Job Opportunity for Dedicated Hair Restoration Forum Members

November 14th, 2009

Thanks to the dozens of active and dedicated members who regularly participate by sharing their experiences, photos, and answering hair loss questions, our hair restoration community’s growth has exploded upward in the last couple years. It is because of this increasing popularity and growth that we are looking for a part time forum co-moderator / editorial assistant amongst the dedicated members of our forum.

To learn more about this opportunity and how to become more involved in our community, click here.

Bill Seemiller – aka Falceros
Associate Publisher/Editor

“Afternoon, Frank.” “Hey howdy, George.”

November 13th, 2009

It's about time these two neighbors got to talking to each other. Most Saturday afternoons you'd find them politely waving as they passed at each other by with their push mowers, tending to their neatly manicured tables, charts, and graphs. It just made sense that the grounds would look that much more complete if they removed a bit of fence between them. And so they've done just that.

If you use either AdSense for feeds or Google FeedBurner to track item clicks and also use Google Analytics, as of today, you will automatically start to see your feed item click analytics show up in Google Analytics with some additional information added to help you understand how distributing your feed with FeedBurner leads to traffic on your site.


Specifically, we will help you classify your links by tagging the Source as "feedburner", the Medium as the channel in which we sent out your feed such as "feed" or "email", and the Content as the actual endpoint application in which the user viewed your feed content such as "Google Reader" or "Yahoo! Mail".  In order to slice your traffic by these endpoints, in the All Traffic Sources view in Google Analytics select the "Ad Content" field in the second column.

In the coming weeks, you will start to see many more distribution endpoints in your reports. The represent ongoing additions to our database of applications that process feeds.




By default, these analytics will show up in the "All Traffic Sources" and "Campaigns" views in Google Analytics. You can filter the results just to only the traffic that comes from Google FeedBurner by filtering on "feedburner" on the All Traffic Sources page or "Feed:" on the campaigns view.  You can also use these sources in the Advanced Segments views.

In this view below, we actually have two separate feeds driving traffic to this blog, and that can  now be tracked easily in one view.





If you have item click tracking enabled, we are now automatically tagging your item URLs with Google Analytics parameters. If you're not using Google Analytics, or for some other reason don't want these parameters in the requests coming to your website, you can turn off Google Analytics tracking on the "Configure Stats" page on the Analyze tab at http://feedburner.google.com.  If you don't have item click tracking enabled, this is also the perfect time to turn it on, which can be done on this same page.





For instance, if you would rather see the detail of where your feeds are read directly, you can add ${distributionEndpoint} as the medium, and then you will get views that look something like this.





Again this will happen automatically except in one specific case:  if you are already tagging your feed item URLs with Google Analtyics tags such as "utm_source" and "utm_medium" - we have disabled this feature and you will have to turn it on manually by selecting "Track clicks as a traffic source in Google Analytics."   Note that if you do this, we will replace any existing "utm_" tags that may be in your permalinks with the values generated from FeedBurner.

In the coming weeks, we will be releasing more features in Google FeedBurner that take advantage of this functionality, so we highly recommend that you register and set up your site with Google Analytics if you haven't done so already.


Posted by Steve Olechowski on behalf of the Google FeedBurner team

Is doing more than one Hair Transplant Procedure Dangerous to the Patient?

November 12th, 2009

This hair loss question was answered by Dr. Glenn Charles of Florida who is a member of the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians.  His professional answer is below.

How many hair transplant procedures do doctors perform each day?  Shouldn’t they only perform one for the benefit of the patient?  Maybe I’m too critical, but my thinking is that your surgeon should give each patient their undivided attention.  

Dr. CharlesThe number of hair transplant procedures per day a physician performs should not be the only factor used in deciding where to go to have your surgery. For example there may be a hair restoration clinic that performs 2 or 3 procedures a day, but uses 20-23 surgical assistants/ technicians. This clinic would have the ability to divide the staff up to have 7-7 assistants in each surgery. On the other hand there may be a clinic that only performs one procedure each day, but only uses 4 assistants/ technicians.

Where would you rather go? It should then depend on several other factors. What does the patient feel comfortable with? What kind of results is the doctor getting consistently? What are the patients saying about the hair loss doctor? What techniques are going to be used? Along with many other pieces of information. I usually only perform 1 large procedure a day, unless the cases are small or just repairs. However, I know a few physicians who have very large staffs and get excellent results doing 2-3 procedures per day.

Dr. Glenn Charles, D.O.

Bill Seemiller – aka Falceros
Associate Publisher/Editor

Does Minoxidil Regrow Hair in the Temple Region?

November 11th, 2009

I am only 18 years old and have the androgenetic alopecia in the temple region.  I have been using minoxidil 2% for the last 10 months, but only small thin hair is growing back in the temple region.  I am so upset.  Please send me your valuable suggestions.

Rogaine PropeciaUnfortunately, though Propecia (finasteride) and Rogaine (minoxidil) are proven hair loss treatments, they’re only technically proven for the balding crown.  That doesn’t mean that they won’t help stop the progression of male pattern baldness from the front however, only hair transplant surgery is proven to grow hair in completely bald areas.

Because hair loss is progressive and you’ve started losing hair at such an early age, you may want to consider staying on Rogaine and adding Propecia to your regime.  Even if they don’t regrow hair, they may just help slow down or stop future hair loss.

Bill Seemiller – aka Falceros
Associate Publisher/Editor

Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) and Transplanted Hair Survival

November 10th, 2009

Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) has recently received a great deal of attention as patient and physician members of our hair restoration community discuss whether or not it might prove beneficial to hair loss sufferers. However, a few leading physicians have been using PRP to aid healing in surgical hair replacement. And while Platelet Rich Plasma has been known to promote the healing of wounds for some time, whether or not it can actually increase hair transplant growth survival and yield is debatable.

Recently, discussion forum member “Julius” created a topic to discuss whether or not PRP can actually increase transplant hair growth yield. To contribute your ideas to this topic, visit “Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) and Hair Transplants”.

Bill Seemiller – aka Falceros
Associate Publisher/Editor