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Hi, I am a 21 year old black female. When I was maybe 2weeks old I had surgery on my eyes and the doctor cut my hair on the sides to put an IV in. My hair never fully grew back. Their is a very little amount of hair on each side. I haven’t tried any meds or talk to any doctors yet. Will this ever grow completely?

With my inability to examine you, there is little I could say about the diagnosis. Generally, you can wait up to one year to see if hairs from trauma or surgery scar will ever grow back. In your case, it has been 21 years… so it would be highly unlikely for it to regrow now.

Snippet from the article:

A Philadelphia boy with a chronic balding illness was sent home by his school for having too much hair.

Eight-year-old Zion Williams has been receiving medical treatment for the illness called alopecia at Drexel University which includes painful injections to the scalp. Doctors at the Philadelphia university’s medical program told Williams’ mother Talia Mann to let his hair grow for at least ten weeks.

Last Wednesday, Williams was turned away from the Shiloh Christian Academy in Philadelphia for violating the school’s mandatory short hair policy. Mann said she even filed a doctor’s note with the school to allow her son to attend with slightly lengthened hair.

Read the rest — Eight-Year-Old With Alopecia, Hair Loss Disease, Asked To Leave School For ‘Long Hair’

I suspect that this young boy has alopecia areata (an inherited autoimmune disease). The simplest solution to me would be to waive their short hair requirement for a few months so that it would not impact his treatment, but it seems that the school was inflexible in its policies and victimized this boy.

I grabbed this from a comment left on another post on BaldingBlog…

I know how you feel I’ve been losing my hair since i was 14 as well, now at 18 I’m almost completely bald. I started using rogain when i was 15 and saw great results within the first 6 months and most of my hairline had grown back but all out sudden it fell and my hairline receded back to where it was previously. Now at 18 I’ve been on propecia for 7 months and have seen no results by itself but hopefully now that I’ve added rogaine the last couple weeks I will see better results.

Anyways I hope you have better luck then me because i know how it feels to lose hair at such a young age which complete destroyed my high school experience. Visit your doctor before its too late.

Rogaine (minoxidil) is not effective a thwarting genetic balding when it is aggressive, particularly in someone as young as 14 years old. Finasteride (Propecia) may have been a better choice when you were 14, though on a counter note, finasteride can also have an impact in growth potential of young men going through puberty. So each and every case is different and the doctor treating the patient needs to exercise good clinical judgement when recommending treatment with risks and benefits in mind.

I’m 16 years old and I’ve been receding for about 2-3 years now. But last year I started thinning and it got worse over time. I’ve been currently using Kevis 8 for about 2 months and was wondering if this doesn’t work for me then what are my options at such a young age? And I also have carry the genetic hair loss gene as well.

Genetic hair loss for men can start with puberty. If you started losing hair at 13 or 14 years old, that is rather young, but it isn’t impossible (as you can attest). If what you’re seeing is male pattern baldness, then unfortunately, it is the genetic hand you were dealt. But are you sure it is actual genetic loss and not some other factors?

There are medications such as Rogaine and Propecia that treat hair loss, but you would need to be seen by a doctor with the permission of your parent/guardian for a diagnosis and a possible treatment plan. At 16 years old, you are likely not a candidate for Propecia yet, as it is theoretically possible that it could stunt growth for those young men still going through puberty.

In general, herbal products, magic lotions, and special shampoos do not work. It is a buyer beware market.

I just turned 21 male in February, I was not really paying attention to my hair until just few weeks ago I noticed a big scalp showing in my crown area and hair is also thinning in that area. My dad is also bald but he started loosing hair when he was 30.

I am now using Regenepure Dr. I heard a good thing about this shampoo. Also should i start to use Rogaine Foam?

Thank you

The only 2 medications that I recommend are the FDA approved hair loss treatments Propecia (finasteride) and Rogaine (minoxidil). If you’ve got early crown hair loss, Propecia is the better treatment… but you should speak to your doctor about this. Figure out what it is you’re seeing in the crown by having an examination with a doctor.

If what you’re seeing is early genetic hair loss, Propecia should halt the loss and possibly regrow the hair. If you’re not seeing genetic loss, this isn’t the medication for you. Minoxidil does work in the crown, but it doesn’t stop the loss and the hairs that regrow tend to be finer.

RegenePure DR is a shampoo with ketoconazole as an active ingredient. Some claim ketoconazole works well as a hair loss treatment, but it is a better antifungal and dandruff treatment. Ketoconazole shampoo is better known as Nizoral, and I’ve written about ketoconazole before here.

(female)
Hello Doctor,
I’m 13 years old and I am loosing so much hair. It’s about 500+ hairs per day. I don’t really know what to do, my mom is taking me to a blood check tomorrow. I used heat stylers almost every day but now I’ve stop that. I can’t even run my fingers through it because It falls out. I’m not kidding and I’m getting so stress because of that. Is it possible to lose all my hair ? What can I do ? Please help !!

