About     Contact     Archives     Videos     Events     Hair Transplant

Hey doc, I’m an 18 year old male with a big forehead for someone my size, and it’s really bugging me. What option would be the best to remedy this for a guy who is my age, who is not balding or has ever had any form of hair loss, whose father did not start balding until his 50s, and who only needs to lower his hairline by 1-2cm?

I know that my two choices are forehead reduction surgery (but I’m kinda wary about the possible visible scar if I start balding), and hair transplantation. Which would the costs generally be for each option for a hairline 1-2cm lower?

At 18 years old, you really won’t know if you will bald, so if you move your hairline down with transplant and should start to recede in the future, you will have a vacant space behind the newly lowered hairline. If you move down your hairline with a hairline lowering procedure and should bald, then the scar from the procedure may show as you continue to recede. Many surgeons will not tackle lowering the hairline on an 18 year old male. For women though, it is generally no problem!

The cost of either procedure (hairline lowering or hair transplants to the hairline) may run about the same.

Hi Dr.,

Just thought I’d send this link to a photo of John Travolta. He’s on the set of a new movie and isn’t wearing his hairpiece!

Thanks for sending this in! We’ve known for some time about John Travolta’s hairpiece, and this new photo from last week shows what I believe to be the real Travolta hair (or lack thereof). He is still the same good looking man, just with a different look.

The full size photo is available at Yahoo’s OMG entertainment news.

photo by Grant/X17 Online

Dr Rassman I can’t help but notice you appear to have a very straight almost juvenile like hairline. Especially in the picture on the right hand side of the webpage under “about me.” Is this your original hairline? Or did you have grafts placed there? If it is indeed the result of a transplant, why do you warn/detract others from getting the same kind of straight hairline which you so proudly display in your picture?

I suppose I should thank you for complimenting my hairline in a roundabout way. I have a classic mature hairline, just as I showed in the post Juvenile vs Mature Hairline — Am I Going Bald?. I have never had hair transplants in the front of my head, so I thank my 102 year old grandfather for passing on his frontal hairline. I am, however, completely transplanted in the crown where my balding spot was — and for that I look to my father.

I’ve posted both of these before, here’s a photo of my hairline and of my crown. Click to enlarge.

Hi Doc, please can you clarify the measurements from the brow wrinkle for a mature hairline. When you say “just over an inch at the temples”, how much more? 1/8, 1/4? My hairline is about an inch and 1/8th from my top brow wrinkle and hasn’t receeded at all in the middle? Should I be worried? I am 34. Thanks

You are right on for the mature hairline. My rules aren’t always strict when it comes to the maturing hairline, but I draw conclusions based upon my observations. The 1/2 inch - 2/3rd inch up from the highest crease in the midline and 1 inch - 1 1/2 inches from the sides is a generally good rule to use as a measurement.

Please see Maturation of a Hairline — Moving From Juvenile to Mature for more.

Well doc, I’ve got to hand it to you. You’ve solved all my problems. I’m 20 years old, and had been losing hair for over 2 years now. I was worried,stressed,depressed.. dreaEverything you can imagine.

I also tried all the products on the market that claimed to stop hair loss- creams,oils,herbal ‘remedies’. I didn’t use propecia though,it required a prescription which would mean I’d have to tell someone I was losing hair. No product seemed to work. Suddenly,long after I stopped using these products, my hair loss stopped.

Finally, I realize that my hairline was just maturing. All thanks to your site. I never knew such a thing existed!

Anyways, the point I would like to put across is to teenagers, who seem to be flooding your site with questions. The point is, your hair will be there till you are in high school, and till you graduate from college(assuming you arent unusually old for school). These are the two places where girls would superficially judge you (and where you’re just looking for thrills). After high school and college, its a different world. Girls turn to women, and they’re looking for more than just arm candy then. Your hair would NOT matter as much as you’d think.

