calvinmd

I'm surprised nobody else has said this yet . . . You're a 26yo guy with hair loss, and you want to get grafts below the NW#2 level? Risky. Ris-s-ky. I'm not saying you can't do it, but I'm saying that in most cases you shouldn't do it. If you still wanna pursue such a low hairline, then you need to be VERY realistic & far sighted with yourself about what your future loss pattern could be. Family history, miniaturization signs right now, etc. (And don't listen to Dr. Armani's clinic on this particular issue, either!) ------------------------------------------------

JoJoJo1: Here's what you're really trying to figure out about HTs: Unfortunately, you cannot just pluck a hair from the back of your head, stick it into the front, and get new hairs growing from both places when you're done. (If this was the case, you'd never see a bald guy on earth again!) All "hair" transplants are essentially just "skin" transplants. You're starting with no hair on the front/top but still having dense hair in the back/sides. Doing HTs is a way to trade that situaiton for somewhat less-dense hair all over your head. Whether it's "strip" method, or the "punch-graft" method (not good), or the newest "FUE" methods . . . they're all basically taking a bit of skin from the back/sides of your head that still has hair-growing follicles on it, and then re-implanting it into the front/top. So whatever is added to the front/top is still being subtracted from the sides/back some way or another. The various methods of doing the HT process are mostly about hiding the fact that hair has been taken out in back, as well as maximizing how much hair can be subtracted before anything begins to show. The hair transplant process would be extremely good & effective (hell, it woulld functionally cure baldness for everyone) except for the fact that everyone has a limited amount of hairs that can be subtracted from the "donor" areas. The transplantation process "works" fine and the transplanted hair eventually regrows in the front looking identical to how it grew in the back. But nobody has enough donor hair to duplicate how their head was before they began to lose natural hairs, so the whole thing is a effort to disguise the MPB issue. ------------------------------------------------

That prediction about Armani (get all the cash he can get right now, and then get out before the lack of real donor hair shows itself) sounds terrible. But unfortunately I don't see how it could be anything else. Armani seems to be a new animal in the HT world: As time goes by, he's creating more and more of a Bosley-style hair mill. But this is one that actually delivers top-notch results from the individual session. It's the long-term recklessness that he shares with the HT butcher chains. --------------------------------------------------

Hairme07-- This issue is exactly the point of all the controversy. Armani's estimates of donor grafts are the subject of whole threads on numerous MPB forums like this one. Here's the short version (and I hope this isn't a total surprise to you): Armani's notorious for estimating the remaining donor grafts at much higher numbers than the other respected HT docs ever do. (Most of the respected HT field seems to agree on the idea that 6-7K is average and 8-10K is rare & great.) Armani has a way of estimating donor grafts at "10-15K" on a lot of people. But so far, he hasn't actually produced any patients with any higher numbers than the other docs. We aren't finding cases of angry patients coming up short yet, but Armani hasn't been doing this long enough for the issue to have really shown up yet in a big way either. And when those anomalously-high donor estimates are being used to justify doing pretty aggressive HTs on younger patients . . . This is why Armani has developed a repuation for being ethically questionable, even though nobody ever argues against his actual transplanting skills. ------------------------------------------------

I think half the problem with the "monkey's ass" look is that nobody wants to build-in for it with any amount of temple recession in front. Everyone wants a NW#2 (or even lower!) in the front. But when I look at the world, I hardly ever see that kind of nice hairline in nature on a head that also has a bare crown. It looks so much more natural to leave the temples recessed and get the crown lightly covered. Sporting a perfect NW#2 hairline with a bare crown is a "psyche-out" appearance. It signals "no-MPB" in front, but presents major MPB in the back. ------------------------------------------------

