About     Contact     Archives     Videos     Events     Hair Transplant

Hi, this might be an unusual question but how much and in what way can the low self esteem/ balding thing affect how a man interacts with women??

I am wondering becuase I recently dated a bald guy and I think he had a few hangups about it and I really think that it affected the way he percieved himself, and me , and the potential relationship. I only went out with him about 8 times. On our first date, he asked me if I was only going out with him because my car was towed, and this was a serious question ( he never thought that I thought he was attractive). Then when I would flip my hair around my fingers he would tell me to stop playing with my hair, and implied that I was being vain. But I have long hair that I like to twist and play with, and I kept doing it, not thinking it was an ACTUAL problem. Until he really got kind of upset, I mean he didnt yell but he got really weird and short with me and told me that It was a sign of nervousness and low selfesteem to play with ones hair….WHAT?!?!?!

Then one night I was a little late getting ready for a date with him and he asked what the hold up was, and I told him I wasnt finished with my hair, it takes an awful long time to dry it, style it, etc. So he made fun of me for it, and told me I would rather “fart around with my hair, than hang out with him”. Then he dropped the subject, for the moment..but brought it up again at dinner…but in a really sarcastic and mean way…”so what else do you like to do, besides, fart around with your hair??” Then, I tried to explain to him that my hair, while lovely and all, is really a pain in the butt to take care of…and he got mad at me and said “ya, I wish I had hair”

Our relationship ended soon after that as he got more and more focused on the idea that I was a prissy girl who farted with her hair all day long, and really wasnt attracted to him. but I was really really attracted to him. Is it in my mind, or did he have something going on in his brain because he was bald. I thought he looked very confident and masculine, its not like he combed it over…he shaved his head for godsake!!!

Is this a common thing with bald men or is it just this guy???

This is an important question. Low self esteem is an issue for men who are impacted by balding. Balding in men, and how to treat it, goes back thousands of years as evidenced by much of what we have learned from older civilizations. But in our modern world, not only are we studying how to solve the problem of balding, we are also considering men’s feelings about balding. Just like women who are proud of a good figure, a pretty face, or a nice head of hair, men spend time grooming themselves to look their best. It is hard to groom your hair if it is not there! I often refer to the lion’s mane as a symbol of virility, for without it the lion might be mistaken for a lioness. No man wants to look less virile than they feel.

Men do get impacted by their balding. When he loses his hair, a man who has relied on his physical appearance to project his personality and virility, may then become self conscious. This may change the way he interacts with his environment. I have seen this happen to men from all walks of life - famous men, billionaires, and geniuses are no different in this respect to the ordinary, average Joe.

I remember a very wealthy man who I did transplants on, who was a great speaker, CEO of a company, dynamic and very outgoing. Two years after he had his transplants, his wife came to me and told me that the man she married came back. His hair impacted his behavior in many subtle ways that she did not appreciate until he became the hairy man she knew 20 years earlier. I was very surprised to learn about it. The person he presented to the world was clearly different than the person she knew privately. They had a very successful marriage and I envied him in many ways, that being one of them.

I could go on and on with all sorts of stories, but bottom line, be kind, do not draw attention to your hair when you are with balding man, particularly if he is sensitive to it as you claimed in your question!

Is this press release true?

“Headquartered at St John’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge, Intercytex has developed a way of stimulating human cells to reproduce, not only to re-start hairgrowth, but also to accelerate wound-healing and replace skingrafts with specially grown skin replacement. ”

“The baldness treatment involves taking a small biopsy or sample hair follicles during a half-hour operation under local anaesthetic at a hair or skin clinic. The sample is then sent to Intercytex’ manufacturing plant in Manchester where the hairproducing cells are extracted and nurtured for three weeks before being returned to the clinic to be injected into the patient’s scalp. ”

“The company says a new head of hair should be evident after three months. Early trials have proved successful, with further ones planned for next year in the UK and US. “

I believe this is old news. The challenge is not to grow a hair or two from a mixture of hundreds, but to grow a large percentage of hair reliably and safely. I heard about this group last year, but was not impressed. At the ISHRS Scientific Meeting this month in Sydney, Australia, I will inquire further about progress demanding to see real data, not hype, and I promise to post a blog entry about it at the end of the month when I return.

Just learned that this month is Hair Loss Awareness Month, as determined by the American Academy of Dermatology. This is from the press release –

“Hair loss affects 80 million American men and women and while it isn’t life-threatening, it can cause emotional distress,” said Dr. Draelos. “Disease, genetic predisposition and even poor cosmetic grooming practices all cause hair loss. Even simple changes in your hair care routine can result in healthier hair.”

You can read the entire press release here. So when is Hair Restoration Surgeon Month?

im from south africa. im 22 years old and losing hair from the front to the back.im busy using minoxidil.its working a little bit but not to much.do you know of any good hair doctors in south africa as good as you for hair implants? i would really appreciate your help. thank you and best regards

Rogaine / minoxidil does not work well for the frontal area, while Propecia does work nicely at preventing hair loss in a person of your age. The effects of Propecia will probably impact the entire head if you catch it early enough.

I do not know of any doctors in South Africa that I could recommend. I always go to the ISHRS (International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery) website for physician searches, but after such a search there, it did not turn up a doctor recommendation. That does not mean that there are no good doctors in South Africa. If you do find local hair doctors, please remember to conduct interviews with each physician before making any decisions about having surgery. You might also consider coming to the US, but frankly at 22 years old, I would expect that your response to Propecia is worth exploring BEFORE you consider a hair transplant.

