Under 25 and losing your hair Part II

So, you´ve taken the decision to see an expert.  What can you expect from your first visit? 

Your doctor will look for two obvious signs.  The first is hair thinning.  A fine, lightened hair that progressively becomes shorter and shorter is the first indicator of baldness.   Early detection is important because medical treatment can restore its thickness, darken it just enough to be seen in photos again, get it to grow more evenly and even keep it from falling out.  This is important because once it's lost completely hair won't grow back.  

The second sign of male pattern baldness is described in this illustration known as the Hamilton-Norwood scale.  It starts with stage I and ends instage VII. 

There isn't a stage VIII but if there was it would include these guys  men who have basically lost all their hair including on the back and sides of their head.  They simply are not candidates for hair transplantation.

Doctors should look out for any redness, excess dryness or scaling on your scalp just to discard any other causes but generally in the absence of any obvious illness, male pattern hairloss is simple to diagnose.  You should know that hormone levels or blood work are not needed in order to figure out your problem is hereditary.  

Picking out the best treatment; however, requires more careful consideration.  A doctor should guide you through the pro´s and cons of each option, such as the duration of the treatments, any the possible side effects, as well as what can you expect in the short and long term considering some may lose their efficacy over time.

And last but not least, when you are under 25 years old, only an expert should indicate the right moment for you to have a hair transplant.  That´s right, there is an ideal moment to get the procedure done.  What I mean is that it shouldn't be too soon when you´ve only lost some hair quality but not hair quantity.  Having a procedure at this stage will probably not move enough hair into the affected area for you to notice any kind of “before and after”; hence, you might feel disillusioned with the procedure; not to mention a possible “shock loss” which is a transient loss of hair in the transplanted area in the months after the procedure.   Of course, you shouldn't wait too long either because why would you want others to know you went bald and then got your hair back when in reality you can recover your image completely unnoticed. But we´ll talk about that in another post.