Al - Moderator

I always combed my hair to the side because my hair naturally grows that way, so it wasn't too hard to cover the thinning on top at first. The problem was I was only in my mid teens. My mom used to yell at me to stop pulling my hair out. It wasn't easy being called the kid with the bald spot at 16 years old. By the time I was 18 I couldn't cover it anymore and people were even asking me what disease I had or what was wrong with me, so I did start doing more of a comb over to try to hide it more. I didn't really realize I was doing a combover until one day my mom said "You comb your hair like a 40 year old bald man." and I just said back to her "Well I AM bald. That's why I look 40." My mom was still blaming it on me thinking I was pulling my hair out because I loved to run my fingers though my hair all day and twirl the ends of it since I was a little kid. I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror after that... and I think I started combing it over even more. The really bad part was after I had a hair transplant. Since then, I can't even cover the sides and back. I wish I could go back to just worrying about the top and maybe just shave it or cut it very short. Instead I have no options at all.

Isn't avodart basically just Rogaine with a few things mixed in? If so just use Rogaine for much less money. I think there's a couple of people here who alternate Proscar and Dutasteride. Take Proscar one day and Dutasteride the next day.

Once they offer a refund you can no longer post that they won't honor their refund policy. If you refuse the refund they still offered it and you still can't say that they wouldn't give you one. So basically I see his options as 1. Take the refund which was the original goal and stop posting about not getting a refund OR 2. Refuse the refund and still be required to stop posting about not getting a refund becaus they offered it. Seems like an easy decision. Why would you be mad at someone taking the refund that he was trying to get?

1. It's a commercial. Don't believe everything you see and hear. 2. You only have a limited amount of hairs that you can ever have transplanted. If some don't grow, you may not have enough donor area left to transplant more for free or for money. You are then left with less thickness than you should have had. 3. If they transplant 4000 grafts and 1000 don't grow, do you really want to risk another session with the same doctors considering there is a limited amount of donor hair? 4. Moving hair from one place on your head to another is only one part of the process. The transplanted hair has to look natural, be placed at the right angles, correct density to mix in with surrounding hair, etc. 5. There is also the donor scar. Some doctors are better at leaving less of a scar. 6. Bosley is a chain. You never know who will actually be working on you. Hair Transplant chains generally get the beginner hair transplant doctors. It's like the minor leagues. If they were really good they would open their own practice and make a lot more money. 7. Watch out for being quoted a price that is lower than other places, but then during the procedure they tell you they will need to charge more for various reasons. 8. Go here: http://www.bosleymedicalviolations.com/

I've been taking proscar for years. I started lifting weights almost daily about a year and a half ago. I found that my hair grows better now and I can use a lower dosage of proscar. I heard several fitness "experts" say that lifting weights is good for growing hair and I've found that it's true for me. I don't know about the protein shakes though. I guess it depends on what in it.

Artificial hair implants were banned in the US about 20 years ago because they have a high rate of infection. Just combing your hair can hurt and cause bleeding. It was also pluggy looking because they would put a bunch of hairs in each small implant (maybe 2mm wide I think they were). If you do smaller ones you would have to do more of them, so you're just going to have more of them getting infected and needing to be removed as time goes by.

One thing to be concerened about is being able to cover the strip scar after FUE. Doing some FUEs in a limited area around your donor scar will leave the area around the scar thinner, so you may not be able to cover the scar as well with less hair around it.

To crewguy28: It definately can be from the rogaine/minoxidil. I used to get dizzy, my heart would start beating rapidly, and a few other reactions. Here are a few of the adverse reactions in the older documentation. I don't know what the wording is these days, but I think they've since downplayed a lot of this stuff now that it's over the counter rather than prescription. 7.36% had Respiratory reactions including bronchitis, upper respiratory infection, sinusitus. 4.33% had Gastrointestinal reactions including diarrhea, nausea, vomitting. 3.42% had neurological reactions including headache, dizziness, faintness, light-headedness. 1.53% had cardiovascular reactions including edema, chest pain, blood pressure increase or decrease, palpitations, pulse rate increase or decrease. .36% had psychiatric reactions including anxiety, depression, fatigue. There were other items listed with percentage rates from .31 to 7.36 but I only listed the ones that you say seem to be happenning to you. I would stop taking the minoxidil and continue with the propecia and see what happens.

That shouldn't be a problem. I've had numerous surgeries and even had a transplanted area excised by strip removal to retransplant old plugs and then the resulting scar transplanted into during a later session.

