26 years old, male, diffuse hair loss.
No hope to restore hair?
Is HT possible?
Is there any possibility to restore my hair?
I lost 90% density.
Really stressful shedding hairs due to stress too.
Thank you for your question!
You’re asking a very straightforward question of whether or not you are a candidate for
hair transplant.
You’re 26 years old and you described more than 90% of hair loss and that you’re also
shedding because of stress.
Well, I think that you will find my answer interesting because you are being very honest
about the degree of your hair loss.
And you are asking a very good question.
Instead of asking how many grafts do you need, you’re asking are you a candidate?
Now looking at a candidate such as yourself, let’s just walk through the steps that we
use in our practice, assess someone like you, 26-year-old male with this type of hair loss.
First we look at the age of onset, how old were you when you started losing hair.
How quickly is this progressing, are there other male family members who have similar
patterns or hair loss.
Assuming that you have male pattern hair loss, what you are experiencing is progressive miniaturizing
of hair.
Hair grows in the cycle and at the end of every cycle, it sheds and when the new hairs
come in, they come back thinner.
So, what we would typically do is assess the top of your scalp with a microscope to identify
the amount of hairs that are thinning relative to the amount of hairs that are still thick.
And although in years past we would have a discussion about considering about a hair
transplant based on the idea of the limitations of what a hair transplant can do, what I’m
going to discuss with you is really alternative that we have developed in our practice which
we call Hair Regeneration.
As I discussed earlier, hair thinning is a progression and is a genetically based progression
when you talk about male pattern hair loss.
Now, when you think about management, there are medical options: one is a drug finasteride.
Finasteride is a drug that inhibits an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase that is responsible
for the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone.
Hairs that are sensitive to dihydrotestosterone will progressively thin and go away.
When someone has that type of hair loss takes finasteride it slows that progression and
can allow them to have thicker hair for a long period of time.
The challenge at our current time is that many people are concerned due to medical studies
that have showed long term sexual side effects of taking finasteride.
The other drug is minoxidil.
Minoxidil is applied topically and appears to keep hair around longer so that it appears
the scalp has more coverage.
It is does not reverse hair thinning.
What we have developed in our practice is a concept and treatment called Hair Regeneration.
Serendipitously, a material for wound healing called extracellular matrix that is used to
help regenerate tissue, placed on skin, it helps regenerate skin by recruiting the adult
stem cells to make this wound-healing mechanism.
Placed on muscle, it repairs muscle.
Although, the literature does not provide enough information all the factors that cause
hair thinning because dihydrotestosterone is not the whole story.
Many men will take finasteride and still progressively lose hair.
What we have seen is that when this material is used in a specific way that we have developed
in a formulation combined with platelet-rich plasma, it is remarkable in how effectively
it can reverse hair thinning.
We have hundreds of patients who come from all over the world and we have 5 years of
data and every week, we see more and more patients for this treatment as we continue
to prove its benefit.
There are a lot of people who don’t believe it, a lot of people who don’t believe in
it but we have the patients and the proof to show that as long as you have hair, you
have hope.
When you look at yourself and you see that you have 90% loss, you would be surprised
how microscopically you have a lot more hair than you think.
And that means, that someone like you, we don’t go for hair transplant first.
This is a significant change in the paradigm of how to treat hair loss and it really goes
on on the full face on the standard approach that hair transplant industry for hair loss.
What’s that model?
That model is to do a hair transplant.
The patient to continuously lose hair, do another hair transplant, do another one every
few years until you reach the end of the donor area.
And unfortunately, there’s a mismatch between the amount of hair that you have in donor
and the amount of scalp you need covered.
What does that mean?
Eventually, people look very pluggy and pluggy meaning they have an obvious hair transplant.
With that understood, we have really created a solution that is not surgical that’s an
injection that appears to have a minimum 3 years of benefit and maximum of 5 years but
our numbers are so much higher with the past 3 years that we can really stand behind the
3 years of improvement with just one injection.
And as what i said before, as long as you have hair, it’s never too late.
Every week I continue to be impressed by patients who have come in who are very far along with
the level of advancement of their hair loss.
But it appears, the younger you are and the more coarse the hair is, it appears that you
get remarkably more volume and correction.
I think it has a lot to do with the early intervention.
When someone notices hair loss, the earlier they come, the better it is.
That being said, like what I said earlier.
It is never too late if there’s existing hair.
So, I’ve given you something to think about besides hair transplant and I think it is
an opportunity for you to learn more about this as an opportunity to treat your hair
loss.
Hair Regeneration does work.
It is extremely effective.
I would actually say that in most patients who have existing hair, far exceeds the benefits
of any hair transplants.
With that being said, I wish you the best of luck, I hope that was helpful and thank
you for your question!