Al - Moderator

You do have a very large area to cover, so I can see why someone would suggest looking at body hair if you are trying to get coverage everywhere. If you're willing to leave the crown alone, then 3000 in the frontal 1/2 is a good idea. If BHT ever improves, you might then be able to go for another session with 1000 or so strip from your donor area on your head mixed with a lot of body hair.

At $299 the X5 is still rather pricey. Do you really need a digital timer? I just look at my watch when I start and spend 8 to 10 minutes. How hard is that? If you do get a laser comb/brush/gadget make sure you use it every day on a clean scalp. Most instructions for laser combs say to use it 3 times a week, but I personally think daily use will produce better results. I use mine after I shower and my hair has just dried. A clean scalp allows the laser light to penetrate into the follicle better because there's no oil and sebum buildup to block it.

I also use it everyday.

It's normal for transplanted hair to grow in somewhat frizzy. I don't know if that happens to everyone though. As it grows out and you get a few hair cuts it will slowly soften up. I'd say in the 12 to 18 month range is where I used to see the frizzyness go away.

So now we know... minoxidil doesn't work. Everyone reading this who says they are using minoxidil and getting good results are no longer credible unless they can show before and after photos and can prove they only used minoxidil.

Thought of something to add to my above post. If the laser comb has been around for years why hasn't there been more decent results? Lexington's web site says their older laser combs had only 1 real laser. What I understand they did was used mirrors to reflect the laser light into several beams, so it acted like 6 or so laser beams. The problem with that is light reflected multiple times loses it's power. So while todays combs use the same mw power lasers as the older combs, the actual power hitting your scalp is more than it was in older combs. This will result in better results of growth. In other words, laser combs of just a few years ago threw the laser light onto your head after bouncing it off of a mirror. Todays combs the lasers are more focused. Compare it to older hair transplants. You will have a really hard time finding anyone who had a good result from a HT 15 or 20 years ago, but it's pretty common to find people with decent results today even though the basic technique is still the same as always. They take hair from one area of your head and move it to another area. However it's been refined over the years to give you individual hairs where you need them to get a much better result.

I tried to address this in an earlier post, but maybe it didn't come across well. The "credible" sources are using laser helmet type devices in their office with patients making twice a week visits that cost thousands of dollars for a few months. how long do you think anyone is going to continue that useage? The "non credible" sources are home users with hand held laser combs that they use almost daily. In the 2.5 months I've been using mine I think I missed only 2 days. There's very little cost involved. I can easily do this for several years if it works. It stands to reason that the "credible" sources are going to have the worst results of the 2 groups. So who is going to do a real study? The "credible" sources aren't going to be able to show decent results because their patients are only using it twice a week. You can't get decent results on most people with only twice a week useage. Don't you think they know that? OK, so what about the laser comb manufacturers? Lexington already did that and submitted it to the FDA. Look at what the price of their comb is compared to others. Lexington comb is $395 for the cheap model and $545 for the premium. Compare that to $79 for the cheap model and $119 for the best model from the company I bought mine. Now that the FDA has approved it, whether you want to argue or not what that approval means, it's selling laser combs. There's no point in doing another study that will only raise your price and make yours more expensive than the competition who also benefits from your study. Drug companies are different. They get x amount of years of exclusive rights to sell the drug, so it pays to do studies plus they aren't allowed to sell a drug unless they do those studies. This is my personal opinion on the subject.

1. Are your on rogaine and/or propecia and if so for how long? The only other things I use are propecia (actually proscar) and nizoral 1% shampoo. I've been using both for many years and haven't used anything else the entire time. I've been trying to cut down on proscar the last few years. The laser comb has let me drop down to taking it only 2 to 3 days a week without getting any sebum buildup. 2. Do you have any before and after pictures? Not yet. It's only just starting to get to a noticeable improvement point without actually inspecting my hair closely. 3. How can you can claim that the laser brush is working great so far by just using the brush for over 2 months. I haven't seen any proven hair loss treatment achieve great results within such a short notice. First of all it depends on how you interpret great. I say that with the perspective that I've only been using a few months. I didn't suddenly get a full head of hair (although I hope I eventually do!). Prior to my laser comb useage I always had some fine hairs that would start growing and then fall out after a few weeks when they reached 1/4 inch or so in length. A few of these have grown into more permanent hairs over the years and I attribute that to the proscar and nizoral use. However even those new permanent hairs are very thin wispy hairs. Those fine hairs I had was one reason I thought I might be a good candidate for laser therapy because it supposedly at least lets your existing hairs grow better and thicker. Once I started using the laser comb what I did NOT get is an initial shedding like rogaine and sometimes propecia can cause. Instead some of the short fine hairs that would have fallen out after a few weeks kept growing. Some did fall out, but I think that's expected since some would have been at the point of being ready to fall out anyway. Hopefully the next cycle will get more of them to grow longer. So the fact that the short fine hairs continued growing gave me a slight, but almost immediate (in 1 to 2 months time) improvement at least as far as close examination goes. To me this is very encouraging. The areas that are improving the most are the crown and back of my head and the temples. At this point (a little over 2.5 months of use) there is now a definite noticeable improvement and increased amount of growing hairs in the back of my head. Something that I really found interesting (and pleasantly surprising) is the scarred donor areas from all the HTs I went through years ago. I had a scarred area that would only grow some sparse scraggly hair, sort of like beard hair. Using the laser comb in that area has straightened the hair out and increased the amount of hair growing there. The scars in that section are partly covered now. I'm very pleased with that! I think that's enough for now. If you think of any other questions I'll try to answer. Please realize that I'm still early on and I'm not fully recommending a laser comb yet. I'll wait for at least another few months before I'm willing to say that. I can only hope my hair continues to improve. I don't know where or when the improvement will stop.

