I learned one thing from this very informative sight, try to keep the hair you have, in my opinion getting a ht is the last alternative. I am 30 years old and have a good size spot in the back of my head it is not bald but very thin. I did have a ht 900 graft in the back, so hopefully it will thicken up a little. But for all the men and women that have a good amount of hair left and are not totally bald, try to keep what you have, I use rogaine on my hairline, take propecia, and I also take a vitamin for my hair. The rogiane seems like it is working ,and to be honest I am afraid to go off of propecia. Face it rogaine is inexpensive and propecia you can buy for about $40 a month. Dont get me wrong ht do work but they are very expensive, just look at all your options before you get one, try the things that could work and remember the purpose of things like rogaine and propecia is not to grow hair, they really wont do that but if you have say 75% of your hair left these drugs can keep that hair healthy and most important keep it on your head, and hey if they dont work than go for the ht just exhaust all your sources first.

I agree completely. With drugs like Propecia, supposedly 80% of users can halt their hair loss, so they might never need a HT in the first place.

I believe it was Dr. Parsley who wrote an excellent post on this topic. He compared hair loss to tooth decay. Nobody reasonable will let all their teeth rot out, and then go to a dentist to have them all replaced. Instead, people use toothpaste to prevent tooth-decay. Propecia is like toothpaste that prevents "hair-decay". Use Propecia and don't let your hair "rot".

Also, hair transplants do not "prevent" baldness. So you need to get on Propecia and stay on it, even after a hair transplant, to save whatever remaining natural hair you still have. There is simply NOT enough donor hair to "replace everything".