Considering HT

[EvilMonkey25]

Hello Everyone,

Im 23 years old, and s started noticing my hair loss at the age of 20, and now it has gotten quite bad, I am considering to get a hair transplant. My health is good, i have no medical issues or problems. For 3 years i have noticed that my frontal hair has been thinning and that has affected me. I recently emailed Dr.Konior for a consultation and said that i appear to have an intermediate frontal recession pattern, and would be an ideal candidate for a hairline restoration. Before emailing Dr.Konior, i had a visit with his assistant Dr.Nadimi and she recommended me to take Rogaine, or Propecia. Does anyone have experience with either of the two? Would you guys recommended? Also is do you guys think it is a good idea to get a HT at this age or should i wait?

[Shera]

Hello Everyone,

Im 23 years old, and s started noticing my hair loss at the age of 20, and now it has gotten quite bad, I am considering to get a hair transplant. My health is good, i have no medical issues or problems. For 3 years i have noticed that my frontal hair has been thinning and that has affected me. I recently emailed Dr.Konior for a consultation and said that i appear to have an intermediate frontal recession pattern, and would be an ideal candidate for a hairline restoration. Before emailing Dr.Konior, i had a visit with his assistant Dr.Nadimi and she recommended me to take Rogaine, or Propecia. Does anyone have experience with either of the two? Would you guys recommended? Also is do you guys think it is a good idea to get a HT at this age or should i wait?

 

You have aggressive balding for one of such tender age. You are probably strongly tempted to get it surgically fixed now but in your case I would advise you to wait.

 

Take the advice offered to you from the highly regarded clinic and see where you are in 6-12 months when you can reassess your options.

 

All the best, I really hope the meds work for you.

[mattj]

I'll second that. 23 is a young age and to have lost as much hair as you have, so early, is a strong indicator that you'll lose a lot more hair over the course of the next 5-10 years.

 

It would be best to see what the meds can do for you. If you respond well to them and your hair loss is significantly slowed, then you will be in a better position to consider surgery.

[EvilMonkey25]

Thanks for the feedback. Got an email from Dr.Konior saying that Minoxidil is one of the most often recommended medications for hair loss. Ive been reading that finastride has a better effect. Would guys recommend minoxidil or finastride. I have another consultation with Dr.Nadimi, and also one with Dr.Panine next week. So i will see what they recommend and base my decision off that.

[Rwethereyet]

Minoxidil and finasteride can be taken together and work well together. You should if you have not already spend some time reading about them both. Minoxidil has very few side effects where as finasteride can have side effects which you should be well aware of before you make your own decision whether to take the drug. You should look on here at others who have used either or both to get a good understanding of what to expect from taking them so you are under no false illusions about what results you can expect. Many people don't realise for the first several months both if these can cause shedding before you start to see results and you need to commit for long enough to see out this phase. Hope that helps

[EvilMonkey25]

How many grafts do you guys think I would need. I Had a consultation with Dr.Panine and reccomened 2000 grafts, but when consulting with dr.konior he recommended 1,500 grafts.

Edited March 5, 2018 by EvilMonkey25

[Steeeve]

How grafts do you guys think I would need. I Had a consultation with Dr.Panine and reccomened 2000 grafts, but when consulting with dr.konior he recommended 1,500 grafts.

 

Konior recommends fewer grafts because he could work his magic with fewer. Neither doctor is wrong, necessarily, but Konior is of a much higher esteem on these forums and for good reason. You won’t find a negative review for him on here. I don’t know that much about Dr. Panine except that he’s very aggressive with his hairlines. I’m not a fan of them but they can be quite bulky. The fewer grafts you use to achieve your desired goal the better, though.

 

I agree with the majority that you’re oftly young to be taking the plunge but if you absolutely must do this then Dr. Konior’s hands are the hands you would want to put your head in.

 

Good luck with your decision.

