Thank you for your question.
You’ve submitted several photos, and you describe that you have been, based on positive
information about PRP that you went and had three separate sessions of PRP over the course
of three months for hair loss.
And yet you state you have been continuously shedding hair essentially since the first
month, and that it’s getting even worse going into the third month where you describe
fifty to one hundred hairs, you see the white part of the hair follicle, and you want to
get some explanation as to what is going on.
I think I can give you some perspective.
I’m a Board-certified cosmetic surgeon performing hair transplant for over twenty years.
I’m also the founder of TrichoStem Hair Regeneration Centers which is based on a technology
and method we developed called Hair Regeneration using acellular matrix, or extracellular matrix
combined with platelet-rich plasma.
So I think I can give you what is first most likely, the most likely reason I can come
up with based on the photos you submitted.
And that is, is that if you have a genetic pattern of hair loss that is aggressive, that
is manifested by this type of rapid shedding of hairs, then it is important to understand
that PRP alone won’t stop it.
This is something that, where PRP, or platelet-rich plasma, derived from your own blood has been
shown to help grow hair that may be dormant, or as we should say in the telogen phase,
and may stimulate growth, but that’s in distinction from stopping pattern hair loss.
We have been very active in using PRP.
We use PRP on the face, on the skin, we use it in scars, and we use it as a part of our
treatment called Hair Regeneration.
The distinction is straightforward - when we treat someone with Hair Regeneration treatment,
we don’t have them come in every month, we do the injection and observe them for eighteen
months.
And what we have found is that we are able to for 99% of men, stop hair loss, thicken
thinning hair, and in some patients even improve on the first results by doing another injection.
For female pattern hair loss, we have more than 80% response with the same thing where
we stop the hair loss, we stop the progression, we thicken the hair.
Now shedding can be a part of the hair regrowth cycle.
When you think about it, if you have a thin hair, that thin hair has to shed before a
thicker hair comes in.
But that applies to our treatment, and we have learned over a long, extensive amount
of time and a lot of patients.
We have patients who come to us from around the world.
It’s one of the reasons why we were motivated to start a company to help bring this technology
closer to the people, and we have a lot of data.
So I would say, this is my opinion, and I don’t in any way want to disrespect any
doctor who is doing this, because I know they are doing their best with what they know and
what they have - but PRP alone will not stop pattern hair loss.
With that being said, it is possible that your hair is really just manifesting the pattern
hair loss.
It is not unusual for a younger person, as young as eighteen, to lose hair very quickly,
and can be bald by the time they are twenty-two.
There are different patterns, some people start losing hair later, and they lose it
slowly.
Other people, a lot of this derived from looking at your family history.
Another thing to think about is whether or not getting the treatment frequently done
can be causing something called shock.
And shock is from scalp trauma and inflammation from the injection.
We know this especially from hair transplant - you can do the surgery and place the grafts,
and in the first few months you can get what is called shock loss.
The hairs that were grafted can shed, and the adjacent hairs that were not grafted can
also shed.
So you can look like you have less hair than you had from the beginning.
Now that’s one thought.
Again, this is something that you should discuss with your doctor.
But, I can’t emphasize enough for you to understand that it doesn’t stop pattern
hair loss.
It can help someone with slow progression to maybe thicken up their hair.
But usually people find, at least the people that come to us, I should say, have found
that it gets really tiresome to get scalp injections every month.
Eventually, a lot of people stop, and then they learn more about alternatives like Hair
Regeneration.
So again, meet with your doctor, learn more about Hair Regeneration and similar treatments,
and then hopefully you will be able to intervene early enough to help you save your hair.
So with that, I hope that was helpful, and thank you for question.