Please help me find what i am looking for!!!

[The count Of Baldecristo]

Hey guys

 

I am looking for people who had a hair transplant and dont take antiandrogens. I try looking at the results in the forum but it seems like everybody is on drugs. Good for them but bad for my research lol.

 

So i am making this my final attempt and an open call to doctors,patients and consultants to direct me to cases of people who dont take drugs for their hairloss and still had a transplant.

[mahhong]

Hi there!

 

Although I cannot give you any examples of patients there are a few things to be aware about with antiandrogens.

 

Firstly it would appear no drug works forever in the fight against DHT. Propecia, by far the most common antiandrogen in the fight against MPB, blocks approximately 80% of the DHT in your body at any given time. This means it can significantly slow down the rate of your balding (to the point it might even give people a temporary benefit with more hair) but it cannot stop you balding forever. Success rates are different in individuals; some claim they have had 10-20 good years on propecia with no significant further hairloss, some have claimed they have noticed their hair beginning to thin again after only 2 or so years. The clinical trials were run for 5 years and showed generally men on propecia had maintained their hair throughout these 5 years, with only minor fluctuations from this norm either way.

 

Anyway the relevance of this is that if you are 30 and start taking antiandrogens there is every chance that by the time you are 40 you will be going noticeably balder again. This isn't because propecia "isn't working" or you've built up a tolerance (which, to my knowledge, isn't possible) but because even though you've reduced the amount of DHT in your body (and only one type of DHT at that), you still have an amount of DHT at all times and this is still attacking hairs. Propecia is, at best, a fairly long term stalling tactic (although a successful one it must be said).

 

I say all this because I'm assuming you're worried/reluctant to take antiandrogens and want to see what an HT looks like without them. My advice is to go on the various HT websites (H+W, Feller and other coalition doctors) and look at the Norwood 6 and, in some cases, 7s.

 

Bobman on the H+W site is an excellent example. He had a Norwood 6 pattern and on the top of his head he was pretty much totally bald (apart from maybe a smattering of hair here and there). At his age I don't think he would have had any significant further balding (perhaps a small bit below the crown). Now, I don't know if he takes drugs on not, but my guess even if he doesn't any further hairloss he could expect to experience would not make a massive detrimental difference to his overall hair quality.

 

NicNitro (also H+W) is another good example of somebody with quite significant hairloss. Again I cannot say whether he is on drugs or not but I don't think they are really protecting the overall cosmetic quality of his appearance.

 

Remember propecia (or any other antiandrogen) cannot make follicles grow hair again (except for those still producing very fine vellus hair, perhaps. To that extent, anybody who is significantly bald in any area won't get that hair back on propecia (or any other combination of drugs).

 

I know that Bill on this site is on propecia and I don't want to speak for him but I have heard him say on several occasions that he is using the drug to hold on to a relatively small amount of hair just below his crown. His hairline and most of the top of his head is pure transplant.

 

So, my point is twofold:

 

Firstly, no antiandrogen (that we have currently) will keep your hair forever. To that extent if you do have an HT both you and the surgeon should plan it with the knowledge that one day you will lose further hair and either need further HTs or have to be content with the results of previous procedures. That means regardless of whether you take propecia or not if you have an HT no doctor will pack in every graft you can afford in a small area because they will have to be conservative about the idea that one day you will need further donor hair for progressive balding.

 

Secondly look at any results from somebody with a clearly bald head (Norwood 5-7) and chances are propecia is doing very little for them, perhaps holding on to a little extra density at best, but certainly not making a huge difference to their overall transplant effect.

 

Whichever way you look at it propecia is a stop-gap and everybody should prepare for the day it is no longer serving its purpose. If you're reluctant to take it but still want HTs there is hope to gain an excellent cosmetic result (except in cases of extreme Norwood 7/DUPA where an appreciable cosmetic difference would not be possible). For the vast majority of men one or more HT procedures will eventually be needed to offer any "cure" for their balding, so you should expect to find some good-to-excellent results from people that don't take any medication!

[mattj]

I can only assume that you want a transplant yourself, but don't want to take anti-androgens and you want to see examples of patients who themselves didn't take the medication, and who didn't continue losing hair after the transplant. Am I right? The problem with this is, hair is generally lost over a fairly long period of time, making the glimpse you see of a patient in their photographs too brief to really tell you anything. You'd need long term documentation to go along with the photos, and even then the information wouldn't be close to spanning the life of the patient and his transplant.

 

The hairloss process is highly individual and rather unpredictable. A transplant is merely filling in the areas which have already succumbed, with the process carrying on regardless. If you are destined to lose more hair then that will happen, so I caution against using other patient results as a yardstick in this context.

 

But perhaps I'm wrong and you have other reasons for seeking this information. Could you explain?

[The count Of Baldecristo]

thanx to both of you for taking the time.

 

Matt you are correct that i still have some hair but i am a diffuse nw6. I will eventually end up a complete nw6 with no native hair to support my transplant.

 

I know we dont have enough donor so every little counts, i am trying to find case of people who are nw6 and dont take drugs so there is no possibility that they have helped their overall outcome.

 

The thing is that almost everyone is on drugs and i cannot find even one case of a nn6 with no regime.