That is false. It has FDA clearance to be marketed as a safe medical device because it bears similarities with previous devices that have been shown to be safe. The FDA did not determine or even attempt to determine whether or not it has any hair growth abilities.

Although it's only approved for safety that's certainly a good start. The price has been going down now that sales are picking up. You can get one for about $200 and you know it's safe to use. That's not a bad price to pay to see if it will work for you. There's really no risk. The meds for a year cost that much. It also doesn't stop you from using whatever meds you want to use along with it. Lets forget about the clinics who charge money to go sit in a chair while a laser machine is put on your head. Lets ONLY look at the newer hand held "comb" type of lasers. If you go to a clinic twice a month or maybe once a week it's not going to have any affect. Let's face it, if you use propecia or minoxidil twice a month they aren't going to work either... yet pretty much everyone here agrees those meds DO work if used correctly. So... lets look ONLY at the hand held lasers. If you search around the web, there's a good amount of evidence that it does work. I've heard several people say it at least had SOME benefits. Even the person who made the first post in this thread said it made his hair look better in 6 months. Isn't that about the same as we expect meds to do in 6 months? Don't you guys say stay with the meds at least a year especially if they seem to have stopped your loss and maybe making it look a little better? What if he stayed with it for the whole year? We already know it was working at least to some degree. I'm not saying it's the best thing ever, but I do think there's enough evidence out there to show that it does work for some people. Maybe I should buy one and try it and report back once a month. I actually think I might be a good candidate for it because I have a lot of long thin hairs growing all over my head that if I can just get them to be a little thicker to be similar to the other hairs on my head it would give me a much more full look even if I don't actually grow new hair.

Is that some new stance that NY is taking? They certainly didn't care a few years ago. I produced a bunch of material about Dr Hitzig, Dr Shwinning, and Dr Handler in NY that claimed a hair transplant was a cure for baldness, they will give you a full head of hair, no scar in the donor area, you'll always be treated as a patient seeking medical advice (my procedures were done by someone who turned out to not have a license to practice), I could go on and on. The state never did anything at all. In fact the Drs are still practicing and STILL doing punch grafts. They call it a linear punch. It's just a rectangular punch graft tool rather than a round one. They have offices in NY and NJ. I think the NJ State answers were even worse than NY. The NJ State Attorney general said it's not medical malpractice if the person doesn't have a license to practice medicine, so they weren't going to persue my complaint. Can you believe that!? It's a criminal act and they didn't care at all. According to THAT stance anyone at all can claim they are a doctor in NJ and do any surgery they want and be LESS likely to have the state look into a complaint than if they were licensed. No wonder Hitzig/Schwinning decided NOT to have someone in the NJ office have a license.

I don't think it can go down any more. It's a pretty good deal now especially considering that you can achieve a much better appearance than in years past. Back in the late 80s and early 90s it cost between $18.50 and $23.50 per graft and it usually came out looking pluggy.

Doctors in general yes, but not in the hair transplant field. How many people with botched jobs have you ever heard of who sued and ever got anything at all? I've only heard of maybe 3 cases. Some of the bad ones get into it because they weren't good enough to make it in their chosen field. Some have been barred from working in their chosen field because of complaints and lawsuits, so they get into elective surgery because it's much safer for them and their only way to continue to make a living as a doctor. I posted before on another thread that you don't really know if you accepted the risks until afterwards. Someone responded that if it came out really bad they would just sue the pants off the guy (don't remember the actual wording they used). I was tempted to respond, but I had said enough then, so I held back. If really think you can successfully sue for a botched job, you are just fooling yourself. It's nearly impossible.

My personal opinion 1. Normally hairs on your head grow for a few years, then stop growing for a few weeks, then fall out. A new hair starts to grow in the same place a few weeks after that. 2. It sounds like you may have shocked your system and sent a lot of hairs into the fallout phase. 3. If that is the case then the lost hair will begin to return a few weeks after the stuff you took is out of your system.

You may want to add something in the cost section about additional cost as the years go by if/when you continue to lose your hair. You may need $10000 now for 2000 grafts to fill in your thin or bald area, but as you lose hair as you age (A hair transplant does not stop your hairloss), you'll need more sessions to keep up. This is particulalry a problem for younger patients who are most likely losing hair at a faster rate and thus will need more work possibly in the not too distant future to keep it realistic looking. With the high costs involved, if you are losing hair fairly quickly it is entirely possible that you may not have the first session paid for before needing additional work done.

