Thank you for
your question. You submitted a single photo and you stated
in your question that you are 18-years-old and you are inquiring on whether or not it
appears that your hair is thinning and you state that the photo was taken with your hair
wet. You are asking about hormonal imbalance being a possible cause. You described some
family history and it’s basically, you’re looking for guidance as to first to diagnosis
and then of course the management. Well, I can certainly give you my some guidance
from my practice. I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon and Fellowship-trained oculofacial
plastic and reconstructive surgeon. I’ve been in practice in Manhattan and Long Island
for over 20 years. Hair loss treatment has been a significant part of my practice and
in fact I am the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers. This is a technology
we developed to treat men and women with hair thinning using an injection, a non-surgical
alternative to hair transplant as well as what’s becoming a significant alternative
to taking oral drugs such as finasteride. Now, I’ll go into the details a little bit
further, a little bit later.
So to begin with, I think that you are probably becoming aware of some recession and thinning
of your hair. What is important is to first answer the questions that come into your mind.
And of course yes, hormone imbalance may be an issue but in my experience, for men with
your young onset hair loss, it basically falls under the category called androgenetic alopecia
or genetic pattern loss, something that runs in families. Common myths that it runs from
the maternal uncle side or maternal grandfather but in reality is there are multiple genes
that are associated with hair loss and therefore even if its siblings or other family members,
you can’t figure out how this occurred, it is in the genetics. And of course, when
we do an evaluation for someone like yourself, we take photos with the microscopy, we take
standardized photos, we review your medical history, medications and details and if there
is any question or concern, we refer you for endocrinology evaluation or if there is any
question of the diagnosis from a tissue perspective or what exactly is going in, whether it is
male pattern or something else, now we do biopsies. That means taking a piece of the
skin with the hair to diagnose what is going on from a microscopic point of view. However,
I would share with you that the overwhelming majority of hair loss, 95% for both men and
women, the most common diagnosis at 95% is androgenetic alopecia.
So the question becomes what do you do moving forward? Well, when we started doing this
treatment Hair Regeneration and briefly Hair Regeneration evolved from our application
of wound healing technology using this material called Acellular matrix that recruits adult
stem cell activity to further improve the wound healing of hair grafts as well as the
donor area of hair transplants. We were able to find that thinning hair got thicker. From
this, I developed a process called Hair Regeneration and what we do is for men and women at almost
any age and our youngest male patient is 17, we are able to successfully with a single
injection treatment, stop progression, restore the growth of hair that hasn’t been growing,
as well as induce the shed of thinning hairs so that thicker hairs grow in. You have to
understand that hair thinning is a combination of the cessation or stopping of hair growth
and the progressive miniaturization or slow progressive thinning of hair. And for men,
there is a strong association with something called DHT or dihydrotestosterone. So you’re
kind of on the right track in terms of hormone-related issue but what happens is with puberty, the
testosterone levels goes very high and that means that also the dihydrotestosterone increases.
So, people who have DHT sensitive hair can also be treated with a drug called finasteride.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t want to take finasteride because of current fears
about long-term sexual side-effects.
Once we were starting to pick up a lot momentum with the Hair Regeneration treatment and we
have patients who come from all over the world to come for this injection treatment which
currently stands at 5 years out, no evidence of regression for the vast majority of patients
which means with one injection treatment. And in some cases in the past couple of years,
we started treating more and more people and we saw some situations where we wanted to
experiment with additional injections, an injection at about 15 months, continues to
be extremely successful in helping people treat their hair loss without any other drugs
or other intervention.
We found younger and younger people coming and there were often times when I had to really
question whether or not it was the appropriate thing to do to help someone as young as 18.
The point is that the onset of this type of hair loss at a young age is unfortunately
associated with a certain rate of progression that doesn’t make you the best candidate
for a procedure like a hair transplant. So, understanding that you now have drugs on one
end like Propecia which people are afraid to take and your are not a good candidate
for hair transplant, it is of value for you to learn about an alternative like Hair Regeneration
because this is using your own blood, your platelet-rich plasma (PRP) which is the concentration
of growth factors but unlike platelet-rich plasma (PRP) on its own, we have combined
successfully an algorithm and a dosing process and a delivery technique with Acellular matrix
to successfully treat men and women of a wide range of ages with progressive hair loss.
So, certainly discuss this with your physician. Discuss this with the people in your family
who can assist in finding the information and do some consultations. Learn about what
options you have so that you feel comfortable with any decision you make and I think this
is something that will help you also think about the different options and there are
not that many so timing is important. I stress this very much when it comes to Hair Regeneration
treatment. We have situations where people start losing hair by 18 and be bald by the
time they are 22. It is a very aggressive progression. So the earlier we catch someone,
the better it is and this has been a very strong message that we have developed for
our patients, for people who are learning about this that the inventory of hair is the
limiting factor, the inventory of salvageable hair follicles. So the earlier we catch someone,
the better it is. So, learn more about your options, start doing some consultations, try
to get into doing something early so you can save the hair before it’s too late.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.