Plucked some hairs from up top and donor today and did a comparison. Got some questions !!

[EpilepticSceptic]

I'm 40.5 years old, and am a solid NW 3 vertex. I have been this way for 15 years now since age 25. Back then I thought for certain I'd be a NW 6 chrome dome by now. I started taking proscar at age 30, but was very inconsistent with it until this last year. Within those 10 years I probably missed taking it for 3 years if you added up all the months where I failed to refill my prescription. Still, my condition remained the same with no further significant loss. My NW 3 pattern developed VERY rapidly from age 21 to 25, and then just mysteriously halted. My temples receded almost overnight and became slick bald skin with no hair at all. Yet the rest of the hair in the NW 3 pattern ( I call it the Richard Nixon look)has remained ever since and it appears to be at least somewhere around 40% of normal density.

 

So last night I plucked some hairs from my donor and the frontal forelock to compare the hair shaft diameter and hair quality. I have come accross many past posts (here & elsewhere)where people say to do this and that most will see a DRASTIC difference in the thickness and quality of the hair. To my pleasent suprise I see NO difference at all !! The color, thickness, and texture looks identical; and I plucked in random spots many times.

 

I have come to the conclusion that there must be a significant possibility that the hair I have remaining on top must somehow possess a much stronger genetic resistance to MPB than the hair that was lost from age 20-25. Is this a safe, reasonable assumption ? Is it possible to have inherited both MPB resistant and MPB suceptible hair within that NW 3 pattern area, and that what remains now is just all of the healthy MPB resistant hair ? Why else would 100% of all the random hairs plucked from my frontal forelock be of the exact same thickness and quality of the hair from my safe donor area ?

 

My mother's father had this exact same pattern of hairloss, and he retained the NW 3 pattern all the way until his death in his 60s. There are also some other hair pattern traits that I share with my mother, like the way the hair grows down the neck at the rear to form a "ducktail". My father has no such pattern, and he is a NW 6 who had reached that level at age 28. Everybody always told me that if your father is bald then you will be bald -- case closed. I guess that must not really be true.

 

It seems that with a HT the most important thing for me is to find a doc who is the very best at planting grafts BETWEEN existing healthy hairs without transecting the follicles. Since so many of the hairs still on top of my head equal the hair shaft caliber of my donor area, it seems logical to conclude that at age 40 it must be because they are MPB resistant.

 

Am I wrong for assuming this ?

[HairHope]

Despite your well thought out theory, shock loss is unpredictable - personally even with the best doctor I would count on it occuring; perhaps temporarily.

 

Originally posted by labrat69:

I'm 40.5 years old, and am a solid NW 3 vertex. I have been this way for 15 years now since age 25. Back then I thought for certain I'd be a NW 6 chrome dome by now. I started taking proscar at age 30, but was very inconsistent with it until this last year. Within those 10 years I probably missed taking it for 3 years if you added up all the months where I failed to refill my prescription. Still, my condition remained the same with no further significant loss. My NW 3 pattern developed VERY rapidly from age 21 to 25, and then just mysteriously halted. My temples receded almost overnight and became slick bald skin with no hair at all. Yet the rest of the hair in the NW 3 pattern ( I call it the Richard Nixon look)has remained ever since and it appears to be at least somewhere around 40% of normal density.

 

So last night I plucked some hairs from my donor and the frontal forelock to compare the hair shaft diameter and hair quality. I have come accross many past posts (here & elsewhere)where people say to do this and that most will see a DRASTIC difference in the thickness and quality of the hair. To my pleasent suprise I see NO difference at all !! The color, thickness, and texture looks identical; and I plucked in random spots many times.

 

I have come to the conclusion that there must be a significant possibility that the hair I have remaining on top must somehow possess a much stronger genetic resistance to MPB than the hair that was lost from age 20-25. Is this a safe, reasonable assumption ? Is it possible to have inherited both MPB resistant and MPB suceptible hair within that NW 3 pattern area, and that what remains now is just all of the healthy MPB resistant hair ? Why else would 100% of all the random hairs plucked from my frontal forelock be of the exact same thickness and quality of the hair from my safe donor area ?

 

My mother's father had this exact same pattern of hairloss, and he retained the NW 3 pattern all the way until his death in his 60s. There are also some other hair pattern traits that I share with my mother, like the way the hair grows down the neck at the rear to form a "ducktail". My father has no such pattern, and he is a NW 6 who had reached that level at age 28. Everybody always told me that if your father is bald then you will be bald -- case closed. I guess that must not really be true.

 

It seems that with a HT the most important thing for me is to find a doc who is the very best at planting grafts BETWEEN existing healthy hairs without transecting the follicles. Since so many of the hairs still on top of my head equal the hair shaft caliber of my donor area, it seems logical to conclude that at age 40 it must be because they are MPB resistant.

 

Am I wrong for assuming this ?