Anything is possible, but highly improbably that you will lose all your hair (unless you have alopecia universalis or totalis, which is rare). Sometimes hairs go into a cycle of excessive shedding and falling out. This is called telogen effluvium. The good news is if this is the diagnosis, it will reverse and your hairs will likely grow back. But you would need to be evaluated by a doctor to get a diagnosis. Perhaps you’ve just damaged your hair from the heat styling, but it would have to be some excessive damage to see 500 hairs falling out per day.

I would measure the hair bulk you have in different parts of your head and then wait out a 4 month period before remeasuring the hair bulk. That will tell us if you are really losing hair, as this test is highly accurate when comparing two sets of results over time.

My question is about the link between DHT, testosterone, aging and hair loss.

If DHT levels are related to testosterone levels, and testosterone peaks at about age 18-22, how do we explain a hairline that does not even begin to recede until age 40? Does DHT increase with age? Do follicles become more sensitive to DHT with age? Is hair loss that begins at an older age caused by something other than DHT?

I will be turning 40. Up until about 1.5 years ago, my hair was very full - no signs of loss at all. Since then, it has gradually receded above the temples and it feels a little thinner on top. I’m not interested in Rogaine or Propecia, but I would like to understand what’s happening.

If you are losing hair (in a pattern), you probably have genetic balding. It generally happens in the early 20’s to the 30’s, but there are always exceptions to the rule (and it can happen in your 40’s and 50’s). In my opinion, it does not have to correlate with the levels of DHT, because it is programmed in your genes… and your genes will express your balding pattern as it was programmed to do. You can have very high levels of DHT and never go bald if you do not have the genes. Or you can have very low levels of DHT and still go bald because you do have the genes.

In the end, the best treatment for genetic balding in men is finasteride tablets daily to slow or stop the loss as long as possible (for those men with the genes for balding, so that DHT can be minimized). If you are not interested in the medical option (Rogaine/Propecia), then the surgical option would be hair transplants to address the corner recession.

First of all, I’m a huge fan of your blog, it helped me a lot.

I visited a surgeon a year ago and he said he would do the surgery for me, but finally i did not have it done. I’m 24 and I haven’t noticed any hair loss for a year or so. I’m only balding in the front and it’s not too bad either.

I’m thinking of doing it now. But I read here that it’s usually not suggested to have it done at this age. Does usually mean that there are exceptions and occasionally you have patients at this age? How do I know my surgeon has my best interest? I actually do trust him. He is a member of ISHRS and seems very trustworthy. He said he usually doesn’t do it for young people, but that I have a lot of hair in the donor area and that since my hair is bright and curly, it’s easy to hide the balding.

We put together this post to help people like you to select a doctor: Selecting a Hair Transplant Doctor. You have to apply judgment in filtering out the variables discussed in this reference.

At 24 years old, you are at the marginal edge for doing hair transplants. Ask yourself — what is the rush? Is it bothering you enough to do something about it now or would waiting another year help you make the decision?

Doctor

I’m 59 and If I part my hair you wouldn’t notice thinning, however I like to comb my hair back and recently you can see the uneven hairline you see with thinning in addition to seeing the thinning which actually makes a broken nose look bigger. I can see how something like 300 grafts would solve it. Am I just being too vain?

I guess solve isn’t the right word ’cause i assume thinning will continue. And more procedures may be needed every couple years. Is that a correct assessment?

In a man of your age, I would expect that the progressive hair loss has already stopped and a hair transplant could solve the problem. I am not sure that 300 grafts would do the job, but I suppose it depends on how uneven your hairline is and what you want changed.

To determine what you need and balance it against what you want, you need to meet with a doctor to determine what your goals are. What I generally do is draw a line for the proposed hairline, estimate the ‘gap’ between this drawn hairline (we decide together where this line is). Then I figure out how much hair it would take to fill in the area behind the drawn hairline to where your existing hairline is.

You are not vain. Everyone has an image of what they would like to look like and you are no different than most men. I had a hair transplant last year (age 70) to fill in a balding crown with great results. You can see photos from that here.

I am a 58 year old male who is generally in good health. I do have controlled blood pressure, on 5 mg of Bystolic, and type 2 diabetes, controlled on metformin, and I also take 10 mg of Crestor for lipid control.

My hair loss problem started around 20 years ago but now it is at the point where the hair loss is just past the crown on the top of my head. I have a thick head of hair on the sides and back but just scraggly hairs on top. What treatment options would you suggest to try and either grown some hair on top of my head or keep what I have now. I have looked at Minoxidil, Rogaine to name a couple but never actually used anything. I asked my personal doctor but since he is bald as well did not have any suggestions.

I would appreciate any help you could offer.

Thanks.

There is not much I can suggest based on a few lines of description alone. Many men have hair transplants for crown loss with good results, but each patient is different. You need an examination, discussion with a doctor addressing your goals, and a meeting of the minds addressing expectations and limitations.

Rogaine and minoxidil are the same medication, available over the counter. I don’t know of any interactions between minoxidil and the medications you listed, but talk to your doctor before adding any medication to your routine. Bald or not, your doctor should be able to tell you more since he knows your medical history.