as well but Im unsure of the long term implications. Im also a bit unsure of how undetectable this really is on very close inspection as I haven't seen it in real life yet. If you are someone who likes the look of a shaved head but prefer the illusion of hair - this is potentially a viable solution and one that I may consider personally. FUE + SMP Still to few results to gauge but the concept is good and some early results look promising. The SMP can help camouflage the shortcomings of limited donor hair and the FUE hair help create a 3D appearance which SMP lacks. And of course the SMP can be used to cover up any FUE scarring. Im hoping for more results on this double edged sword approach and may potentially consider it. Dr Gho As mentioned above its hard to take this guy seriously. His previous work was sub par to say the least with sometimes zero results and his website is still full of deceptive photos using the old wet hair + flash trick to cover up any short comings. However, if Sneijders result in fact was a result of Gho's hair cloning technique this could in fact be what we have all been waiting for. (For those of us with thick wallets at least) Anyways, sorry for the long winded post. Would love to hear your thoughts.

I have no personal experience with FUE, and aside from reading this forum for the past ten years my opinion is an educated layman's opinion at best. In my personal view it seems very rare that patients get good results from FUE mega sessions, The yield seems overall poor.

Great result. And good job getting rid of that awful coconut hairstyle : ) Such a waste of a good head of hair...

Great result. And good job getting rid of that awful coconut hairstyle : ) Such a waste of a good head of hair...

This looks great sofar. Looking forward to more updates.

Thanks for sharing. Hopefully you will be satisfied this time around. I think your results are probably more common than the home run results.

I'm getting a bit concerned by all these patients that suddenly disappear. One can only hope they are busy enjoying their new hair but I doubt that's the case.

I second the point of using wet hair. It's impossible to judge if the conditions are not the same.