28 year old hair transplant candidate?
I have been losing my hair since 20 when I had a stressful time in a relationship and
at university (diet and sleep suffered and I had anxiety).
In my teens I did dye my hair black and some hair fell out as a result.
My hair is still progressively thinning.
I keep it long on top to try and cover the visible scalp.
It is causing me a lot of stress trying to compensate for the lack of hair and I haven't
been sleeping too well.
Do I look like a suitable transplant candidate?
Thank you for your question!
You’re 28 years old, you submitted a couple of photos of the topic of your scalp which
are very helpful.
You described a situation where you’ve been losing hair since the age of 20 and you described
different periods of your life where you’ve had a lot of stress and unfortunately, the
hair loss is adding to that stress.
So the first question you’re asking is are you a suitable candidate for hair transplant.
Well, to give you a little background about myself to help you understand the question,
I’m a board certified cosmetic surgeon and I’ve been performing hair transplant for
20 years.
I’ve been practicing in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years and I can tell you
that one of the most important things to understand about hair transplant is the limitation.
You’re 28 years old and you have very advanced hair loss.
The thing about the hair transplant industry is the expectations of results are very often
not met because of a combination of overselling from aggressive marketing combined with the
reality of the limitations of the donor area.
If you think about it, the top of your head needs a certain number of hairs and when you
look at the back of your scalp where the true permanent zone is, that is simply not enough
of hairs.
Andi if you think about your progression, where will you be a year from now, 2 years
from now.
We have seen many patients like yourself who tried to have transplant in their 20s to try
to compensate for the hair loss.
By the time they hit their mid-30s, they really look like they didn’t have transplants.
They look like they still have thinning hair.
Now many people have tried in your age range to use drugs like finasteride.
Finasteride is an effective drug for patients whose hair is DHT sensitive.
Finasteride is an oral medication.
It’s a drug that inhibits an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase.
This enzyme inhibits the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone.
The challenge is that many people don’t respond because their hair follicles are not
responsive to DHT.
So therefore, there is clearly a lot of unknown factors that are also contributing to hair
loss.
There have been numerous chromosomes associated with hair loss approximately 11 of 23 pairs.
So, in our practice, we have been very excited to help patients like yourself with a non-surgical
option called Hair Regeneration.
Hair Regeneration was an accidental discovery based on the observation that a wound healing
material called Acellular matrix, when used for hair transplant, appear to make thinning
hairs to look thicker.
So what we’ve done over several years is develop a system and process so that we actually
do an injection as an alternative to transplantation that reversed hair thinning.
Now the challenge for us is when a patient comes, it’s not like we can take a bald
person and make them into a mop top.
It’s really how soon after your onset of hair loss and the rate or progression are
factors that affect how well the treatment works.
But it cannot be understated.
The treatment has been close to a 100% beneficial for male pattern hair loss.
There are occasional patients who don’t respond to the treatment but that is a very
small group.
We have not yet been able to figure out how to predict that but odds where close to 100%
of male pattern hair loss respond, it has been a huge success for patients who come
to us from around the world.
We have reached a point where have been successful with it that we are now scaling this treatment
to try to bring it closer to people and the company we started is called Trichostem®
Hair Regeneration.
The point is this is a treatment which has so far been a onetime treatment and in some
patients after a year, we’ll do a second injection to build upon what we’ve done
and in someone like yourself, your level of hair loss is typically someone who would probably
get a second treatment.
But again, with several years of data, 3-5 years of data, we have been able to show no
significant regression with this treatment.
Essentially, with this treatment, we will of course learn more as the time goes on,
if the treatment is required, once every 3-5 years to maintain and thicken your hair, from
my experience, it far exceeds the benefits of a surgical transplantation where, if you
were any to have done every 3-5 years and you run out of donor area and you have done
anything for your existing hair.
Now sometimes, we do combine this but in general, especially in someone in their 20s, we try
to avoid surgical transplantation.
So I recommend that you learn about this treatment and continue doing research but I would discourage
you from having transplantation.
I don’t think that’s the right solution for you.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!