How I Got My Hair Back...

as Brad Pitt once said in Fight Club it's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything this is the story of how I got my hair back let's start with a timeline of events in medical school back in 2008 I was diagnosed with alopecia ariata mainly on my legs and this is an autoimmune hair loss condition where the body attacks its own hair follicles I remember going to a dermatologist and having them offer me steroid shots but I really wasn't that excited about getting shots into my legs just for some more hair to grow in so I said you know what let's just watch it and I ended up not getting any treatment at that time for the next 10 years different spots would come and go on my legs and also on my arms so I'd get an area of hair loss like a circular spot and then maybe over the course of a few months it would start to fill in with hair and then a new spot would open up somewhere else on my legs or arms then at the end of my facial plastic surgery Fellowship in 2018 I was at a plastic surgery conference in Miami when I noticed in the mirror that I had this spot that was opening up on the left side of my head and that really freaked me out I was again offered steroid injections and this time I took them because I was obviously worried you know going into a profession that had to do with Aesthetics that I was going to have this big hole on the side of my head with no hair and how people would perceive me over the course of about nine months that bald spot filled in with hair and it looked pretty normal then on December 7th of 2019 something unexpected happened I woke up one morning and I went to brush my teeth but I noticed that as I was swishing the water in my mouth and trying to spit it out some of the water was just inadvertently like squirting out of my mouth and I was like wait a second like why can't I control this water like I never you know we don't think about those things normally right we just kind of do them it becomes routine and and sort of route from me I was like in that moment having to force myself to continue to close my mouth or else the water was just coming up but over the course of the morning I started to realize that the right side of my face just felt weaker and so that was something I had never experienced before also my taste felt off you know I ate I remember some like cheese in the morning and it just didn't taste like cheese and I remember that later that morning I had a scheduled haircut and I was like do I go to my haircut or do I go to the emergency room and get evaluated for like a possible stroke and that was I was honestly debating between those two things because I really hate changing plans like so I knew I had this haircut and like well I have to get my haircut because it's scheduled for you know for 11 A.M but uh luckily my wife convinced me to go to the emergency room instead I got some Imaging done where they scan my brain to make sure that there wasn't anything really bad going on and it turns out that the Imaging was all normal and the blood work was as well so essentially I was diagnosed with Bell's Palsy at that time and they gave me some steroids and antivirals to take to try to improve the speed of recovery and the other funny thing is that I actually had a photo shoot scheduled for a few days after this happened to me and I just kept that because again I don't like changing plans so I kept that photo shoot and I couldn't actually smile because then you could really see the asymmetry in my face so I did my best so with the help of the steroids the antivirals and this electrical stimulation that I was getting over the course of about four weeks the facial nerve improved and I started to look and feel much better and I was still able to get my work done during that time now keep in mind that up to the age of 34 I was like a Norwood zero I had this really low hairline really thick full hair and that was just like a staple of my look right I never once had thinning never really thought about my hair starting to you know worsen and recede or anything like that it was lucky genetically but after this Belle's episode my hair started to thin now the following month on January 21st of 2020 I was sick with covid and at that time we didn't know what it actually was right but I had these terrible symptoms I was in bed for a week I literally just had these high fevers for a week couldn't get out of bed it was the only time that I actually had to reschedule my surgical patients because I couldn't get out of bed and soon after that I started to experience rapid hair loss throughout my entire body I tried PRP injections I tried oral minoxidil I tried squaric acid and none of that was really helping and we made a video in the past that we posted on this channel that goes through some of those trials and tribulations so check that one out too and while all of this was happening January of 2020 was when I had split off from my hair transplant mentor and I was worried that you know maybe patients wouldn't come to me because I was this young hair transplant surgeon with you know not too many before and after photos at that time and now I was losing my hair how would I explain that to my patients all those things were swirling around in my head and were making me really nervous and Afraid for the future and then of course uh the pandemic hit and then I was just like I don't know what's gonna happen I mean this is just a complete disaster now six months later in June of 2020 I decided to just shave the remaining strands on my head the hair was looking so thin and it just wasn't worth just putting up with those hairs anymore so I went ahead and just shaved it off and my condition at that time was officially alopecia areata universalis the other big problem was that my fingernails were starting to get super brittle they started to get these pits and they just weren't strong so if I were like on the keyboard I'd noticed that you know the fingernail was starting to bend and I was really worried that it was going to affect my surgical performance as the nails got more and more brittle so around that time as some of you know through our you know past videos I went on immunotherapy so this is essentially like allergy shots so they found out I was allergic to many things and similar to what squaric acid does which is an immunotherapy that's more applied to the surface where you redirect your immune system to Target something other than the hair follicles so this was something that didn't have that much data behind it as far as systemic immunotherapy but my immunologist and I felt that there was a chance that things could get better if we started to Target some of the things that I was allergic to so that the immune system would essentially have something else to do other than destroy my own hair follicles and mess up my nails so this went on for about a year and a half that I would go every week and I'd get you know stuck with needles to get these allergy shots I also briefly tried a gluten-free diet around that time and then like an anti-inflammatory diet these diets were very hard for me to stick to uh and I wasn't sure if they were actually doing anything so you know I tried them intermittently for about the course of a year but then ended up going back to like my usual diet which is a fairly balanced diet luckily my fingernails improved over the course of about three to six months and I was super thankful and pleased with just that if you guys remember I got glasses around that time