[AB2000]

Thanks for the feedback. Got an email from Dr.Konior saying that Minoxidil is one of the most often recommended medications for hair loss. Ive been reading that finastride has a better effect. Would guys recommend minoxidil or finastride. I have another consultation with Dr.Nadimi, and also one with Dr.Panine next week. So i will see what they recommend and base my decision off that.

 

Like others have pointed out already, at your age, you want to know where you are going towards in terms of end result hair loss before charting your HT course. If you are too aggressive early, you won't have much left over to use if you will be a high Norwood, and your resulting hairline will look very odd and bad.

 

Two things to try for now if you want to hold off on transplantation:

 

1. Use drugs to stabilize your situation; minoxidyl at the very least. I've chosen to not risk FIN myself.

 

2. Try using hair concealers in the meantime, once you've stopped or slowed the hair loss. Some Toppik in the meantime might do you will in hiding your hair loss recession.

[Rwethereyet]

You should definitely try to slow down or control your hairloss first. As has been pointed out already here. Another thing to remember is after your surgery you will not see the full results of the surgery for 12 to 18 months. If your hairloss is aggressive you may have lost more hair by then and the surgery may not give you the desired outcome. You may find yourself constantly chasing your hairloss with surgery.

[mattj]

Considering your young age and the fact that your hairloss has been quite fast, I would agree with the opinion that you should take steps to slow it down.

 

The question of whether you should have surgery now aside, with your level of hair loss you would need 2500 grafts at a minimum. Your entire frontal third is quite bald or thinning and to achieve a result that is dense and within that blue line is not possible with 1500 or 2000 grafts. HT surgery is about the numbers together with hair characteristics and there is no magic method for producing a dense result without using the necessary number of grafts. With a lower number of grafts, you would have a trade-off in terms of density and the placement of your hairline, which would have to be in a higher position. I'm taking into account here your thicker hair caliber and wavy texture, which are favourable characteristics. Your darker skin tone is also good as it would provide a lower contract with your dark hair.

[EvilMonkey25]

Based off the feedback you guys have provided, i will begin taking Finasteride, in order to slow down the hair loss and thinning, and then reevaluate after a few month. Before i start on finasteride, i had a few questions. Should i be taking it everyday or i take it every other day. Also where can i get finasteride from should i reach out my personal doctor or the HT clinic. And also what dosage. The only thing that scares me about finasteride is it can cause infertility, considering my age

[pkipling]

In addition to trying to get your hair loss stabilized, I wanna point out that should you decide to go the route of getting a HT that you will most definitely need more than one procedure. Eventually needing a 2nd HT is something anyone getting one needs to be okay with, but even more so when the hair loss is as advanced as yours at such a young age. It's going to be a big time and financial investment, so make sure you're prepared for that mentally and take that into account before jumping into anything.

[Steeeve]

Based off the feedback you guys have provided, i will begin taking Finasteride, in order to slow down the hair loss and thinning, and then reevaluate after a few month. Before i start on finasteride, i had a few questions. Should i be taking it everyday or i take it every other day. Also where can i get finasteride from should i reach out my personal doctor or the HT clinic. And also what dosage. The only thing that scares me about finasteride is it can cause infertility, considering my age

 

It doesn’t really matter what doctor you get fin from. Most HT docs would prefer you have given it a shot for 6-12 months before they even consider putting you under the knife.

 

I’ve never heard of fin causing infertility as much as erectile dysfunction. A lot of people throw out quotes and percentages about how many men it actually affects but I’ve never really seen any studies that those quotes or percentages came from except for one. Back in 2012 I had a consultation with Dr. Brad Limmer, a year before he passed away, in San Antonio and he presented me with a study (at my request) that stated that only .06 percent of men who took finasteride suffered from ED. He estimated that it REALLY only affected about .04 percent of men, though, as a lot of guys came back later and said that they were dealing other extenuating circumstances in their lives that could’ve contributed to it. The study was not amended to reflect this.

