calvinmd

The issue of whether ICX's stuff regenerates existing follicles or regrows new ones might be VERY important. If you've had most of your bald head area surgically worked on during previous HT procedures, then you might benefit from this a lot less than others. Your donor wouldn't really have many "dead" follicles to revive, and the MPB'd follicles in your bald areas would probably have suffered a hell of a lot of damage from the past HT procedures. I can't believe they're this far into the game, and they still don't have a clear-cut answer for such a basic question. ------------------------------------------------

Probably plugs/minigrafts. The hairline point looks like it was placed offline with the rest of his head! . . . And yet Stan Lee is a household-word person for a lot of people in the country. He does cameos in movies, etc. Have you ever heard anyone talk about his "weird hair?" Most people just don't know about this kind of stuff at all, let alone care enough to look for it all the time. Get a decent modern HT procedure done and virtually 99% of the people out there simply won't ever know a thing, whether you think it's dense/perfect enough or not. ------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately, the follicles are MUCH more complex than just the skin layer itself. I do think Intercytex seems to be making more progress on hair cloning/HM than any of the other past efforts. But I notice that the Intercytex operation has always been talking a lot more about their progress over past HM attempts rather than talking about actually producing fabulous Elvis-headed results with their trials. I think that's a small but very important distinction. -------------------------------------------------

The "signature" argument might help explain why the dork hasn't tried to fix his head, but I don't think that would explain how/why he took on such a ridiculous appearance in the first place many years ago. Baldness just doesn't cover it IMHO. I think he's hiding a butchered head. --------------------------------------------------

Finasteride seems to be essentially a trade-off: More hair for more side-effects. The recommended dosage of 1mg per day doesn't seem to be based on anything medical, but rather just picking a point on a chart that seemed like a decent balance between the two issues. You can split pills into pieces if you want. For example, half a milligram seems to have most of the effects of a whole milligram. The stuff can last for more than a day, so you can take a given amount every other day if you wish. But I don't think I'd wait two days between doses. ------------------------------------------------

Yeah, this news has been posted before. I honestly have more short-term faith/hope in this stuff than I have in hair cloning. I still have the majority of my native hair right now. Saving original hair in a real, permanent, and non-side-effected way would really change the ballgame in regards to HTs. It would potentially allow traditional HTs to offer much more of a "cure" than they can right now, because you could transplant MUCH more aggressively with much less future hair loss to compromise & plan around. If you give them all the donor hair they want and a couple of surgeries to do the job, then the best HT docs can already go pretty near original-density just using existing methods. If you find a way to really reduce/eliminate future hair loss, then many of the younger MPB sufferers would be within transplantable range of being functionally "cured." ------------------------------------------------

Chill man. You asked for responses. When I referred to "a writer who doesn't know much about hair loss" etc, I wasn't intending to refer to you. I meant that was my immediate reaction to the article that you linked to. (I'm sorry if that accidentally came off like I was picking on you rather than the article's author.) With regards to Fin, I also didn't mean that a lack of DHT itself is the culprit of the side effects. I meant to say that the main function of Fin (lowering DHT, and the subsequent rise in estrogen that it generally causes) was causing the side effects. I totally agree that the estrogen increase probably has more to do with the side effects than anything else. I re-read what you posted and I think I understood it better this time. I can see why it's an interesting idea; it sounds like potentially a way to create an alternative version of "finasteride" that converts the excess DHT into more testosterone rather than estrogen. I'm not sure whether that's entirely the greatest idea either, at least when used alone. (Testosterone can be overdone, too.) But I could definitely imagine that using some combination of Finasteride and this other stuff might work to produce a much more properly-balanced hormonal system than the Finasteride alone is capable of doing. It's interesting, and it might really bear looking into. ------------------------------------------------

Now way there isn't SOMETHING wrong with his scalp. Maybe plugs, maybe scalp reductions/flap work . . . but definitely some sort of surgical problem under there.

I think it reads like some decent suggestions, but I think maybe it suffers from a little of the "pro-natural bias" at the expense of real results in several places. They at least alluded to the idea of Saw Palmetto rather than Finasteride. Nice try, but SP's known prostate benefits don't transfer to MPB results anywhere near as well. That aspect of SP is pretty well known among the hair loss community. So whenever I read someone suggesting SP for hair loss, I immediately begin to suspect that I'm listening to a writer who doesn't know much about hair loss but they're pretty sure they can dig up a "natural" alternative to anything made by the pharmaceutical industry. It makes me think the source is more biased than informed. The stuff about naturally manipulating 5-alpha-reductase is interesting. However, I'm not sure I see the big benefit. The side effects & problems from DHT inhibition seem to primarily come from the DHT inhibition itself, not anything else in the process. So I suppose a natural alternative might work to spare your liver some amount of processing issues, but I doubt it's actually gonna have fewer side effects for a given amount of hair loss. It sounds like another case of a natural alternative that's good to know, but probably doesn't offer any real seat-of-the-pants improvement over the existing pharmaceutical option. ------------------------------------------------

I read a lot of the same things. SP has less side-effect issues than Finasteride, and it has a similar effect on the prostate as Fin. It would be wonderful if SP would also work on hair with fewer sides than Finasteride, but the overall conclusion of the hair loss community seems to be otherwise. "No sides, and no hair benefits either" is what the vast majority of the hair loss SP users say.