So don’t worry about your hair too much; even if it’s rapidly falling,it would take a while for you to bald completely. And by then,you’d be through the superficial stages of life. And remember, nothing really causes hair loss apart from your genetics, which you cant change. So don’t worry about things that are not in your control.

Otherwise,there’s always Dr.Rassman ;).

Thanks for the comments! For those that still don’t know what a maturing hairline is, you should certainly read Maturation of a Hairline — Moving From Juvenile to Mature.

Hey Doc,
I’m a 21 year old white male, my father is 42 and has a full head of hair. I know my mom’s father was balding but only met him in his 50’s and didn’t know when it began. I’ve noticed a decline in the thickness of my hair. There’s no balding at the crown but there is thinning and receding at the hairline. I’ve always had a naturally high hairline, but I do notice my hair used to grow quicker and be thicker all around. At my age is this a sure sign of MPB? Or can you experience these effects without having the gene? Thank you

Hair that is miniaturizing grows at a slower rate and the more miniaturized it is, the less it grows… until it eventually just stops growing. For those people who miniaturize all of the hairline, for example, their hair will not grow at all and sometimes it takes up to a year to fall out completely. Some men will change the thickness of their hair as they go from childhood into adulthood. The way you tell the difference between changes in hair thickness and miniaturization as an early sign of balding is to:

1. Use a micrometer to measure the thickness of your hair in the back of your head and at different areas in the front and top.
2. Have your hair mapped out for miniaturization to see if there are differences between the hairs in any one area which reflect miniaturization.

This way you will know what is happening.

My question is in regards to the hairlines of many rock musicians which I have noticed over the years. I’ve been big into heavy music for many years and i’ve notived many of them seem to have slightly receded hairlines which have never gotten worse. Some examples are

Dez Fafara from the band Coal Chamber (now Devildriver), Bass guitarist Oliver Reidel from german heavy metal band Rammstein, And in particular Pogo, once keyboardist for Marilyn Manson who has retained i’d say what’s inbetween a 2 and 3 on the scale for many years.

All of these artists seem to have retained around a 2 and 3 class pattern and has never gotten any worse. I guess it’s possible they all have gotten hair transplants at one point. Any knowlege on this? Is it possible for someone to have they’re hairline recede like that and just stop? I mean it happened to both my uncles who had they’re hairlines recede a bit around my age (19) and now in they’re late 30’s hasn’t gotten much worse. Thanks and hope to hear from you!

You are correct to look at the genetics of your family for the answers. Many people stop at Norwood Class 2 or 3 levels. I actually believe that the Norwood Class 2 pattern of balding is not real balding, but just the appearance of the mature hairline. That being said, I am not Dr. O’Tar Norwood and do not know if he recognized the mature male hairline as a normal transition for a maturing man when updating and devising the Norwood classification system that we use today.

As I’m sure you could likely assume, I’m not a big heavy metal music fan, and didn’t have the foggiest idea who the people you specifically mentioned are. I asked someone on my staff to hunt down these folks, and their photos are presented below:

I don’t see any hair loss in the gentleman on the left, Dez Fafara, as the photos I’ve seen have his long hair covering any pattern that may be present. The other two guys, Oliver Reidel and Pogo aka Madonna Wayne Gacy (thanks Internet!), each appear to be Norwood Class 3. It is completely possible that they stopped at their current levels and did not require any hair restoration, but I have no first hand knowledge about that (and if I did, I couldn’t say).

The term mature hairline sounds like a cop out to me made up by doctors. Explain if I am wrong here. A mature hairline is considered some slight recession that most men get at a certain age regardless of if they are balding or not. Wouldnt then it follow a NW 7 would simply be a hairline that is more mature then the normal hairline and hence balding would not even exist as a term right?

I do not believe you are understanding the difference between the mature hairline and male pattern baldness (MPB).

