Every day, Dr. Friedman sees men and women just like you who are seeking answers for their hair loss questions.

Question:
What is the best topical treatment for the re-growth and thickening of hair loss for a female around the age of 40?

Answer:
I personally do not believe there is a good topical treatment for re-growth for women.  I think the only FDA approved drug is Rogaine or minoxidil and I think it is a drug that has not been very successful in re-growth of either males or females.

In my experience I think less than 5% of women will see any re-growth with minoxidil or Rogaine.  I have seen a decrease in hair loss with minoxidil but it still does not stop hair loss totally.

My feeing is the best treatment for women who are experiencing hair loss, especially an early thinning, is low-level laser therapy.  In our experience we have had phenomenal success in not only stopping the hair loss with laser therapy but we have also seen a reversal of miniaturization of the hair getting shorter and shorter and finer and finer.  We have actually seen the volume of hair getting thicker and thicker with low-level laser therapy.

The one thing we should make clear is that low-level laser therapy works best in patients who have a lot of hair still present and therefore the earlier one comes for treatment, the better the results.

Dictated By:  S. Friedman MD

Question:
I had a baby two months ago and now my hair is shedding all the time and my hair is thinning on the top of my scalp.  Is there anything that I can do to stop my hair loss and to re-grow my hair?

Answer:
When you were pregnant, the placenta was producing a tremendous amount of female hormone that actually caused your growing phase of your follicles to stay in a growing phase.  Typically 80% of our follicles are in a growing phase and 20% are in a resting phase where the hair falls out.

When a women is pregnant that ratio changes from 80% to almost 95% growing.  When the placenta is delivered after the baby is born, that growing phase ratio of 95% growing, 5% resting now has to go back to the normal ratios of 80% and 20%.  Therefore, for a period of 12 months following delivery you will notice your hair thinning but it is not to the point of being unnatural, it is to actually lose the hair that you should have lost during those 9 months of pregnancy but you maintained those hairs instead.

Most women that have thick hair will not even notice that their hair is thickening while they are pregnant, while most women who have thinning hair prior to pregnancy will notice that their hair actually looked the best when they were pregnant and actually will start thinning again after delivery.

We have found that using low-level laser therapy has been successful in moderating that tremendous fall-out commonly called telogen effluvium, which is a normal reaction to loosing the placenta and therefore loosing the female hormones that were produced during the pregnancy.

For those women who experienced scalp hair thinning prior to being pregnant, I think those women will probably notice a marked decrease in their hair thickness after the baby is born and should consider low-level laser therapy to try to prevent any more hair loss.

To answer your question in summary, it is a physiologic change that is normal to see more shedding after delivery of your baby.

Dictated By:  S. Friedman MD

Question:
If I start laser therapy will I have to keep using it?  I am a 39-year-old woman and my hair loss is embarrassing.  Is there any way that laser therapy can have a permanent result or is it like using minoxidil, when you stop the treatments you lose your hair?

Answer:
Low-level laser therapy is very effective as long as you continue to expose the follicles of the scalp to the laser.  We require every other day exposure or regimen to the scalp to keep the hair follicles from miniaturizing.

Unfortunately, the hair follicle has a memory and if one stops using low-level laser, within 2 to 3 weeks they will start to notice a reversal of what they were able to garner with laser therapy.

In that regard laser therapy is similar to minoxidil in that the procedure must be maintained on an every other day regimen to maintain the cosmetic advantages.

Dictated By:  S. Friedman MD