Hair Loss Treatments: Clinics, Laser Therapies, and Products

It’s one of the top questions dermatologists get asked about: ‘What can be done for thinning hair?’ Now, a hair loss and hair restoration clinic promises new hair for almost all of its clients.

Barry Boudreaux, 45, of River Ridge began seeing male pattern thinning hair ten years ago in his mid-30s. It was a familiar genetic site.

‘When I was younger and I was growing up with my father and my uncles, I didn’t know grown men had hair’, said Boudreaux.

But now he’s turned to a newly opened clinic in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, for help.

‘Some people have said, “Have you changed your hair?” I haven’t grown any more hair but I think my hair and my scalp’s more stimulated. I don’t feel that I’m losing that much on my pillow’, Boudreaux explained.

Sarah Hopper of Metairie is only 23, but in the last few years noticed her hair was changing.

‘I’d take a shower and it was just like increasing—like when I’d wash my hair, how much hair would come out’, said Hopper.

She too turned to treatment at a hair loss clinic.

‘It definitely feels fuller, thicker. I’m much, much happier with it, feel more confident’, Hopper said.

Hair loss clinics have been around for quite some time, but not all clinics have the latest technological therapies to offer. There are more than 130 affiliated clinics in 29 countries. They focus on not one treatment, but a multi-therapeutic approach.

‘We’ve had 97 percent success in regrowing hair’, said Pete Zito, a certified hair loss consultant.

Clinics use prescription pills such as finasteride, and several strengths of topical medications such as Minoxidil, saying theirs is less irritating to the scalp. They say their conditioners, shampoos, supplements, and solutions cleanse and give nutrition to the scalp with DHT inhibitors, ingredients that block hormonal action that causes male and female pattern baldness called androgenetic alopecia. Also in their arsenal is a low level laser with multiple diodes. They say the technology is cleared as safe and effective to regrow hair.

‘We are in the process of doing a study right now ourselves, through our clients, and the preliminary numbers in that study are in the high 90 percent of people using the combination therapy of getting results’, explained William Blatter, president and CEO of a hair restoration clinic in Latham, New York.