Most Caucasians (95%) will have a mature hairline as they “mature” from their teens to twenties, but about half of the men will have genetic balding, otherwise known as androgenic alopecia (AGA) or male pattern baldness (MPB) by the time they reach the age of 50. The term “mature hairline” is not some hype or concocted term, as it does describe what happens as the juvenile (your 12 year old hairline) changes into an adult hairline. Use your eyes at shopping centers and observe men over 30 and you will see just what I am talking about.

Doc,
Exactly what is a maturing hairline.. what age does it start.. and where does it stop. Isn’t there usually general thinning of the scalp with a maturing hairline as men age without going bald? I see a lot of guys in the office around 50, who still have hair but certainly not the hair I remember them having 10 years ago. I’m assuming they’ll have much less at 60.

A maturing hairline can start from the teenage years to the late twenties. General male pattern hair loss can start as early as puberty or as late as in the 50’s, but these are not firm rules. The men you see at your office probably have male pattern hair loss or you’re just remembering wrong (10 years is a long time!). Just getting older will not produce hair loss, just as our former president Ronald Reagan demonstrated.

Please see Maturation of a Hairline — Moving From Juvenile to Mature for more.

Joe Penny, perhaps best known for his starring roles in hit 1980s television series Riptide and Jake and the Fatman or more recently his guest spot on the popular TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigations and the Hallmark Channel’s Jane Doe TV movies, has agreed to let me show his results from a repair job started years back. Due to a variety of professional obligations, we were unable to schedule more work until about a year ago. When his old, ugly plugs from another doctor showed, I was reluctant for him to tell people that I was his doctor (even if only for repairs, because I did not finish the repair job)… but now things are very different as these two month old pictures show.

He tells me that on many occasions he’s overheard fellow actors talking about hair transplants, expressing fear of taking charge and doing something about their thinning hair. As Joe puts it, “It takes a great deal of courage to make the decision to get a hair transplant, especially when you see so many bad jobs out there in Hollywood. You get gun shy after making a bad decision and it took me some time to make the decision to fix my bad hair job. But now, when people talk about a hair transplant for their balding and struggle with the hair loss problem, they don’t look at me as an expert any more”.

Update 2/1/08 6:00 pm:

Joe just wrote to me. He did not know that I put him on the blog today, even though he gave me permission to do this over a month ago. This is what he said: “I want to thank you again for your kindness and your generosity in my case. The last procedure I had..even after seeing you a couple of months ago..has still continued to grow and thicken. Also the donor area…because of the expert surgical job you did… is so loose I cannot believe it! It is truly astounding to me. I mean…I new you were good but WOW! The results speaks louder than words. I have recommended several people to come and see you. I know that some of them have already come. They called me and were very angry at me, meaning…well the dialogue went something like this…”Why the hell didn’t you tell me about the NEW HAIR INSTITUTE BEFORE” My response was “I DID…YOU WERE NOT LISTENING”. They are extremely satisfied, as I have been for years. So I will keep spreading the word about the fantastic work you and you Doctors are doing at NHI.

After I received this email, I wrote to him asking for permission to use the above email. His response came in at 9:00pm and this is what he said: “Yes, you have my absolute permission to post my email. Please consider this communication as my acknowledgment that it is absolutely OK with me to post it. Not a problem Dr. Rassman. If there is a group oif men or if there is an open house going on at the office with people who are considering it and might feel a little shy or afraid of a surgery, just let me know and IF I, AM…AND IN TOWN….I WILL DO MY BEST TO ATTEND AT AN OPEN HOUSE!

Your fan forever, Joe Penny
God Bless You And Keep You

Joe is not atypical for someone who has gone through a type of hell with the old type of hair transplant plugs done years ago. I am absolutely humbled by his comments. For as long as I have been in this industry, I have been pleased to be able to help men like Joe and there have been hundreds of them, but it is even better to put hair back on a new patient who would never have to experience Joe’s type of pain.

Click photos to enlarge.

After repair:

Before repair (scanned photos):