Thank you for your question. You are 20-years-old and you state in your question with the photos
you submitted that you have been losing hair since you were 17 and now you are clearly
noticing significant hair loss and you want to find a solution that is of course safe.
Well, the photos you submitted are very helpful and just to give you a little bit of my background.
I’m a board certified cosmetic surgeon and fellowship trained oculofacial plastic and
reconstructive surgeon practicing in Manhattan and Long Island for over 20 years and hair
loss treatment has been a very big part of my practice. And in fact, I am the founder
of TrichoStem™ Hair Regeneration centers which is a non-surgical alternative to hair
transplant that we developed in our practice, a method called Hair Regeneration that has
been a very successful in helping people with minimal invasive approach so I can certainly
speak to you from a perspective of treating a lot of patients like yourself.
So to understand, basically you are dealing with is most likely a genetic pattern hair
loss or something called androgenetic alopecia. And the early onset is not unusual and there
is a general rule of decades where in your 20’s, 20% of men have hair loss, 30% at
30’s and etc. Understanding that you have a relatively aggressive genetic pattern where
you have an early onset and it seems to be a relative rapid progression. In terms of
medical therapy, you probably are already familiar with finasteride which is a pill
that you take daily and Rogaine which is a topical solution or foam. I think that when
you ask the question safety, I think you probably learn the concern about long term sexual side
effects from finasteride and any of the other relatively minor side effects associated with
Rogaine.
However, I think that from our experience, we have developed in our practice an alternative
called Hair Regeneration as I mentioned earlier. This is a method which was derived from the
application of a wound healing material called Acellular matrix which is combined with platelet-rich
plasma (PRP). Briefly, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is derived from your blood and is a
concentration of the wound healing and growth factors necessary when you, for example, cut
yourself. These cells and factors actually help with wound healing and initially this
technology was being employed in our practice for the improvement of outcomes on hair transplant.
What we wanted was improvement in the grafts survival. We wanted the donor areas to heal
better. What ultimately developed of course was this observation that thinning hairs actually
became thicker. What was even further important for me was that when I looked at people who
have just thinning hair and I tried just the treatment alone, it actually, in some cases,
was superior in the results compared to hair transplant.
The unfortunate reality with hair transplant is that if you have existing hair, when openings
are made or the graft sites are made, you can get a fair amount of loss of native hairs
and it is referred to us as collateral damage. Now that putting aside, in our practice, for
patients as young as 18, we’ve had more than 99% success for men and women of all
ages in seeing improvements with Hair Regeneration. This is a treatment that’s an injection
that is through the scalp and it actually will stop the progression, will allow for
regrowth of hairs that are not growing actively and cause thinning hairs to become thicker.
With more than 5 years of data and very good follow up, we are able to, we actually follow
our patients every 3 months and take digital photos and microscopic photos and document
their improvement. We’ve been very pleased with this success rate in comparison to drugs
and surgeries for people who have hair this has been a great option.
I think that is important for you since time is critical to learn more about this option
and look for someone who offers procedure like this. I think that this is an opportunity
where you won’t and without saying discounting the option of medical therapies such as finasteride
or Rogaine, but I think that Hair Regeneration is really intrusive with hair loss in a way
that is unique from pharmacologic options. And at the same time, in a remarkable way,
this one time treatment or in some cases when we do this a second time between 12 and 18
months, we are able to sustain significant improvement for years and that result is actually
unparalleled. So learn more about this option and once you are comfortable with the doctor,
move forward with the treatment.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!