“What is the right age for a hair loss treatment?” This is one of the most commonly asked questions during a hair loss consultation.

Each Hair Loss Treatment begins with a Consultation

If you are a young person who is suffering from hair shedding and came in for a consult at Evolved Hair Restoration Clinic in Perth, it may sound disappointing at first but we cannot guarantee that a hair loss treatment will be prescribed to you! This deduction could be because you are witnessing a temporary phase of hair loss, which is reversible in nature and therefore no treatment is warranted. How is this deduction made? At Evolved Clinics, we gauge the root cause of hair loss and determine how progressive it is by running a diagnostic test on your scalp. If you wish to read more about diagnostics, check out our blog on “Pathological Powered Consultation to treat Hair Loss”.

We use a Hair Analyser Tool that provides a magnified view of the scalp and assesses the density of hair. After comparing the difference between the normal area of hair with balding areas of the scalp, an assessment is made to determine the need of any hair loss treatment. We generally follow a rule of thumb. If we get a scalp with head of hair before it reaches 50% of its original size, we have a good chance to turn it around to make it thicker.

Which Hair Loss Treatment is best for you depends largely on your age

Which type of medical treatment depends on the age of the patient. There could be a situation that a child, although rare, as young as around 10 years old shows early signs of hair loss. In those cases, we prescribe Minoxidil and Laser Hair Therapy. No Finasteride is prescribed unless a child is gone through the puberty cycle. A safe age to start Finasteride would be around 17 years of age. There are many other non-surgical treatments available as well – PRP Hair Treatment and Hair Mesotherapy both work to improve the blood circulation and make your hair look denser. These work really well for young people.

Should a very young patient undergo a hair transplant surgery?

Now coming to the hair transplant surgery for our young friends. Generally, we are reluctant to do surgery in very young men (yes you can call us conservative!). While you will get the outcome you expected if you were to go for a hair transplant that young, the problem is what happens after 10-15 years? As you may be aware, for a hair transplant, some portion of your donor hair (hair at the back which normally lasts a lifetime) is taken and redistributed in areas where you are losing hair. For a person suffering from aggressive hair loss, it is possible that you may end up losing hair from the donor hair at the back as well. Which means that you may get bald at the back and therefore you will not have enough hair to implant! So you will land up in a spot that the distribution of hair will look very unnatural. This is a horrifying reality that many hair transplant clinics will not tell you.

Net net, we would strongly recommend a hair loss treatment for young patients and would like to defer hair transplant surgery till the time we feel it would be appropriate.