Al - Moderator

Some people like to think they are smarter than they really are. How do they know they can tell the HT hairlines from natural hairlines when they are only studying high resolution still pictures of hair transplanted hairlines? The next time someone says to you that they can tell the difference, ask them how many times they saw high res photos of natural hairlines. I mean seriously, even if you can tell by studying an close up shot for a few minutes, how many times have you ever done that to someone in person? It doesn't happen.

Sure. Of course! Thank you.

synthetic hair transplants are illegal in the USA because of the problems and complaints that were happening as a result of having it done. I looked into doing this as one of my options because it was still being done then. It was banned right after that. They attach hair (could be real or fake) to tiny aluminum (or similar. Maybe plastic) tips. Sort of like putting a small piece of metal around the end of the hair and crimping the metal so the hair stays on it. Then they make the slits in the donor area and put the hair "grafts" in so the metal ends are in your scalp. After a few days the healing of the holes they made will grow around and over the metal tips, so they can't come out. You end up with several thousand little pieces of metal/plastic/whatever they use in your head. The hair doesn't grow because it's fake, so it's always the same length. Over time natural occurrences such as combing your hair, strong winds if your hair is being blown around, shampooing your hair, etc slowly makes the implanted hairs come out, many times leaving the tips lodged in your head. After maybe 2 years you need to go back to do an overall fill in to replace all of those that fell out. This includes surgically removing any of the pieces that remain lodged into your scalp. After you do that a few times your head will be so scarred... and you have to continue going back for a refill every few years forever. You'll also have to deal with small infections on an ongoing basis because of having 4000 little pins in your head constantly. Your body doesn't like that and will keep trying to reject them. That leads to pain and stinging when you try to comb your hair or when someone puts their hands through your hair. Nearly everyone who was going through this process eventually had them all removed for one reason or another (money, infections, pain, etc). Then you are left with a bald head full of scars which makes it harder to have a real hair transplant which you should have done in the first place. Did I convince you not to go this route yet?

A lot of people have a good amount of long thick hair in their underarms. I've been thinking about doing body hair transplants because I don't have any donor hair left on top. I actually want to put some hairs into the donor area to fill in some scars. I started using a laser comb though and decided to give it at least til the end of the year to see how that goes before I think more about doing BHT. Flap surgery will mess you up bad. We won't even have to go there to rough you up. The flap surgery will do that for us.

Unfortunately I just kept circling through items 1 to 5 over and over. Would have been nice to get to #8 just once.

Worked for me. Started taking Proscar around 1997. Still taking it currently, but at lower dosage (every other day. Sometimes every 3 days) I had very slow hair growth over the 10 year period which is much better than the rapid hair loss I was having prior to using it.

Glock, You are a pro. You know exactly how to make a promise to satisfy your wife, keep the promise to her, and still have fun looking at all the hot BRUNETTE babes on the beach! LOL

Hair2stay, I don't want to put you down, but damn dude! If you didn't tell me it was pluggy I probably wouldn't have noticed. I think your hair probably looks a lot better to other people than it does to you because you are looking at it trying to find every little detail that might be wrong with it. Maybe it looks a bit worse in reality than it does in pictures, because I know that's sometimes the case with mine. If I hold my head up from 5 feet away my hairline looks pretty good in pictures, but still I think you might be trying to compare other hair transplants to your own and are being too critical. I think you need a dose of reality. You need to look at some pictures of some truly bad HTs. I would LOVE to have the hair you have. Yes it's horrible that you had to have repair surgery for a not so great HT, but it looks like it's turning out better than it was and at least you had enough donor hair to actually have a repair! Some of us aren't so lucky. You have to realize that it will never fall or comb exactly the way it once did when you had your natural hair there.

Too bad I work on Sundays or I would seriously think about going. I could show you what a hair transplant should NOT look like.

Golden, Don't do it!! They tell you it's real hair and integrates with your own, etc, etc, but it's just a hair piece, toupee, wig, whatever you want to call it. I got suckered into that back when I was 21 (from another company, but same thing). Before I went there I was shying away from going out places or dating women because I was a NW 5 and felt I looked so much older than the other people my age. I felt out of place. I remember when I was 20 I dated a girl at work who was only a year younger than me and I got told I was "robbing the cradle" (dating young girls that I was way too old for). For a while I was dating women who were 5 to 10 years older than I was just so I wouldn't feel too old for them. So anyway I know how you feel. So I got the "strand by strand" hair replacement and the problem got 10 times worse! All I did all day was worry about who could tell if it was fake. I was always looking at mirrors. I was doing that alot before, but with the hair system it was a LOT more. When I was out with some people, I'd go to the men's room and check to see if it was noticeable. Let me tell you it's the most horrible thing when you look in the mirror and can see that it's fake. You just want to rip it off. I used to stay there combing and combing to try to make it look half decent. Most time it doesn't happen. Even if I was able to make it look OK, how do I go back out there knowing that everyone there knows my hair is fake because it was so obvious. Sometimes I'd just sneak out and go home without even telling anyone. That was the few times I actually did go out. After that I hid from everyone and never went anywhere. After 7 months of that I finally got rid of it. I tried hair transplants, but that made my hair even worse. But no matter how horribly ugly I look from the scars from the hair transplants, I will never go back to wearing a hair system. The only thing I would consider is wearing a partial hairpiece for the back if you can get the front filled in with hair transplants (I don't know your situation. I can only tell you of mine). That's what I originally wanted to do when I went for my hair transplant, but they insisted I was a good candidate and started towards the crown rather than the hairline just to prove it. But that's another story. Anyway.... Don't do it!!