As I understand it, the stuff is basically like a "concealer" at a chemical level. It makes the hairs grow stronger when you're using it, but it doesn't do anything to stop the DHT from continuing to damage the hair follicles. The rate of loss doesn't really slow down once the initial "boost" during the first few years is past.

I've come to think that the way the temple areas are handled is absolutely vital if you're gonna have a big bald crown later on. It's true that there are natural cases of strong frontal 1/3rds with bald crowns, but how many of them EVER have strong filled temples in front with that crown? Practically none that I ever see in the real world. The few times I see it occurring, the balding seems to be much more of a "diffuse thinning" look in the balding area rather than a harsh transition from hair-to-bald everywhere. When looking at a man straight-on from the front, seeing flat NW#1-2 temples is a visual "no MPB" message, and it creates the subconscious expectation that the rest of the guy's head is gonna be as hairy as the front view. Seeing a huge bald spot in back when the same guy turns his head is so unexpected that it draws attention to itself. So what's the moral of the story? IMHO balding crowns and NW#1-2s DO NOT go together. No matter how dense the front may be, a NW#2.5 frontal hairline (or better still, a NW#3) is much better. The subconscious signal you're sending from the front is "baldness is at least possible on my head," and that makes a huge difference when the bald crown shows up. -------------------------------------------------

Why can't we all just get 6-7 HTs? Simple. HTs don't create any new hairs. The number of hairs is staying the same, and your skull is staying the same size. The more hair you take from the back/sides, the thinner those areas become. After you use up about 5000-8000 grafts (on average), your donor area can't lose any more hairs without looking unnaturally thin and also revealing the strip-scars. This is why the entire baldness community has such a collective hard-on for the concept of "hair cloning" to work out. Cloned hair follicles = unlimited donor hair supply. ------------------------------------------------

PHX, what's your overall MPB situation? Your age, and Norwood level right now? Any other areas thinning at all? Family history of hair loss in blood relatives? The biggest deal-breaker on eventual HT results usually isn't the first HT, it's the basic donor-hair-versus-lost-hair ratio that the guy walks into the clinic with. If you've got major-league hair loss and you're only in your 20s, then this is a BIG problem. If you're a little older and have a more reasonable amount of hair loss overall, then you can rest relatively easy. The worst possible outcome is that you still get essentially what you want, it just takes another round in the HT chair with a different doc to finish the job.

I also say it's way too early for HTs in this case. NW#5 and it's already so visible at this young age . . . I'd be downright surprised if you didn't progress to at least a shiny-head NW#6 by the time you're 30. Can't rule out a NW#7. And with the major-league amount of DHT susceptibility you must have for this kind of hair loss at 20, I personally might worry about serious donor-thinning problems a few more decades down the road. 1300 grafts? No way. That's enough for the full-bore strip scar that commits you to HTs for life, while also being too little to make the kind of cosmetic difference that it needs to. Forget it. IMHO, your gut feeling is correct that the number is too small to do what it needs to do. -------------------------------------------------

Just to avoid any confusion for any other noobs reading this -- The scars never totally "heal" in the sense that they're always visible for the rest of your life if your head were to ever be shaved smooth. The linear scar will "heal up" into a very fine line of scar tissue. It will be almost as if someone drew a long line across the skin of your head with a peach-colored magic marker. In the best cases it's as small as a 1-2mm wide, and it it's hard to even find it by hand when there's hair grown out over it. It will never be truly "gone" unless future scar healing technology advances beyond anything we have right now. It's just a question of how short your hair can be before the scar begins to show. A "better" scar is one that won't be visible to other people in public even with fairly short hair lengths on the back/sides. ------------------------------------------------

If Propecia was being held off the market for decades to wait for safety trials, then we'd all probably be screaming for them to get over the "minor" incidences of sides and just let us try it & decide for ourselves. But since it's been put out there as "safe" and Merck's side effects figures are way lower than the "feeling in the air" in the hair loss community, I think we probably react more negatively than if we just didn't have any info about it at all. To each his own. I personally think Merck is lying through their teeth (or else they just didn't want to know what was really going on for plausible deniability reasons). But that doesn't make the drug evil. Just a little more problematic than Merck's sale pitches want us to think. Either way, if Propecia wasn't on the market, it would be the hottest underground hair loss drug out there. There'd be tons of users claiming it's got no side effects at all. ------------------------------------------------

