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(male)
Hey guys im hoping you can help me. I’m 18 i have a problem, now i dont know why i dont have hair on my legs, 1 could it be becuase i dont eat the right food, 2 i dont excersie enough or is it just that my DHT level is low, and why would it be low? i have bvery little hair, only around my ankles not alot but a little, over the month of June last week i was on Vacation, i noticd that i had a little more hair growing then it stopped am i imagining this or is there something wrong

This is a maturing process and body hair increases as one ages. At 18, you may be on the left of the bell curve, which means waiting it out. Leg hair increases in the 20s in most men.

(male)
hey. im only 14 but for about a month know i have been very worried about my hair. it started right about summer and my hair has been falling out rapidly. i have medium long hair and wash it daily. every time i step out of the shower and comb my hair the comb is completly filled with hair. at school the person behind me would complain about the hair on his desk.

this has never happend to me and im scared i might be going bald very early. please help

First, at 14 years old, you should have a parent or guardian involved in the process. See an expert on hair (a good dermatologist) and get that doctor to evaluate you for early genetic hair loss. Most people lose 100 hairs a day and when the hair is long and the summer is upon us, there may be shedding from the heat. Still, get a doctor to look at your scalp and hair to tell you one way or the other if you are balding at a young age. Get your hair mapped out for miniaturization, as that will tell you the status of genetic balding if you have it.

hi, I’m 17, and about 8 months ago i started dying my hair. I am naturally ginger and have dyed it around 6 times in the last 8 months. I have noticed alot recently that my hair is falling out around the crown, but the hair that falls out appears to have a root on but does not have ginger half to it. whereas if i tug a hair out it is half guinger half black. This is causing me alot of concern and im frequently being bullied about my thing hair at the back. I am growing the colour out back to my natural colour hoping that the dying is causing my hair to fall out. But I dont think it is this because the roots are falling out, plaese advise me and help me. It will be appreciated so much

Thankyou.

Leave your hair alone and wait until it replaces itself. Your frequent dying may have damaged some of the hair. Use a good quality shampoo and conditioner, no dyes. Hair grows out at a rate of 1/2 inch per month, so it will take you 6 months to grow out 3 inch long new hair.

How old do you have to be for an accurate miniaturization mapping?

Any age. It is just an examination of hair condition under a microscope. You can be 1 or 100 years old.

Hi i started balding when i was about 19 and now i am 23. I have had 3 transplants within that time period and have got some coverage on the front of my scalp, but it still is thin and it makes my forehead look big. My problem now is the crown is balding and i don’t think i am going to have enough donor hair for the crown. Is there something else i can do or what do you think my best option is because it still is thin in the front but is getting alot worse on the crown. Thank you

You may be in big trouble. I would want to know things like:

1. What was your Master Plan for hair loss?
2. Did your doctor tell you about the possibility of running out of your donor hair?
3. Were you led to believe that you could get all of your hair back with good coverage?

Regular readers of this site may notice that I’ve written time and time again about the problem with transplanting younger men with early hair loss — and it is for precisely this reason. I am concerned about a 23 year old (who is probably still balding) asking me a question like you did. If you ran out of donor hair (or are about to), then you need to sit down with a really good doctor (hopefully you have one) and get some basic answers to questions about your future. An in-person exam with an expert is key for you right now. You should be worried.

Dr. Rassman,

I had a question regarding traction alopecia. I’ve always had a widows peak/high forehead. For years I had really long hair. Yet, I never knew the affect of tightly tied back hair would result in hair loss. I recently worked a job for a year where I would tie it back quite tight. Everyday it seemed I was breaking hair and after a few months I started to notice my front corners looking thinner and broken. I saw a dermatologist a few months ago. He gave a quick glance and asked about my family history. I do infact have some family members who have baldness and others who don’t on both sides. I was instantly given the MPB diagnosis. I was prescribed to Propecia on the spot and basically told good luck and that I should look into hair transplants. As I’ve been reading more about shock loss in young men. And as I’m 21 years old. I’m curious to know if I should begin looking into it, or wait and hope the propecia can help what’s been thinned. I’ve read that you’ve seen some patients reverse frontal loss with propecia.

Is it likely to help a hairline that’s intact but thin?

Thanks for your time and most importantly for having this blog. It’s a place that gives many hope.

Do not rush to transplant your frontal hairline. You can just say no!

Stop pulling on the hair and get a caring doctor who is not so much interested in your wallet and get one that is more in your welfare. Get a proper examination. If you are just having a loss of the mature hairline accelerated by the traction, then there is nothing to treat. If you do indeed have MPB, you should take Propecia for a year or so before you even consider a transplant. Then again, at 21 years old and with early hair loss, most respectable surgeons wouldn’t transplant you anyway (you may continue to bald and you don’t want to use up your valuable donor hair just yet).

I recently turned eighteen years old and have noticed a recession of my hairline in the corner’s of my hairline. My grandfather’s father and father both have hair loss and my mother’s father as well, though not as significant.

I recently went to see a doctor(after a long wait, grr) and he wouldn’t give me a prescription for Propecia because of the effects on hormone’s for someone my age. But as I recall, reading through this site, Propecia ought to be most effective for someone my age.

He referred me to a dermatologist, whom is booking for November(my god, about 5-6 months…).

My question is ‘What are the effects on the hormone’s on someone my age taking Propecia and is it worth the successful hair regrowth which should come from someone my age?’

Thank you.

It is not unreasonable for an 18 year old with proven genetic hair loss to take Propecia (finasteride 1mg). You’re likely past the age of puberty, so I don’t understand what problems your doctor has with the medication. Propecia does work best when the genetic hair loss is caught early.