You say you've been wearing a hair replacement system for almost 20 years, so I'm guessing you're in the 40+ year old range. It also sounds like the bald area in your crown isn't that large of an area. If those are true I think I would opt for trying to fill in the crown area on the next HT. You don't have to concentrate the entire 2500 to one area. If you want a bit more thickness in front then put 1000 to 1500 in the frontal half and the other 1000 to 1500 in the crown. You will hopefully end up with some good thickness in front with a little bit of thinning in back, but no bald area. Once you start getting into the upper 40s in age people don't even pay attention to a little thinning. It's expected. It's well worth not having to bother with any hair system any more especially if you like to be active. Plus you won't have to pay for hair replacement maintenance anymore.

What happened to that $3.80 per graft that Bosely was advertising?

There are two categories of laser useage. First is the laser lamp at the doctors office. Second is the laser comb you use at home. We need to seperate the two, but first let's look at something else. Suppose we look at Rogaine/minoxidil. I think most people here will agree that Rogaine has at least some growth effect on many people. Suppose we have 2 groups of people. Group A visits the Dr twice a week for him to apply Rogaine to their heads at $125 a visit. Group B buys Rogaine at Walmart and applies it themselves every day. Do you think Group A is going to get anywhere near the same level of results that Group B gets? No! A person in Group A will spend $1000 a month for no results because Rogaine needs to be used daily for effectiveness. Do you think the Dr will be able to show results that it works on any of his patients? No! Of course not. According to Dr Feller this would prove that Rogaine doesn't work. While Dr Feller is busy announcing that he has proved that Rogaine will never work, Group B is happily using Rogaine every day and maybe 80% are getting noticeable growth. Dr Feller says these don't count because word of mouth and a few individual people's photos don't prove anything because there could be lighting issues and what ever else. Now go back and replace Rogaine with lasers. I agree 100% that it is a total waste of time and money to have a laser lamp on your head at a Drs office twice a week. If you read and listen to what patients and laser users have actually said you'll see that almost every one of the people who went to a Dr a few times a month say the Dr visits were a waste and a rip off. However there's a lot of people who have tried laser combs that say they have worked, including myself. EDIT: Wanted to add that I do not sell laser combs or make any money from them. I am simply a laser brush user who is seeing hair growth. I use it every single day for about 8 to 10 minutes just after my hair has dried after taking a shower.

I almost always parted my hair on the side, so i don't think I would change that even if I did have a lot of hair.

Most people want to get their hair as thick as possible, but here's something to think about. Let's say you're 30 years old and have a HT. After 2 sessiosn you think maybe the Dr should have made your hairline a bit lower, maybe it's a little too see-through on top, etc., so you want to go back for another session or 2. OK. So maybe you still don't look truly great for your age and there are still other 30 year olds with more hair. Before you try to thicken up your hair too much think about this: If you plan correctly, your HT will look better as you age, meaning you will look better for your age as you get older. You will start liking your HT more over the years. In 10 years when you're 40 you will still have all that transplanted hair while all your friends and former hot hunks have been losing their hair for the past 10 years. On the other hand if you plan poorly and try to do too much to look like you're still 18, then you could end up taking too much donor hair out and then trying to find more donor hair to cover the crown that wasn't so bad a few years earlier. You'll end up hating your HT more and more over the years. It's much better to look good as you age rather than look more and more like a freak as you age. So... have a conservative HT, work out and keep your body in shape, and you'll eventually be the hot hunk you always wanted to be. Nothing wrong with being over 40 and dating women in their 20s and 30s. Just some things to think about here.

notGoing: I'm not trying to stop you from getting a HT. I'm not sure how old you are, but I think I read in another thread that you have little to no hair loss in the crown. If that's the case and you only need hair in front, then I would just not worry about the crown for now and don't touch that area. Just make sure you don't try to get too low or too thick of a hairline. The hair greed thing is a big factor. We all have at least some of that or we wouldn't be here. It's fine to have hair greed to some degree because everyone should try to look their best. What you have to be careful about is getting a taste of a good HT and then getting too much hair greed. What I'm saying is be conservative, maybe a slightly higher hairline than you would like, maybe not go for that 3rd or 4th session right away to keep thickening up your hair until you wait a few years to see where (if at all) your hair loss progresses to.

