Thank you for your question!
You’re 22 years old and you’re noticing a widening of the part which appears to be
a diffuse thinning of your hair and your doctor recommended that you use men’s Rogaine and
you’re asking if this is okay to do. Well, I can certainly give you my perspective and
experience.
I’m a board certified cosmetic surgeon and fellowship trained oculofacial plastic and
reconstructive surgeon. Hair transplant and hair loss has been a big part of my practice
for over 20 years practicing in Manhattan and Long Island. And in fact, I’m also the
founder of Trichostem™ Hair Regeneration centers which is a non-surgical alternative
for hair transplant which we developed in our practice using a wound healing material.
I’ll go further into detail into this as we discuss your question.
So let’s start first of all with the diagnosis. The first thing I would want to know when
a 22-year-old woman comes to our practice with hair loss is this is pattern hair loss
or the term androgenetic alopecia. Because if your doctor is recommending you use Rogaine,
this essentially means that your doctor is diagnosing you with pattern hair loss. Now,
in female pattern hair loss, it is not unusual to see women in their 40s and older develop
pattern hair loss or androgenetic alopecia but it is very unusual for women in their
20s.
Now in our practice, we developed a treatment called Hair Regeneration and it has been very
successful as a way to help men and women with thinning hair using a wound healing material
and a method and a process that we’ve developed and it’s an injection and it appears to
reactivate thinning hair. It stops hair thinning hair and lets thinning hair grow thicker.
With more than 5 years of data, we appear to have no evidence of any regression and
I’m always continuing the process to maximize each individual’s result because even though
there’s a pattern, there’s also a lot of individual variation as to the expression
of hair loss. For example, some men start losing hair at 18 while other men start losing
hair in their 30s. Well with women, proportionally, it’s still higher in their middle age time
frame as opposed to women in their 20s and 30s.
Now, as more people start to learn more about our treatment, we started to see a lot more
younger women and it would always raise a red flag for me and I would actually do biopsies
of the scalp and send to pathology lab to make sure that we’re not dealing with any
other condition whether it’s an inflammatory condition, a scarring condition or an autoimmune
type of condition.
So with that being said, I would suggest that you consider, before doing any treatment,
at least getting a diagnosis that’s confirmed by a biopsy. You know, this is something I
would do for a woman who comes in who’s 22. I would say as a side note that a lot
of our patients who are in their 20s and in their early 30s who have come in and we have
done biopsy, a lot of them do have androgenetic alopecia or pattern familial hair loss. so
I think it’s just a group that’s been underrepresented and underappreciated because
there were no options other than topicals. With Hair Regeneration, more people are finding
us and learning about this option and using it and getting good results. More than 90%
of women see improvement and more than 99% of men see improvement.
So I think that, in terms of safety, there’s always been a caution, going back to the question
about the Rogaine, there has always been a cautionary rule about the 5% Rogaine in women
possible causing facial hair growth and other potential side-effects. In my practice, I
would say that overall, there hasn’t been that much of a trend but that’s one doctor
with one population. I think it’s a risk but you also, you have to ask the question:
what is the benefit of 5% versus 2%? The higher the concentration doesn’t necessarily mean
the better the result. And to understand the effect of minoxidil, minoxidil doesn’t stop
hair loss progression. It allows thinning hair to stay longer on the scalp and it appears
to make the hair look more full but I’m concerned that if you don’t have some kind
of intervention at such a young age if you’re progressing, then it’s a problem that you
wouldn’t be able to keep up with even with a topical treatment like minoxidil.
So I think you should meet with a doctor who diagnosed you or get an additional opinion
but if someone like yourself comes to my practice, I would do biopsy to have confirmation and
then I would consider recommending Hair Regeneration treatment. That’s basically because with
hair loss, there are so few options and it leads to a lot of people doing very desperate
things whether it’s buying pills or buying oils and supplements that are really of no
value, shampoos etc. Essentially, you have medications. For women, it’s minoxidil.
For men, it’s minoxidil and finasteride and then there’s surgery. And for men, pattern
hair loss surgery is an option. For most women, it’s less of an option because there’s
still a lot of existing hair. Hair Regeneration fits that very well because it basically takes
your existing hair and triggers a process that makes it grow thicker.
So with that being understood, again, meet with your doctor. Get additional opinions
and consider getting a biopsy before you undertake any treatment program.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!