Yes. That's pretty much it. There was a video posted here some time back that showed the donor strip being removed. I think it's on youtube. The good news in the pictures you link to is that Bosley is using a single blade knife. When I had my HT done at L. I. Medical (Dr Hitzig, Dr Maleka, Dr Schwinning (Stay FAR away from any of them!!!!!) used a 3 blade knife for session sizes of 30 to 122 grafts. I'm sure I lost more follicles from disection and scarring in the donor area than were being transplanted.

It's actually time for my 4 month update. I'm trying to make sure I post once a month on the progress. I don't have time to write full detail now, but things are looking good. I'll post more tomorrow.

Well I never smoked and I don't think it's possible to have lost my hair any faster than I did. I was a NW 5 by age 22 when I had my first HT.

You can try telling Dr. Griffin something like this: There are a few other really good doctors farther away that will do 1300 grafts for $6500. I'd rather have it done locally for convenience, but a $2000 difference is a lot. If you can split the difference and do it for $7500 then it's worth it for me to stay near my house. You never know. He may give you a nice discount to get you as a patient rather than lose you to someone else. It all depends on how much business he has. You can also ask if they have a short notice discount. What happens then is if someone cancels at the last minute they call you up and tell you they have an opening available tomorrow because someone cancelled. You get a big discount for coming in on short notice. Otherwise they would have made $0 on that day. Some places do that and some don't. The drawback is don't really know when your appointment is until a day to a week or 2 ahead of time.

HiFi, How long have you been using the amazing laser brush? I have the 6 laser model that I got for $119. I've been using it for about 4 months now and it really seems to be making a difference. My regimen includes proscar, nizoral shampoo, and the laser brush. I can't use minoxidil because of bad reactions. Looks like the link to your pictures was removed, so I wasn't able to view them.

baldeagle's post is a perfect example of what I've been trying to say about laser therapy over the last few months. He says "the laser thing was a waste of money". If someone reads that it surely sounds like it didn't work for him, yet he says "In all honesty, the laser hair therapy (LHT) DID provide mild to moderate improvement in my hair loss". My guess is he may not feel it was a waste of money if he would have gotten those results for $400 or less. So as I've been saying, when you hear people say it doesn't work, not worth the money, waste of time, etc. you have to ask if it was the money factor rather than the actual results factor. I can certainly understand why someone would rather pay $10,000 for a HT and get a lot more hair than they did by paying $10,000 for laser therapy. I have to ask baldeagle that since he knows it did provide some growth and knows it does work on him, would he consider using a laser comb to prevent furher loss after the HT. It sounds like a reasonable plan to me.

My guess is it's the rogaine/minoxidil that stopped working more than the propecia and you're losing the extra growth you were getting from that. That's known to only work for a few years in many people. Propecia has a longer time frame of effectiveness. I've been taking it for 10 years and it's still working for me. I'll also add that I think there can be a few years when you would naturally be going through very fast, agressive hairloss that the meds have a harder time fighting it. Once you get past those years to when your hairloss will have slowed on it's own, the meds start having a better effect again. If you can keep as much hair as possible until then you'll be better off at that time. At least that's what seemed to happen to me over the years.