Since you already have the Avodart, it might be interesting to try switching back and forth. Take Proscar one day and Avodart the next.

right. What happens more often than losing hair past the donor scar is that a patient's hair loss pattern will lengthen and widen. You may think you are leaving a lot of donor in reserve, but if you lose more hair down the back of your head, not only do you need to fill in that area, you also have lost the area where you thought you had more donor area left. I put together a picture to demonstrate. If you get to #4, then you're in a position where you have to decide to either: 1. Try to get at least enough grafts to cover the sides and leave the balding back/crown area alone giving you an irregular look because the bald circle is not on top where a normal bald persons would be, but rather it is towards the back. 2. Try to get enough grafts to thinly cover the entire area with higher probability of leaving the scar visible because you won't have any remaining hair to cover it. Sometimes patients go through several sessions over the years to cover the areas as they continue to lose hair. This results in eventually the hair loss running into or past the scar as the patient kept taking more donor hair away to cover the thinning areas.

Transplanting into a scar works. Years ago when scalp reductions were done. The somewhat standard practice was to do a scalp reduction and then at the next session cover the resulting scar with grafts. It's only in the last few years now that scalp reductions are no longer done that people (and even Doctors!) somehow forget that the hair grew in the scars. However, I don't think it's a good idea to do a max session size that would create a wide scar with the thinking that you can go back later and fix the scar. It is much better to have a very thin scar to begin with and not have to worry about it later. If you're going to end up with 2 sessions, it seems to me to be better to put both of them to your thinning area rather than have to deal with scar repair with the 2nd one.

Happened to me. I lost hair past the scar in the back. On the sides my hairloss has gone just up to the scars on the sides, so there's not enough hair above the side scars to cover them. During the years I was going through my hair transplants all they did was small sessions to chase my hairloss until I lost too much hair and didn't have any donor left.

It's working for me. It was worth buying. I've been using one for exactly 2 months now and I'm definately growing new and more hair. Don't get the overpriced ones by Hairmax or Sunetics. Do a search for amazing laser brush. I got a 6 laser brush for about $129. In comparison, the Hairmax one is I think $395 and has 1 laser with a mirror to simulate several lasers which gives a reduced quality effect. The more expensive Hairmax comb has more actual lasers, but they are charging a ridiculous $600 for it.

Now for the potential bad news: * Milestone payment of US$200,000 received from Bosley under ICX-TRC option I really hope if this works it doesn't end up being a Bosley exclusive licensed sort of deal where you have to go to Bosley to get this. If that turns out to be the case, they will probably just screw the whole procedure up and it won't be worth having it done.

You can read the interim results here: http://www.intercytex.com/icx/news/releases/2007/2007-09-25/ I saw 2 items dealing with hair regeneration including the following statements. * Hair regeneration ??“ first 12 patients treated in Phase II trial of ICX-TRC * Preliminary data from Phase II trial of ICX-TRC for hair regeneration shows increased hair counts and good safety profile

I've been using Quality Health, Inc for 10 years. They are located in the UK. http://www.qhi.co.uk/index.asp

The site listed in the first post of this thread is not a scam. It's just a very old site that was originally put up I think sometime in the mid 90's. I remember seeing this site way back when I was on the hairloss newsgroups before Pat decided to start this site. The guy had a really bad hair transplant and eventually decided his best option was to get a hair system. What is so wrong with promoting an option that you are using? Aren't we all doing that here in our signatures? We post what doctors we went to and how great we think the result was. I made my signature a few weeks ago about my laser comb usage. All those horrible posts on the site are because that's how hair transplants were in those days. There was hardly ever anyone who was happy with it. Look at some of the people who go for repair work now. If you had a HT like that wouldn't you maybe start thinking about a hair system to cover it up? I never posted a link on here to my own site I've had for 10 years now because it too is mostly a very old site, but here goes for comparison http://members.aol.com/LongScars/

I did take pictures early on, but unfortunately they didn't come out very clear. How do you guys get clear detailed pictures? When I took the first set I decided to take pictures every 2 months, so I'll be taking more next week.

OK. I listened to the broadcast. Dr. Feller is so close minded about the whole thing. He acts like he knows everything about why hair falls out, what makes it grow, what doesn't. You'd think if he knows how hair growth works he would have a cure by now. What a joke. dr Feller says when he was at a lecture and they started discussing laser therapy he didn't even want to hear it and walked out. How can he say he knows it can't work if he refuses to even listen to findings? he says he wants proof, but then says scientific findinds are no good, people claiming it works is no good, and the real thing I find amazing is that he even says photos that show improvement don't count! Yes he really said that. OK. So why do photos count in minoxidil and propecia studies, but they don't count in laser studies? I decided to do my own study. So far it's growing hair on my head, but I'm sure that doesn't count as proof to Dr Feller, but that's OK. He can continue claiming it doesn't work. I'll keep growing hair.