Unfortunately some of them are not human at all. But how far do you let lack of greed and morals go? If a stock broker swindles people out of money they end up going to jail. If a "doctor" swindles you out of monay AND slices you up giving you scars all over in the process that is OK. I think there's definately something wrong with that picture. If the stock brokers were smart they would come to your house and cut you a few times and avoid jail time. If the outcome is what you wanted then the doctor probably was not unethical at least in that one case. It's OK to have somewhat differing opinions and procedures on what is the best way to achieve a decent appearance as well as saving donor hair for possible use later.

Kind of ironic that they are also looking into the hedgehog signaling pathway for ways to cure cancer. Maybe if they successfully create a decent cancer drug, the side effect will be growing all your hair back. hehe.

I think in some people it does get completely into the blood stream and affect the entire body. I used to get sort of a full body swollen and puffy effect, my heart would start to beat very fast, and I would get dizzy and lightheaded and practically pass out. I usualy had to lie down on my bed for a half hour and try to calm my breathing down until it passed. Those are some of the listed possible side effects. There's also been a few women who have posted that they started getting unwanted hair growth in other areas.

Totally agree. That has definately been part of my problem over the years. After a ton of hair transplanting, I still looked like a bald guy. Some time back I even had a few people who hadn't seen me since before I started my HT ask me why I never got the hair transplant I said I was going to do... and that was after I spent $16000 on it.

I wish there was something like this site available when I had my transplants done. At the time there really was no way to get any kind of information on hair transplants except for the infomercials from the hair butcher mills.

A lot of people use both, so it wouldn't hurt to try it.

Minoxodil is absorbed into the skin. I imagine if you are using a lot of it daily it will start to spread out once it gets into your body perhaps affecting areas as much as 2 to 3 inches from where you are using it. The good news is he is definately responding to it, so hopefully he'll start getting hair growth in the rght areas soon. No way! I already have that problem. I grow hair all over my body... except for my head. How unlucky can a person get. LOL

I've been taking proscar for 10 years and I'm still slowly getting some hair growth. It's been sort of happening in stages. I'll gow some hair over a few months or a year and then it will stabilize and not get any thicker for a while. I wouldn't lose any either, just maintain what I had. Then a year or so later my hair goes into a new spurt of growth for a while. It's sort of been going back and forth like that for 10 years. Overall I've gained a fair amount of hair. The best part is even after 10 years of using it I'm now on the best growth stage I've ever had. It's lasted over a year and I've grown a few hairs in areas that I haven't had any in 15 years or more. I don't agree with anyone who says folicles die after a certain amount of time. I have to say this though. I've been thinking a lot about it lately and I'm pretty sure the growth spurts have coincided with my on and off working out and lifting weights. I sort of go on a workout kick for a while until I lose a few pounds and gain a bit of muscle and then I slack off until I feel out of shape again. In December of 2005 I made a New Years resolution to start lifting weights and continue the entire year. I did it and have continued into this year and my hair growth has been going on ever since. I DO KNOW that the proscar helps though. Whenever I miss taking it for more than about 3 days for whatever reason, I start getting a lot of shedding.

Here's my view. I'm in agreement with everyone here IN THEORY... meaning I think it's a bad idea to support or want a competing site and forum to exist that's run and supported by doctors who can't get recommended here. HOWEVER, here are the problems with that IN REALITY. 1. Those forums were almost totally empty until some of you here started posting on it the other day after it got mentioned by Jotronic. If you feel it's not right to support such a forum, then why are you? You're supporting it by making valid posts which will make the site valid. You're hurting your own cause. If a newbie looking for hair loss answers finds a hairloss forum in a web search and that site is pretty bare, the person will most likely move on to find another more active site. But if there's posts there, he will stay and ask questions and seek answers. We should monitor the site to see how things go, but should stay away from posting and making it a site that people start seeking answers on. 2. If you feel it's not right for the doctors listed on this site to support a doctor sponsored site, then again I have to ask... why do you feel it's OK for YOU to support such a site by posting there. 3. Any successful business is successful partly because they make themselves known in the community and have a presence there. If the other forum eventually has a lot of doctors and many potential patient vistors, shouldn't the doctors here reasonably be expected to make themselves known to visitors of the site? 4. By trying to force the best doctors off of a certain forum, aren't you contributing to the visitors of that forum getting ONLY recommendations from the bad doctors who are listed there? It sounds like you want to make the other site exactly what you say you don't want it to be. That is... butcher/hairmill doctors convincing visitors that their work is great. Visitors can only compare what is available to them. If you only make bad doctors available to them then you HAVE to expect that they'll be going to the bad doctors you say you don't support. I say get the best docs on that site and their great work will continue to outshine the bad docs who are trying to outsmart us.