Thank you for your question. You are 24 years old and you have been taking finasteride and
using minoxidil for several years to treat your male pattern hair loss and you are expressing
concern that there is an impact on your general sense of health and wellbeing from using finasteride
and you are asking can you sustain your hair with minoxidil and platelet-rich plasma (PRP).
Well, I can certainly give you some guidance with this question. I’m a board certified
cosmetic surgeon and fellowship trained oculofacial plastic and reconstructive surgeon. I am also
the founder of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration Centers which is a treatment that we developed
in our practice which uses platelet-rich plasma(PRP) and in addition with other elements and methods
to help people with male and female pattern hair loss.
So to understand a little bit further the benefits and limits of different medical therapies,
I think that if you have responded to finasteride then being off with finasteride, essentially
you are going to affect the DHT sensitive hair follicles but certainly you are in good
company because a lot of people are either stopping taking finasteride or will not take
finasteride at all. In terms of using minoxidil alone, I think that minoxidil may be a value
for thinning hairs but it doesn’t stop the progression and people can religiously use
minoxidil and still progress to continuation of hair loss.
Now that brings us to platelet-rich plasma (PRP). Platelet-rich plasma (PRP), we have
lots of experience with platelet-rich plasma (PRP). We use it in all of our surgeries,
skin rejuvenation, for acne scars, for scar revision, for general skin health, for rehabilitation
for injured skin from thermal energy devices and it’s very effective in many things.
And really we even use it for dark under eye circles. However, for hair loss alone, in
my experience, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is not enough. And from the feedback I get
from patients who come to us, they go for platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection for hair
loss and they will do it monthly but unfortunately by the time they get into the 4th month, they
start wondering if they need to get scalp injections for the rest of their lives and
then they find our treatment called Hair Regeneration.
Hair Regeneration is a treatment we developed from the use of platelet-rich plasma (PRP)
derived from your own blood, concentration of wound healing and growth factors and Acellular
matrix which is an advanced wound healing material that really does a remarkable effect
on wound healing in areas in the body where cells don’t normally would heal. What it
is called is mitosis but rather they would heal by scaring. Now this is an incidental
finding. This technology, this material for example ,if you were to place Acellular matrix
on muscle where there is an injury instead of scar tissue, you will actually induce the
healing with muscle. So from a biological point, it is remarkable through the activation
of your adult stem cells wound healing response. When it originally was used to help people
heal from transplants and improve graft survivability, it was observed that thinning hairs become
thicker. So in our practice, we do this treatment called Hair Regeneration or patients who come
from around the world and essentially it is a onetime treatment. For most people with
some people who have moderate so severe hair loss, I will do a second treatment as a way
to boost the benefits of the first treatment. It doesn’t mean you need the second treatment
and because we have so much experience with this material and this process that we found
that a second treatment somewhere around 12 to 18 months has been a benefit and after
that, people continue to grow hair and they do 99% for both male and female see a response.
We follow or patients for years and we have seen that 5 years after, people are not regressing,
So there is an opportunity for you to have an alternative to finasteride the way the
majority of male patients who come to us, more than 99% will not take finasteride. In
fact, closer to 99% and therefore, we know the treatment works independent of pharmacological
support.
So I think it is important for you to learn more about the treatments like this in addition
to the platelet-rich plasma (PRP) benefits and I don’t disparage anyone who is using
platelet-rich plasma (PRP) for hair loss but certainly, we have track record to show that
our method actually has brought platelet-rich plasma (PRP) to a different level which we
called TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration. So learn more and move forward with the intervention.
And the earlier we catch somebody, the better it is and we tell them that as long as you
have hair follicles, there is opportunity. Once hair is lost, it is no longer salvageable
and in fact, we are treating people as young as 18 years old, men who are young as 18 and
women who are in their 20’s .
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!