I'll wait as long as I wanna wait for the decision to get HTs. But I won't wait for all these future advancements that have such a long track-record of not coming on time. --------------------------------------------------

If you're a younger guys who's not really bald but has just lost the hair above the sides . . . You're showing early stages of MPB. Mild temple-area recession is normal to happen between the ages of 20-30, but the process is also the first stage of larger hair loss for many guys. If you are genetically predisposed to getting male pattern hair loss and the temple hair loss is not the end of the process, then unfortunately your hair loss WILL UNQUESTIONABLY get worse over time. It's only a question of how much worse and how long it will take to happen. I'm sorry to be the bearer of possibly very bad news for you. But you're talking about HT surgery, and it's important that you realize what you're getting yourself into. There are a lot of unethical doctors out there (yes, even the well-known doctors who claim to be at the cutting edge of the hair loss field) who will take your money, and lie to you, and leave you worse off than if you had never sought their services in the first place. I'm saying all this because you NEED to educate yourself about the hair transplant world before seeking any HT surgery, especially for temple/hairline work at a younger age. ------------------------------------------------

Hair loss does get a decent amount of funding. It's not the moon shot but there's millions being spent on it at this point. It has just turned out to be a surprisingly difficult job, and it wasn't being taken very seriously until the last couple decades. I'm not sure about the "protein" thing. Hair cloning (or hair "multiplication" methods) have been done since at least the 1980s. The cure for hair loss has been said to be "5-10 years away" for at least the last 20 years. The researchers are always posting optimistic estimates on things because they're trying to keep people investing in their work and nobody wants to wait too long for the payoff. Right now it's hard to know. On the one hand, it's the same "5 years away" that we've always heard. But on the other hand, there are more kinds of things being tried by more different groups of scientists that ever before. At some point, raw probability would seem to dictate that one of these schemes will pan out. And the current batch of "5-10 years away" schemes are often partway through the FDA/other safety trials process now. That typically wasn't true about the past claims along those lines. It's a multi-million-dollar investment just for the trials alone, so nobody does that unless they think they're testing something realistic & workable. Right now, NEOSH101 is a chemical that seems to work as an ass-beating-strong version of Minoxidil. It doesn't have to be applied every day. It's several years into the trials. Androscience is testing a chemical for acne & hair loss that would interrupt the androgen receptors in the follicles/skin from working properly, and it may actually work to degrade their function in the long-term. ( It brings the promise of permanently less long term hair loss even after stopping the drug.) This stuff is in trials for acne right now, but the same process will basically work on hair loss too. Same androgens in the same skin layers. This one's also several years into the trials. Intercyctex is basically just the same old "hair cloning" racket. It just bears attention because everything about it smells pretty good. They've gotten serious funding for the project on the strength of what they're doing, and they're aiming for a widespread release (rather than just fixing up a few zillionaires). They seem to have made progress on one of the longstanding problems with all the hair cloning attempts (growth direction). They seem to be far & away the most serious cloning attempt yet, and there's some reputable hair researchers involved in it. They're about halfway through the safety trials right now. -------------------------------------------------

It doesn't just take 3-6 months. It can often take 6, 8, or 12 months to really see whether it's doing something for your hair. The hairs that are being affected by the drug are sometimes kicked into their "resting" phase when you start using the drug. So those hairs will take a few months before they even sprout again. If you're not getting side effects, don't quit the drugs until you've given the drug a year to work. --------------------------------------------------

I don't think I could do the system for life, but could really see using a system to hide the grow-out stage of a traditional HT. The systems don't always look perfect, but I'll bet there's also a certain amount of "you only see the bad ones" at work with that issue too. Hell, even if some people suspect that you're wearing one for a while, your eventual HT results would probably leave them thinking "I must have been imagining things" 6-12 months later. --------------------------------------------------

All of them do. The existing drugs weren't tested for frontal hair loss. That's not the same thing as saying they failed at the job. But crown loss is usually more predictable than frontal loss once it begins, so it makes sense that the crown would be the easier place to study. I've had some small regrowth at my temples from Finasteride. ------------------------------------------------

Thanks for the positive feedback. The whole thing probably doesn't mean too much for the "average" HT candidate who is 35 years old with small/medium hair loss. But these days we're seeing a combination of younger HT patients + severe raiding of the donor areas with big long strips & FUE work. It seems like this trend has eventual donor thinning problems written all over it. For all the advancements in HTs over the last 15 years, half the gains have been from simply finding ways to raid the donor areas more significantly. Unless some type of HM/cloning becomes a reality, this could still be big trouble. The earlier & more significant balders may just be trading the problematic HT results of the past in exchange for problematic donor thinning later in life. ------------------------------------------------

I think hair loss has gotta be the cruelest "minor" condition of its kind out there. I mean, imagine if there was a "male-pattern fatness" issue. Something that would only strike a certain percentage of men, and they have absolutely no control over it. Society would probably paint it as a noble & epic struggle. --------------------------------------------------