To prove that you have genetic hair loss (and not just a maturing hairline), then you should get your hair mapped out to see if there is any substantial miniaturization behind the mature hairline, and if so, then this drug will be effective and generally indicated. Your doctor will make the final determination on prescribing you this medication, however. Also, you might consider asking your doctor to refer you to a different dermatologist — one that doesn’t have you waiting half a year to see him.

I thought I’d send you the picture of my current hair situation for use on your Blog because it’s hard to find pictures of men who are truly in the early stages of balding. And not just a maturing hairline or are in the more advanced stages. It’s also hard to find any good pictures on the internet because of camera quality, lighting and such.

This is a picture of me three and a half months ago when I went to Dr. Bernstein for a consult. He put me on Proscar and said to comeback in a year.

So far, I’m starting to see small hairs growing out above my temples in the 1/2″ area of my hair above my temples that I lost about two and a half years or so ago when I was 22. This loss caused a more pronounced widows peak and moved me from a NW2 to a NW3. You can also clearly see the thinning in the anterior mid-scalp. I’m not sure when this started because I used to use gel and leave my hair wet which made the loss undectable. But you can better explain what is going on in this picture, so I’ll let you do it. Do you normally see a good response from Proscar with this type of thinning? Thanks for all the great help this Blog offers!

Thank you for allowing me to publish your photo. Click it to enlarge.

It is difficult to assess your hair loss from the photo you provided, but if Dr Robert Bernstein found miniaturization during an in-person exam, then it is there. Since your hair loss is quite early, finasteride should do wonders for you. I should note, however, that if you were prescribed Proscar (finasteride 5mg), you are only to take 1/4 tablet a day to treat your hair loss. After a year on finasteride, another miniaturization exam will show whether the medication was beneficial for you in halting your hair loss. I suspect that it will be.

Dear Dr. Rassman:

Thank you for your outstanding blog. I have a question about hair transplants. Most of the before/after pictures that I’ve seen show patients with substantial balding who then receive very noticeable new coverage. I wonder, though, whether it is possible to design and begin to execute a H.T. Master Plan beginning in the very early stages of hair loss, so that — rather than suffering noticeable loss and then receiving visible new coverage in that area — the transplants can instead be inserted into areas that are just beginning to thin but still have substantial coverage.

It seems that people who work in the public eye — television anchors, actors, and so forth — must have a way to plan out their transplants so as to seem simply to retain their hair, rather than seeming to lose it and gain it back. Does transplanting into areas that still have coverage make the eventual loss of the remaining hair in that area transpire more quickly? Can transplants be performed BEHIND a fairly solid hairline if the surgeon determines that declining hair counts make it inevitable that this area will eventually go bald?

I’m a 29-year-old male, and I began using 1.25 mg/day of finasteride eight years ago. I still have quite decent coverage — noticeably thin in the vertex when under bright lights, somewhat recessed temples with miniaturized/vellus hairs at the temple hair line, and a decreasing hair count that is only noticeable to me in the first two inches of the frontal hairline. After noticing fairly quick loss in college, the erosion has been very slow during my eight years of finasteride treatment. However, I am aware of the five-year finasteride studies showing hair counts dropping after two years of treatment and continuing down from there.

I understand the need for conservative transplant treatment at my relatively young age, in order to preserve appropriate reserves of potential donor hair. (This is why I know it would be inadvisable to move my hairline FORWARD toward its adolescent location.) However, I am hoping that I can replace hair BEFORE I entirely lose it — including bolstering the hairline and several inches behind it before the inevitable loss there becomes noticeable. So, I wonder if you could tell me: do HT surgeons ever transplant into an area that still has substantial coverage, so that the loss doesn’t need to become noticeable before it is replaced? In other words, can a Master Plan be devised to prepare for inevitable future loss before that loss actually fully occurs, rather than waiting for visible baldness before surgery takes place? (I wonder how else, say, actors and television anchors are able to avoid the appearance of “losing and regaining.”)

Thanks very much for your time! I appreciate it.

I have firmly established a viewpoint to not transplant people before they are ready. Preventing visible hair loss with transplants is performed by some doctors and those happen to represent the doctors who are more in this for money rather than the welfare of their patients.

As good as you think you might be able to predict what will happen to you, you might be surprised to see that the balding will actually occur differently than you expected. As the supply is limited on everyone who will become significantly bald, you could run out and not complete what you will need if you are too aggressive. I am often humbled by the balding process, but I am also the biggest fan of being conservative.

(female)
I’m 17 years old. When I was 15 I noticed that my hair starting falling out very often. During that time I was planning my Sweet 15 I wasn’t sure if that was the reason why my hair started falling, because of some of the stress. Last year my hair started falling every day, almost a hand full. I started getting worried because cancer runs in my family on both sides and I always wondered if I had a sickness but I doubt it now because I dont have any signs of that. I’ve noticed though that some of my hair is growing back but differently. It seems to grow thicker or more brittle than the regular hair I have. My hair is dark brown but the new hairs are black. I have two older sisters, one has lost an amount of hair but thats becuase of all the gel, hairspay, and the hot tools. The other still has a lot of hair and she is 28. So i’m wondering if you know why my hair started falling out at age 15? and why are some hairs growing back thicker and somewhat curly or brittle when I have straight hair (i hardly use any hot tools).

I could write a book on what is possible in your situation. Unfortunately, I don’t know the things that you are doing to your hair and wonder if you are using chemicals that are causing problems. If this is only stress related, then telogen effluvium could be the cause. Figuring out female hair loss is complex and you need professional advice from a good dermatologist. I certainly would not put cancer on the top of that list of potential causes.

For more possible causes of women’s hair loss, see: WebMD.