I'm not saying don't ever use finasteride. I'm on the stuff right now. But having said that, everything I've been able to read about finasteride & MPB users makes me think that the 2% number for the side effects is absolutely bullsh*t. I'd bet 1000 grafts of my donor hair that the true number is a lot higher than that. Just for one example: I've read that that numerous men in Merck's studies dropped out of the trials before they were finished. That's not abnormal by itself. But apparently these cases were NOT factored into any of the side-effect findings! (You don't suppose than any of them might have quit the drug because of ED problems, do you?) The good news: There's also a lot of user feedback that the side effects seem to reverse themselves with time if you quit the drug. Most people seem to find that it takes a lot longer than just a few days to get back to normal, but they're usually feeling a lot better a few months after they've quit the stuff even if they had spent a couple of years using it. Although this is not every case. Some users have complained that they never quite got back to 100% pre-Finasteride, and there are a few real horror stories of problems that do seem to be pretty permanent. (But it makes me wonder about the timeframe: If you spent several years on the drug, you're also just OLDER for chrissakes! That issue alone decreases your sex drive at least a little bit, especially if you started Finasteride during your 20s/30s.) ------------------------------------------------

I saw your pics in the other posts -- You're definitely not in the better portion of HT candidates with that much hair loss, but a lot still depends on other factors. It's safe to say you won't have hair like Elvis even with any amount of transplants. (Just too much bald skin in relation to the amount of hairy scalp left.) Your age, your donor characteristics, and the results you expect still leave a lot of questions. Either way, it's not really a question of "am I a candidate?" For a lot of hair transplant clinics out there, they'll define a "candidate" as just about anyone with money to spend. There are tons of unscrupulous doctors all over the country who would be happy to take your money and operate on your head whether your appearance stands to benefit from it or not. But it's up to YOU to educate yourself about the HT process for a while (months, at the very least) and decide whether you think the benefits will outweigh the downsides for your situation. Whatever hair that gets added to the top/front has to come from the back/sides, and everyone's head gives a limit to how much hair that any HT doctor has to work with for them. No matter what you do, ANY hair transplant surgery will leave you with enough scarring on the back of your head to permanently rule-out the shaved-down bald appearance. You can either choose to do the Bruce-Willis-style bald haircut, or you can get a HT, but not both. You CANNOT ever shave down that short once you've had your first HT without the big obvious scars being visible on the back of your head. Unfortunately this is true with even the best HT doctors. ------------------------------------------------

When the drugs are quit, the hair loss is back. Your hair doesn't "stop growing" in the literal sense or anything, but the natural MPB pattern resumes. Minoxidil is a VERY harsh drug to quit. That will cause all the benefits that it had ever provided to disappear within months. Not pretty. You'll be right back where nature had intended for your MPB to be. Minox stops the body from carrying out the DHT's orders to execute the hairs, but it doesn't stop DHT from continuing to bond to more hair follicles during the entire time you're using it. Finasteride (Propecia) is a little easier on the hair to quit it. Your MPB still quickly resumes, but at least using Fin for 5 years will put your hair loss permanently 5 years behind where nature had intended. Fin stops the DHT damage in the first place. Either way, tapering off the drugs tends to be better than an abrupt stoppage. Especially with Finasteride. ------------------------------------------------

Bill -- I honestly think the results are decent by anyone's yardstick. It looks a little thin on the front/top in the harsh ligthing shots to be honest. (But that's measuring it against a no-MPB yardstick, which is not exactly fair. It's amazing that I'm making those kinds of comparisons about a NW#6 guy's HT work, isn't it?) I think the hairline is very well-placed & shaped for your head. IMHO the transplanted hair is definitely a major improvement in your appearance overall at this point. I'm curious: Any thoughts on what the density might be in the typical places in those pics? Like in the hairline and in the frontal third? I'm always trying to figure out what various densities look like, and you really take some honest pics. ------------------------------------------------

After reading this whole thread, I went and looked at my hairline in the mirror. (Dark hair on light skin.) I originally though it looked natural but the longer I look at it the weirder it starts to look. Kinda pluggy, irregular, too "soft" in the transition, etc. I'm disappointed with it now. . . . but I haven't had any HTs. This is my natural hairline I'm talking about. ------------------------------------------------