 

I’ve been on fin since April of 2012 and I’ve never experienced any side effects other than the occasional brain fog but that has never held me back. I started with propecia every other day and stayed with that until September of 2015 when I switched to generic fin. I experienced a giant shed at that time so I started taking it once a day every day. Still no sides. My wife is currently 4 months pregnant and I didn’t get off of it while we were trying.

 

I had significant regrowth with the fin/minoxidil combo.

 

Fin can be your best friend if you give it a chance.

[matt3480]

Here is the good news.....you are going to have a year wait for Dr. Konior anyways. Take that year and try Rogaine/Fin and hopefully stabilize that hair loss. Then have Konior take 1,500 grafts....and maybe even less if you respond well.

 

I think that's the best course of action. You have time to wait.....you are in a good position but make the right choice. You are in Illinois I presume....this isn't even a hard choice for the surgeon.

 

As for dosage.....studies have shown 0.50mg per day is pretty much as effective as 1mg. I would probably start on 0.50mg/day and see how you respond to it and go from there. I don't feel most people need to start at 1mg/day.

[mattj]

0.5mg is a good dosage as, like matt3480 says, this can be just as effective as the full 1mg dose. A lot of people get a good response taking it every other day. These lower and less frequent doses are an effective method for reducing the likelihood of getting side effects.

[mattj]

 

I’ve never heard of fin causing infertility as much as erectile dysfunction. A lot of people throw out quotes and percentages about how many men it actually affects but I’ve never really seen any studies that those quotes or percentages came from except for one. Back in 2012 I had a consultation with Dr. Brad Limmer, a year before he passed away, in San Antonio and he presented me with a study (at my request) that stated that only .06 percent of men who took finasteride suffered from ED. He estimated that it REALLY only affected about .04 percent of men, though, as a lot of guys came back later and said that they were dealing other extenuating circumstances in their lives that could’ve contributed to it. The study was not amended to reflect this.

 

Both of those percentages seem very low to me. I know that in the online hairloss community we get a biased sample of people reporting side effects, but the frequency of side effects is almost certainly much higher than the studies suggest.

 

Despite that, I do think it's worth giving the meds a trial run. It's too easy to be frightened off them.

[EvilMonkey25]

I just started taking finasteride, it’s been about a week since I’ve been taking it. I’m taking 1 pill every other day. Is that a good dosage or should I be taking it everyday?

[Steeeve]

Both of those percentages seem very low to me. I know that in the online hairloss community we get a biased sample of people reporting side effects, but the frequency of side effects is almost certainly much higher than the studies suggest.

 

If i’m being perfectly honest, I don’t really care about studies. It was being thrown out as a personal annecdote. It was something that was presented to me by a doctor and the percentage was only based on the number of men taking part in the trial.

 

I would say the number of men who complain about the side effects of finasteride in this community is much higher than .06 percent, however, who can really say that fin is really the cause of the issues that they are dealing with? I don’t know. You can either choose to take them at their word, based on their gut feelings, or understand that there are a lot of different things that happen to people on a daily basis that affect people mentally into suffering from a lot of effects. I do believe people suffer with effects from it. I just don’t know if there’s any real way to know what’s what unless someone themself is personally involved with a trial.

 

Again, it doesn’t really affect me, personally, either way. I chose to take a gamble on the drug and it paid off. If I had suffered from any sides then I would have stopped taking fin. Some men don’t wish to take that gamble. That’s perfectly fine. It’s their choice.

[Steeeve]

I just started taking finasteride, it’s been about a week since I’ve been taking it. I’m taking 1 pill every other day. Is that a good dosage or should I be taking it everyday?

 

I was instructed by my doctor to take it every other day. I only chose to take it every day when I switched to a generic fin 3 years later. People in this community can only tell you what they did based on their own personal experience. That may not work for you, though. I would consult your doc on the matter. It’s your best/safest bet.