OK. Let me see if I can help clear this up between everyone. I think there are 2 main points of yours that if you toned down some the entire thing would have been taken more seriously. I think the first problem was calling it repair work. I think that was a bit extreme. I would call it more of unsatisfactory work. I think if you called it something more along the lines of that then the other thread wouldn't have been so hostile. The next problem was the scar. You made it sound much worse than it is. Maybe partly because Dr Feller said he couldn't do anything to fix it because it wasn't in the area that he felt it was better to take donor hair from. I wouldn't like it either if I went to try to get scar reduction and the Dr said he can't do it at this time, but I don't think that makes it a bad scar I don't view it as a bad scar. It's a bit wide at some spots, but this does happen. Not everyone has a scar that can hardly be seen. I don't see yours as overly wide from what I can see of it. I also don't agree with the way you say it was done incorrectly. I think that's more of a philosophy thing. Most doctors make the smiley face scar, but I can tell you from experience that it can sometimes be better to have a low scar. It's easier to cover a lower scar if your balding area increases in size. That could make a higher scar unable to be hidden well if the bald area widens to near the scar line on the sides. I don't know what you looked like 3 years ago when you had the first HT done, but I can imagine the doctor would have taken young age and extent of hairloss in consideration and placed the donor scar in that spot in case you ended up at a NW 7. Now on to the parts I agree with from what I can see. It does look like you got less than satisfactory growth, although I don't know if wearing a hair system for 3 years may have made it worse than it would have been. It looks like you got an inch or so of grafts placed around the front hairline (looks like a reddish area along your hairline). Is that the grafts? Or is that because of the hair system? I'm not sure on that. I don't know what kind of expectations you had, but I'll assume you had reasonable expectations for 2000 grafts that you say were agreed upon. I think if anyone went in expecting to end up with growth that 2000 grafts would reasonably achieve then they should definitely be unsatisfied if the results don't show that. You expect to get growth of 2000 grafts. The Dr only does 1500. That fact alone I know would be unacceptable to many people on here including myself. Add that to not even getting (from what I can see at this point in time) decent growth for 1500 and I can certainly agree that the results are unsatisfactory and below what it should have been So my conclusion is: Yes I can see why you would be unhappy with the results. From what I see it looks like you had poor growth and not enough grafts even if there was good growth. I don't think anyone would be happy with what I see. However I don't think the scar was bad as far as HT scars go. PS. I see you're looking much better now. At least now you can get rid of the hair system and be happy with hair!!

For FUE you have to buzz the entire area for the procedure to be done, but afterwards you can grow your hair as long as you want to. With strip some doctors require shaving the recipient area if you still have some of your own hair growing there, but afterwards you can grow your hair to any length, although you may have a donor scar visible at very short lengths. The donor area will be buzz cut, but most of that area is what is being removed to be placed where you need it and that will be sutured or stapled closed.

If you're going to try this I suggest you buy a laser comb and use it at home rather than going to a clinic and spending thousands.

Are you taking any medication for the stress disorder? If you are then perhaps that's what is causing the hair loss.

Read the label for the active ingredient. The active ingredient in Nizoral is Ketoconazole 1% (or 2% by prescription). If the active ingredient in Fungoral is the same then you should be OK.

A few well know people saying it doesn't work, but who have never actually tried it or done any study is not what I consider evidence that it doesn't work. If you read posts on various forums and such I think you'll find that most people who say it doesn't work are those who never used it and most people who have used one say it does work. Don't compare a home use comb or device with laser hoods used a few times a week at a doctors office. You can have 1000 people use rogaine 2 or 3 times a week and they won't get anywhere near the same growth results as a group of people using it twice a day as suggested.

When i started using the laser comb, I decided to try it for 6 months before I made a final determination of whether I thought it worked or was total crap. However I also said I would keep everyone updated on the progress (or lack of) during those 6 months. This is what I have done. If my hair all falls out I will tell you. If it grows in like Elvis I'll tell you. If after 6 months I feel my hair is till the same as it was before I'll say that. I have no agenda other than trying to get more hair growing on my head. I post about it to let others know how my trial is going since there doesn't seem to be any other real ongoing results anywhere. I really wish the other 2 or 3 people who said they startd using it around the same time I did would post their results so we can see what's going on. What happened to Petesman?

Somewhat true I agree, but 1. I'm not here to be a guinea pig and stop taking everything else that helps just so I can prove to you or anyone whether or not the laser comb works. I'm here to grow hair. If what works for me is a combination of things then that's what I'll use. 2. I've been on proscar for 10 years since it came out. It stopped my hair from falling out and has very slowly over the years thickened my hair, but that was a VERY slow process over many years. Some of the hair that grew has never grown past being short thin hairs. Even the ones that did grow long still were very thin, fine, wispy hairs. 3 I said several times I thought I was a good candidate to try the laser comb because the proscar did grow a lot of very fine hairs on my head, so the laser comb had something to work with since the biggest thing about the laser comb is it's supposed to help existing hairs grow better, longer, and thicker. 4. Once I started using the laser comb some of the fine hairs that can hardly ever be seen started growing longer. Some of them have now grown to an inch or more where the most they ever grew before was just barely breaking the surface. The ones that were growing longer before seem to be thickening in the shaft. This was not happening (or happening VERY slowly over a period of years with proscar). 5. I was able to reduce the proscar dosage because I no longer get a sebum buildup on my scalp. After more than 25 years of oily, greasy, sebum filled scalp unless I took enough proscar, it suddenly stopped just a few days after starting to use the laser comb. With that, my 3 month of use feelings is that the laser comb is working.