Honestly, I'm not exactly sure where I read that info anymore. When I first was investigating the idea of taking something for MPB, I was just reading everything I could find on the issue of hormonal drugs. (Testosterone, DHT, Estro, etc.) I read a bunch of MPB articles, websites, body-building info on similar subjects, various message boards, etc. I even talked a little bit with a couple of friends who work in the pharamceutical & medical fields. That description about Fin's effects on the system came from that load of reading/digging, but I'm not sure exactly where I first heard it. I think it was talked about that way in more than just one place, though. Either way, the idea that it wipes-down the "standing" levels of a drug that take a while to replenish themselves makes a lot of sense to my mind. It explains why the drug can have such a short life in the system, and yet it still seems to be capable of affecting people's bodies for much longer periods of time when they get side effects from it. The Finasteride itself might be outta the body within days, but the body's naturally slow regeneration of DHT will make Fin's effects linger for a longer time. (So the Fin users aren't lying when they complain about the side-effects lingering for weeks & months after stopping. But the drug researchers aren't lying either when they insist that Fin is totally out of the body within days.) It also means that taking Fin every other day (or even longer intervals, or at different times of the day, etc) is probably fine. What's really relevant is the net amount of fin that's "averaging" in your system week-by-week and month-by-month. ------------------------------------------------

Sounds like you're informed and thinking about ALL the long-term ramifications of more HT work. Of course that's the best way to be. I hope you don't lose heart on the whole fight, though. Like others are saying, there's more treatments that may really pan out eventually. (And in the last few years, a few of the "other treatments" are finally beginning to look like they might not all involve expensive/scarring HT surgery!) I'm just saying that even though you're being smart & realistic for today, don't give up all hope for the future. I mean, just the fact that you're pretty sure you have Androgenic Alopecia (as opposed to one of the other types of hair loss) sounds a little encouraging to me, believe it or not. Being the most common form, that's the type of hair loss that's getting the lion's share of the research and is probably the most likely to get new treatments within the foreseeable future. (Some of the other types of hair loss aren't getting the same amount of effort thrown at them. And unfortunately for those cases, it stands to reason that hair loss will probably just become even MORE socially-unacceptable for those people once AA becomes widely reduced.) ------------------------------------------------

Ask away. The internet will teach you more about hair transplantation than some doctors even know. And by the way, a lot of the respected HT doctors can actually be a good bit CHEAPER than a chain like Bosley. When you look past the sales pitches and begin to really compare various clinics in terms of hairs-per-dollars, you find out that paying more money doesn't always give you the best results. (When I first started researching the HT process, this surprised me too. But it's true.) ------------------------------------------------

I've been on a bunch of perscription stimulants over the years. (Sleep issues, ADD, etc.) I agree that stimulants inhibit growth of hair, but I think this issue can get over-emphasized sometimes. I find that it takes a pretty large dosage of a stimulant (read: illegal) before that even becomes an issue. Although everyone's body is different. But just look at the widespread stimulant usage in Hollywood - Lots of people in that industry are on everything from Adderal, to Dex, to full-blown raging cocaine addictions. If big hair loss with even just prescribed amounts of stimulants were really that commonplace, then there wouldn't be any real hair left on TV. ------------------------------------------------

I realize that there's much more to the story than just raw DHT levels, but I'm very wary of all the zillions of drugs/herbs that purport to grow hair based on fighting the inflammation alone. IMHO, that's basically just fighting the outward appearance of hair loss (the visibly missing hairs) without ever treating or even slowing down the underlying problem (DHT damage). But when making that last post above, I had been under the impression that NEOSH101 was basically just a supercharged minox. From what you say, it sounds like NEOSH101 might be able to do something more significant for the problem than just fighting inflammation. THAT would be real progress. I still don't know what to think about the long-term issues with any of these drugs. That's why I'm so wary. Stopping the DHT with something like finasteride might not work forever, but at least you know that the ground it gained on your MPB was really gained. MPB might eventually retake those hairs if you quit fin, but at least MPB hasn't still been invisibly gaining on you during the whole time you were on the pills. I will be really encouraged if NEOSH101 has this kind of lasting prevention effect like the current DHT inhibitors do. ------------------------------------------------