I have bleached blonde hair which I have been bleaching for about 1.5 years now. For the past 10 months or so I have only bleached the roots and experienced the regular breakage associated with bleaching. It has all been quite normal and certainly nothing to be alarmed about. However for the past 2 - 3 months I have noticed a large amount of hair loss at least 50 hairs a day which is very unusual for me. The other unusual thing is that for example at the moment I have brown regrowth of about 1 cm length. If I purposely pull a hair out of my head it is blonde all the way down with 1 cm of brown at the root. However every single hair that comes out of my head on its own has a tiny 1 mm of brown on the end as opposed to the 1 cm of regrowth that I actually have. Every single hair that comes out has this 1 mm of brown on the end which is making me wonder if it is actually coming out from the roots or not as the roots are much longer. I am started to get very concerned and would appreciate any answers you could give. Thanks.

It is always difficult for me to interpret the meaning of what you are seeing without making my own observations of your clinical examination. I generally employ densitometry (a science I invented and patented) which allows me to visualize the degree of miniaturization of the hair and the area in different parts of your scalp. First, I need to know if you have genetic balding. A good visualization with high magnification would serve to address the diagnosis.

The average person loses 100-150 hairs per day, so your report of 50 is not alarming. Although we undergo asynchronous hair growth, many people do see some cycling of the hair loss, not to the degree of animals with synchronous growth (shedding), but certainly what you describe could be present on a temporary basis. Time will clearly tell us and after you get a good diagnosis (reassuring yourself that you do not have genetic balding), then waiting this out is a reasonable next step. The hair character does change with age, and it is possible that you are changing the character of your hair which makes you more conscious of your recent past history of hair loss and hair breakage. You might consider letting your hair go natural brown and see if the hair loss slows down, but the first thing to do is to get a good examination and diagnosis.

Does Cool Laser Therapy work?

The low laser energy therapy is relatively new in the United States. It has been used in Europe for some time. The evidence is anecdotal, but there is no real good objective science to prove value. Everyone wants to believe that it works. Products like the laser comb are available for around $600 and people seem to be willing to invest in such products in the hope that it will work. I have reviewed all of the cursory science from Europe, and possibly there is a suggestion that the increase in hair fullness may be in the order of 10%. If that happens, then it would be good, but the issue is ‘at what cost?’ I am going to participate in a well controlled assessment of this therapy shortly. If the company follows through with the study, it will put numbers to the value of laser treatment so people like you can determine its worth in your approach to hair loss. At this time, I can not endorse it, but I feel that there is no down side to its use except the money you invest.

I have recently began using the new lazer comb. It was given to me as a gift. I was curious if it has been effective in the hair loss fight? Any comments, advice, side effects would be greatly appreciated.

I have not read any impartial scientific papers that verify the effectiveness of laser combs. I tend to discount any reports that claim the combs work, if they are written by those who have a vested interest in the success of the laser comb industry. On the positive side, I have not read any papers that claim that is unsafe to use the laser comb. Since the comb was a gift, and you plan on using it as recommended, I see no reason for you not to try it. However, if you see any adverse reactions or have continuing balding, you may want to have a doctor examine you and see if there are any recommended and scientifically proven methods that may help you.

I’ve previously written about this in a previous blog entry, Hair Lasers.

Do women really care if a man is bald?

According to a survey that appears in the July/August issue of Cargo on newsstands June 14, “almost half of U.S. women do not mind if a man is losing his hair, but 99 percent are against comb-overs.”

Forty-eight percent of the women in the online poll for Cargo magazine say men shouldn’t even worry about hair loss, while 32 percent recommend going with the flow and cutting all hair off. Only 1 percent suggest hiding a balding head under a cap or a comb-over.

i’m a 40 year old white male that is totally bald on top,with hair just on the sides. i have alot of baby hair or very small white hairs in the balding spot.i’ve been bald totally on top since i was around 25 to 30 yrs old. will transplants or drugs work for me………help

The ‘baby hair’ you are reporting in the balding area is what we call ‘miniaturized hair’ which means that the hair shaft is reduced in diameter and takes on the fine baby hair appearance we had at birth. This is a process that precedes the final balding stage. If the miniaturization is caught early enough, there are medications (like Propecia) which may reverse the process. Near the end of the loss process, it would be unlikely that the hair can be brought back. As the process you are describing sounds like the end stage of the loss, then the only solution may be hair transplantation. This is well defined on newhair.com, which has hundreds of photos of men who have had the hair moved into the balding area from other parts of the head.

I noticed that many of the photos show red head where the transplants are. Is that what I am going to look like and have to walk around with?

The pictures we show that are ‘bloody’ red or pink, reflect the time that they were taken (usually minutes after the surgery). Most are in the first 24 hours after the surgery when we have access to the patients. After that, the patients wash their own hair and the pinkness goes away faiirly quickly. What I mean by fairly quickly is that most people with dark, medium, or olive skin color rarely show any red color within 24-48 hours of the transplant. People with very fair, pale skin tend to show more pink or red in the wounds, but these people fall into two categories:

1. The first are the people who have what I am going to call ‘Histamine’ positive skin. These pale skinned people tend to develop redness in any scratch or trauma to the skin. They store higher amounts of the chemical Histamine at the ends of nerves which release to cause vaso-dilitation of the blood vessels. If you are one of these people, you can easily see it, just by taking your fingernail and scratching your arm. The people who are Histamine positive will develop a red-streak within a minute of the finger nail scratch. When we know that people are in this category, I treat them with two medications to minimize the redness and how long it lasts.
2. The second group of people are those who are not Histamine positive and they will respond like all other people with the redness or pinkness gone in just a day or two.

If you come to one of our open house events, we usually have someone there who had surgery earlier in the week. This allows you to see the post operative wound and the issue of social detectability, within a week of surgery.