24 years old, hairline has been receding for 5 years.
Am I a good candidate for Hair Transplant?
I'm 24 years old and my hair has been receding for the last 5 years.
My hair is pretty thick everywhere else.
Just the hairline keeps rising.
Thank you for your question!
You’re 24 years old and over the past 5 years, your hairline has been receding and
you’re asking a very straightforward question: are you a candidate for hair transplant.
Well, I’m going to discuss with you the approach that we have for patients like yourself
in our practice and I think you’re going to learn something that is very different
than what you have been researching up to this point as far as your options for a receding
hairline.
Just a little bit of history, for most transplant surgeons, someone coming into them in their
20s with this aggressive recession, a lot of surgeons will choose not to operate because
of significant limitations related to hair transplant surgery.
The problem is, is the amount of hair you’re losing is far greater than the amount of hair
available to restore all the hair that’s being lost.
So, there’s a limited area at the back of the scalp we call donor area.
And although, lately it’s been popular to perform procedures called FUEs or follicular
unit extractions and there are all kinds of claims about megasessions and thousands of
hairs being transferred but the reality is, the donor area is very limited.
You look at the baldest man that you can see and then you’ll understand that the genetically
resistant area is very limited.
And for someone in their 20s, if they do get a transplant, there’s still receding and
then you get another transplant.
Eventually, you run out of donor.
In our practice, we developed a method called Hair Regeneration.
It is not surgery.
It is actually an injection.
This method was developed combining a material called extracellular matrix derived from pig
bladder and combining this with platelet-rich plasma.
Now what is extracellular matrix?
This is a material that is originally was designed for wound healing and what it does
is that it allows the duplication of cells native to a particular area.
So if you apply it to muscle, you get muscle.
You apply it to skin, you get skin.
What was noted is that when it was used to assist in the healing of a donor area for
a strip method for hair transplant, what happened was that the thinning hairs became thicker.
So in the past several years, we have been developing a formulation and delivery technique
and we call that hair regeneration.
What this appears to is it restores the cells and singles necessary to change the thinning
process.
Instead of hairs becoming thinner, it reverses and becomes thicker.
We always advice prospective patients that as sooner as they get this done, the better
it is because we can save the hairs that are thinning but we can’t save the hairs that
are gone.
So this something that is quite significant and has been very effective and we have been
patients who come to us from all over the world.
So for someone in their 20s, I would actually advise against having a hair transplant and
consider hair regeneration.
Of course, you also have the option for the two FDA approved medications.
One is minoxidil and the other is finasteride.
Minoxidil does not help reverse hair thinning but appears to prolong the presence of hair
that’s thinning on the scalp.
That makes the hair look a little bit thicker.
Finasteride blocks an enzyme, 5-alpha reductase which reduces dihydrotestosterone.
Dihydrotestosterone or DHT can cause hair follicles that are susceptible to the effects
to DHT to thin so therefore it can reduce DHT to a certain segment of people with male
pattern hair loss, you can get an improvement.
What we have seen in our practice is that may people who are younger who have this frontal
receding progression tend to not respond that well to finasteride.
And lately, at this time, there has been a lot of concern about the long term sexual
side-effects of finasteride.
I think the true impact has yet to be determined but most of our patients who come to us in
their 20s and 30 categorically do not want to take finasteride.
So I want you just to learn more about Hair Regeneration.
Learn about this process.
Unfortunately, we don’t have specifics as to what the exact reason as to why this work.
It appears that the basic science of hair growth has yet to discover all of the critical
stem cells and cells and signal necessary for hair growth which is why hair cloning
remain elusive and all of the biotechnology companies who have tried to corner the market
of hair loss have not been doing very well and their products don’t seem to do very
much.
We have been success in trying to use this material which is already FDA approved and
using it in a off label way to treat hair loss.
So it’s quite a very exciting time and a game changer for people who have been coming
to us from all over the world.
So it’s something to consider as an option for your situation.
I wish you the best of luck, I hope that was helpful and thank you for your question!