You could get a specific answer, but it won't tell you what you probably want to know. It's not about how long Fin stays in the system. That's why you're finding conflicting answers about how long Fin's effects linger. Finasteride actually stays in the system for a pretty short amount of time (a few hours, maybe days at the most). But the DHT-type#2 that was drastically reduced takes a lot longer to get replenished by the body and return to normal levels. (This is normal. The DHT#2 always builds slowly. But unless finasteride is there to wipe out the standing supply, your body would usually have a large amount of it sitting in the system at any given time because it get eliminated so slowly.) Replenishing it takes a while. You'll get SOME DHT back pretty fast, but the 100% amount is gonna be a while. Several days even from just a few small daily doses of fin. Depending on how long & heavily you were dosing with Fin, it could even take weeks or a month to replenish the standing supply to FULLY normal. And then, depending on how severely/long the DHT was being reduced, the timespan for the body's tissues/organs to fully "bounce back" could be even longer than that. ------------------------------------------------

I'm not optimistic about that one. Sounds like they've got yet another drug that didn't do what they had developed it for in the first place, so now they've got nothing to lose by packaging it for MPB and seeing if they can get a little extra income out of us. That article makes it sounds like a type of glorified Minox, and that isn't any kind of long-term solution. Within a few years you're getting back to baseline again. -------------------------------------------------

I think the issue about ultimate possible HT density is really over-discussed. Basically, if you're any worse than a NW#2 and you're not at least 40 years old, then the issue is simply not relevant to you at all. Your hair loss & finite donor hair WILL limit your density long before the surgeon gets anywhere near the limits of his abilities. ------------------------------------------------

Everyone on this site would probably like to have a definitive answer to that question. Nobody knows. Merck didn't do long-term studies on it. (And if they'd even tried to wait for long-term evidence before releasing the stuff, we'd all be screaming at them to stop being so cautious and just release it already.) When you take into account the prostate-oriented users and those who started using it before it had been okayed for MPB, there are a fair number of users who have logged well over a decade with the stuff. So if everyone was gonna have some catastrophic effect at year 9 or something, it would have probably come up by now. I don't think anybody expects that the long-term effects are gonna turn out to be anything very good. But it's a question of HOW bad, how reversible, and is there a correlation between severity & long-term issues? ------------------------------------------------

I'm just extremely leery about any hair loss product that doesn't actually stop the DHT damage from occurring. Not preventing the DHT damage to the follicles = risky. Suppose John Q. Citizen is balding agressively. John-Q is using finasteride but he's sick of the sexual sides. Then NEOSH101 comes out and works beautifully. Suppose John-Q has gotten so much hair growing back better & stronger, and MPB seems to be a thing of the past . . . then he decides to stop being the only sexually frustrated & bald guy left on the block. He drops the finasteride and finally gets the HTs he's always wanted. He maxes-out his donor area to be a NW#2 with a good sex life again . . . . . . but suppose a few years later, this (new, untested) NEOSH101 gets yanked off the market for safety reasons. Or suppose men's bodies just start to "accomodate for it" the way they seem to do with anything else after a while . . . Now, John-Q is TOTALLY F*CKED!!! He's got a whole head of DHT-damamged hair, he's got years of no finasteride anymore, and his new ace-in-the-hole inflammation blocker is suddenly gone. His scalp feels like it's on fire and his natural hair races up about four Norwood levels inside of six months. His donor area is strip-scarred & totally exhausted, he's got thousands of damn near original-density grafts stuffed into the first few inches of his hairline, and he's got a totally bald head behind it. Totally f*cked. Hair Club member for life. And every step of the way, everything he did seemed to be quite a safe & prudent course of action at the time he did it. ------------------------------------------------

