Dr Leonards blog

Propecia® is one of the leading medical treatments for hair loss in men, but it becomes a hot topic in sports and Olympics news from time to time. Professional male athletes do their best on and off the field, and that includes looking their best (as we know from Tom Brady’s widely publicized visit with a hair loss specialist a few months ago). However, using Propecia® can sometimes be an issue for competitive athletes. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) bans the use of Propecia® because its active ingredient, Finasteride, is considered a “masking agent” for some performance-enhancing steroids. Though Finasteride is not a performance-enhancing drug itself, its presence in urine makes it hard to detect banned substances. This has posed a problem for a few male athletes, who were unaware of Propecia® being banned in competitive sports by the WADA. A member of the US skeleton team at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Zach Lund, was banned from the competition

I am writing to you from the ISHRS Live Surgery Workshop in Orlando, Florida where I moderated a segment and gave a talk on the Male Consultation. I also participated in creating the recipient sites of a live surgery teaching case on a follicular unit transplant of the frontal forelock on a very nice physician from the greater Philadelphia area. Just a few weeks ago I was asked about a hair restoration technique called Laser Hair Transplant Surgery. It always surprises me that even though this technique has fallen out of use since the 1990s, people still talk about it. A patient will come in to the office having heard or read mixed reviews on this “high tech” way of restoring hair, and ask for my opinion to get the facts straight. I’m always happy to tell him or her the interesting history of this once "hot" technique. First of all, this process should not be confused with low level laser light therapy, an effective technique that uses infrared light ther