 

i wanna see the reality of a transplant with no help from anything so that i can see how i will look like in the worst case scenario

[Jotronic]

Count,

 

Unfortunately I don't think you'll fine a patient like you are trying to find, at least not one that has been to us. I do know of "Biscuit". He had a procedure with Dr. Wong at least six years ago and has been drug free completely, both before and after surgery. As far as I know he has not lost any more hair but at the same time he is nowhere near (or wasn't) a NW6.

 

Most patient that are NW6 and get surgery do not wish to progress to NW7 and since we highly encourage all of our patients to start and stay on it there are very very few that do not take our advise on this matter. Btw, both Bobman and NicNictro are on meds, Bobman on Proscar and Nicnitro on Avodart respectively.

[The count Of Baldecristo]

Originally posted by Jotronic:

Count,

 

Unfortunately I don't think you'll fine a patient like you are trying to find, at least not one that has been to us. I do know of "Biscuit". He had a procedure with Dr. Wong at least six years ago and has been drug free completely, both before and after surgery. As far as I know he has not lost any more hair but at the same time he is nowhere near (or wasn't) a NW6.

 

Most patient that are NW6 and get surgery do not wish to progress to NW7 and since we highly encourage all of our patients to start and stay on it there are very very few that do not take our advise on this matter. Btw, both Bobman and NicNictro are on meds, Bobman on Proscar and Nicnitro on Avodart respectively.

 

Thank you joe for your honest answer, it seems like the worst case scenario for me is worst than i thought because i didnt think the nw7 factor. i think the safe side for me is not to have a transplant at all without propecia

[Tao]

Hi Count,

 

I've had one transplant and am scheduled for #2 in June and I've never taken anything and don't plan to. I'd say I was a good Norwood 5 when I started. Lost most of my hair going back to my crown. Luckily, I have lots of good, coarse donor hair which works to my benefit. My first HT was for 2700+ grafts up front last April. I'm going back for about the same amount to my crown. My first HT had really incredible results and really I'd be fine if I had to stop here but that hair greed thing ya know.

 

Why am I not on Propecia? I just don't like the idea of having to take a drug. Yeah, DHT does us wrong when it comes to our hair, but the body uses DHT for other things too. I'd prefer not to mess too much with nature. Who knows, I may regret it and I'm sure folks on here will tell me to get on it. But no dice. Granted, I'm almost 43 and my hair loss is fairly stabilized. My hairline and frontal third looks really good now and whatever I get up on my bald crown will just be icing on the cake. Hell, if it turns out anything close to the results I got the first time, I won't even look like I'm balding at all. BTW, my doc was Konior in Chicago. He done me good.

 

Cheers.

[The count Of Baldecristo]

Originally posted by Tao:

Hi Count,

 

I've had one transplant and am scheduled for #2 in June and I've never taken anything and don't plan to. I'd say I was a good Norwood 5 when I started. Lost most of my hair going back to my crown. Luckily, I have lots of good, coarse donor hair which works to my benefit. My first HT was for 2700+ grafts up front last April. I'm going back for about the same amount to my crown. My first HT had really incredible results and really I'd be fine if I had to stop here but that hair greed thing ya know.

 

Why am I not on Propecia? I just don't like the idea of having to take a drug. Yeah, DHT does us wrong when it comes to our hair, but the body uses DHT for other things too. I'd prefer not to mess too much with nature. Who knows, I may regret it and I'm sure folks on here will tell me to get on it. But no dice. Granted, I'm almost 43 and my hair loss is fairly stabilized. My hairline and frontal third looks really good now and whatever I get up on my bald crown will just be icing on the cake. Hell, if it turns out anything close to the results I got the first time, I won't even look like I'm balding at all. BTW, my doc was Konior in Chicago. He done me good.

 

Cheers.

 

hi Tao thanx for your feedback. Do you have a gallery with pics, can i see your result please?

[Tao]

Hi Count,

 

I don't have a gallery up yet. I did get some good pre-op pics from my doc but they're too big to upload here. Need to figure out a way to compress them. I'll try to find time next week and get something up.

[mahhong]

Originally posted by Jotronic:

Count,

 

Unfortunately I don't think you'll fine a patient like you are trying to find, at least not one that has been to us. I do know of "Biscuit". He had a procedure with Dr. Wong at least six years ago and has been drug free completely, both before and after surgery. As far as I know he has not lost any more hair but at the same time he is nowhere near (or wasn't) a NW6.

 

Most patient that are NW6 and get surgery do not wish to progress to NW7 and since we highly encourage all of our patients to start and stay on it there are very very few that do not take our advise on this matter. Btw, both Bobman and NicNictro are on meds, Bobman on Proscar and Nicnitro on Avodart respectively.

 

This is interesting. Out of interest are you saying the going on the meds is like a safety measure? I just ask because in the case of people like bobman I wouldn't have expected (though I'm a layman) that his hairloss would have progressed much further at all. It seemed to me his 'safe' region was fairly well delineated. Is it the case, however, that there is really no such thing as truly safe 'borders' of hair when it comes to MPB?

 

Any light you can shed on this would be much appreciated!