not because my vision was uh getting poorer but because I wanted to cover up the appearance of the lack of eyebrows so nine months into this immunotherapy in February of 2021 there were some signs of scalp hair regrowth but this was really short-lived and that hair disappeared again six months later so by August of 2021 I again had no hair on the body so now a year after that in July of 2020 2 the eyebrows started to spontaneously return and at this point I wasn't on immunotherapy anymore I wasn't getting those allergy shots I pretty much just had stopped doing that and as most of you know I decided not to pursue Jack inhibitor therapy and I have a video about why I made that decision and over the last six months the hair has just continued to thicken the eyebrows the eyelashes and you can see you know some scalp regrowth and just like facial hair and like underarm hair and not really much on my arms but on my legs I'm seeing some signs of hair growth and I'm nowhere near where I used to be but it's promising that at least some of the hair is returning but remember that alopecia universalis is the more severe form of alopecia areata and the chance of complete regrowth of my hair is under 10 so what actually brought the hair back there is no one right answer here but these are some of my thoughts overall I've had reduced stress at work about a year ago in September of 2022 I made the conscious decision to scale back on some of the surgeries that I was doing and I decided that I was only going to focus on hair surgery and lip surgery and that was a huge decision for me because you know I'm fully trained in really high level rhinoplasty surgery facelift surgery eyelid surgery as many of you know and I was getting nice results doing those surgeries for many patients both for cosmetic purposes and for functional purposes so to cold turkey just stop offering many of those surgeries was a huge decision also over the course of the last year I've been able to grow my practice grow my staff and I really feel like well supported both on the front end when it comes to you know receptionist my patient coordinator and then on the back end you know I have an amazing team of like really experienced people you know my hair tacks my hair nurse my physician assistant I mean everyone's really top-notch and doing an incredible job so over the last year the practice has been stable uh you know we're still scheduling several months out and that of course uh gives me just some sense of of calm and again reduce stress also over the course of the last year I've had reduced stress at home my daughter is now four and she's sleeping a little bit better so you know those sleepless nights uh are gone luckily in addition to that uh something that I haven't really spoken publicly about just out of respect for my wife and you know her specific requests but she's now allowed me to to mention this uh in this video is that around the time that I was diagnosed with alopecia areata and I thought I was going through something you know horrific and terrible I felt so bad for myself well that quickly went away because my beautiful wife Liz was diagnosed with a form of leukemia called CML out of the blue and that was of course uh you know insanely difficult and uh really heartbreaking at the time but she's a super strong person and she was able to uh you know overcome the disease and was placed on uh the proper chemotherapy pills early on and did really well with them uh luckily and so you know she has been off the medication now for a few months and uh and in full remission of her disease and so that first of all back when it started I no longer felt bad for myself because she was going through something much worse and the the crazy irony of some of the comments that I was receiving on these videos was like you know oh do you have cancer like oh are you going through treatment because I didn't have eyebrows and all this stuff meanwhile you know it's my wife who's going through all these crazy things but she's done really really great and you know that's been uh the biggest uh to Joy in my life is seeing her recover and do awesome that has of course taken stress off of me and it's given me a new Fresh perspective on life and really what matters most to or what should matter most to all of us I've also been exercising more I go for these little jogs maybe two to three miles three to four times a week and that's really helped just kind of clear the mind and make me feel that physically stronger and with a little bit of weightlifting you know mixed in as well some of you guys might not know but I used to actually like lift weights towards the end of high school early college I was like probably in my best shape and then it sort of went downhill my diet has also been overall quite good I've been eating less overall I still eat way too many sweets but other than that it's a balanced diet and I've just been doing some intermittent fasting and I think maybe that has something to do with the hair regrowth as well and at the end of the day I'm really doing what I love you know I really love caring for patients and seeing them have fantastic results um with their surgeries and just the you know delivering good quality care I also love educating on YouTube you know I've always been into teaching and I tutored early on in my life like even in early High School I was tutoring people who were a year you know behind and that has been something that you know has always kind of come naturally and that gives me a ton of happiness and joy in my life also I really enjoy the process of growing the practice as well as growing the brand feel confident and being able to add value to people's lives beyond what just surgery can afford really helping people learn how to navigate the Aesthetics Marketplace and to not be fooled by different gimmicks or marketing tactics that people might have but to again make these informed decisions with the best possible information available that's truly my goal with all the activities that I do online and that I do in my practice and I think being able to do these things things that I love doing has given me an overall just peace of mind and the ability to produce without you know being worried about what people will say for example because I just know that as long as I put sort of patience first or people who are just looking to learn and Elevate the overall nature of my field then I'm doing the right thing and we're just going to keep making videos and and doing good work ironically I had to lose my hair to find the drive to be able to educate the world about hair loss and to give many people the joy of hair restoration and I truly believe that your support and kindness in part helped bring back my own hair so I wanted to thank my family my friends my patients my staff and the entire YouTube Community regardless of what the future holds for my battle with alopecia areata I'll be forever grateful

Channel: Doctor Gary Linkov

Views: 2,239,985

Keywords: alopecia areata, alopecia areata treatment, alopecia areata universalis, alopecia areata regrowth, alopecia areata recovery, my hair loss journey, how i got my hair back naturally, Dr. Gary Linkov, Doctor Gary Linkov, hair loss, hair regrwoth, hair regrowth for men, hair loss treatment, what is alopecia areata, alopecia, what is alopecia areata universalis, hair transplant, plastic surgery, celebrity plastic surgery, How I Got My Hair Back...

Id: wFZm0E3P1Cs

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 13 2023