Wynter: If the hairline is to be lowered come hell or high water, then IMHO you should get a FUE hair transplant in front rather than having any kind of "hairline lowering" done with a scalpel. And just lower the center area of the hairline, leaving the temples un-lowered. If it turns out that you start balding in a few years, then you've got no linear scars anywhere (which allows a relatively short buzz cut) and you haven't even committed to filling in your temples with the future transplants you'll need. (Somewhat receded temples is a much safer way to have the hairline, in terms of future HT issues and limited donor hair.) The bottom line is that if ever do ANYTHING about the hairline, from ANY field of cosmetic surgery, then you're 100% committed to the full-blown hair transplant process as soon as any male-pattern baldness shows up. But what I'm suggesting will be the least-possible risk to take and still do anything about framing your face better right now. ------------------------------------------------

I wonder if this stuff would have the "everything falls out almost immediately if you ever quit using it" problem that minox has. That issue alone has kept me from getting on minox. Knowing that I have no choice but to gunk-up my head again every few hours for the rest of my life is not worth it. Anything that doesn't stop the androgen receptors or the DHT in the scalp . . . it'll absolutely hook you into using the product for life. -------------------------------------------------

Okay, you've made up your mind. But even so: 1.5-2.0cm is A LOT to lower a naturally-occurring hairline. A LOT. I realize that sometimes doing a hairline-lowering job can be an improvement in appearance, but even in those cases I can't think of anybody I've ever seen or known who would need 2cm's worth of it. More like .5-1.0cm at the most. Find someone who is really good with photoshop to do a new pic of you with the lower hairline. I'll bet money that you'll look better without the entire 2cm's worth of lowering. The fact that you're pushing for 2cm makes me wonder if you've gotten way too obsessed with this one particular bad feature of your face and you're wanting to absolutely annihilate it now that you're gonna have it worked on. The hairline may be too high now, but that doesn't mean you should have your surgeon knee-jerk it way too low. Do an internet search for "Micheal Jackson's nose" and you'll see the harmful results of OVER-fixing a slight flaw after too many years of emotionally stressing over it. Jacko might have really benefitted from the first two or three nosejobs, but . . . (And I also still vote STRONGLY not to try to get your hairline lowered at all. I'm a person who's got virtually no hair loss in the genes and I'm still starting to bald in my late 20s.) ------------------------------------------------

Bicep implants are probably real. I know there's already a different/stiffer type of "breast implant" for guys who wanna look buff. A couple years ago, I saw a dude on some MTV or VH1 special who got calf-implants. He literally got a surgery & paid $5000 or something to make his lower legs look more muscular. That seems nuttier than bicep implants. Either way the gym is a better idea. Chicks would probably accept arm implants a lot less than dudes even accept boob implants. ------------------------------------------------

I hear you. You're not interested in doing this operation for baldness-related reasons. But how old are you? Maybe you're not going bald right now, but unfortunately that doesn't mean you won't be fighting baldness in the front area a few years from now. This is why nobody wants to do this operation on you right now. The doctors insist on treating your case like a male-pattern baldness case because it's very possible for you to end up in that situation in the future even though you're not in that situation right now. ALL hair transplants & hairline moving surgeries leave scarring on your skin. (Not just the "botched" ones.) Hair transplants only look acceptable because the patients plan on NEVER shaving their heads bald again during their whole lives. The scarring will be VERY obviously visible on your forehead if you go bald later. Think about it. -------------------------------------------- EIther way, the rule of thumb is that you should be AT LEAST 25-26 before getting HTs, and being 30 years old isn't even the safest plan yet. If you keep looking for doctors willing to do a HT on you at a younger age, you will find them. Just not ETHICAL doctors. They're not interested in making you happier with your appearance for the long-haul, they're just interested in telling you whatever it takes to get your money right now. THOUSANDS OF MEN ARE LIVING WITH A PERMANENTLY-BOTCHED APPEARANCE BECAUSE OF THIS! LITERALLY THOUSANDS! DON'T THINK IT WON'T HAPPEN TO YOU! I think you should look into hair transplantation rather than some type of incision surgery to move your hairline. FUE transplants are amazingly good looking & natural without leaving big line-scars anywhere. (The scars are small scattered dots that are much harder to see with short haircuts.) -----------------------------------------------