Do you have to take any medications/follow-ups forever to keep it in place or is a one and done kind of procedure?

No medications or follow ups required. The transplanted hair follicles are harvested from a region of the scalp (the donor area) that is genetically immune to hair loss, meaning they are permanent. However, you will continue to lose the non-transplanted native hair around them as baldness progresses. So some people choose to take finasteride and/or minoxidil to maintain their existing hair (I personally don't).

The side effects of finasteride are wildly overstated, millions of people take it without any issue, myself included

> I think the finasteride side effects sound too much for me to handle.

That's the bit that puts me off. I don't mind my baldness - it doesn't impact me in any way. I wouldn't mind being able to have hair again to style it, but not at the expense of the potential side effects of fin.

I'll just continue to enjoy not having to style my hair every morning, and saving on extortionate barber bills nowadays.

You don’t? Are you okay with what it’ll look like once you lose the hair behind your transplant? Folks who get a HT who don’t get on meds will have a weird crescent hairline and then no hair behind it. Feels like at that point just don’t get the transplant in the first place.

I've never done it despite being fully bald by age 25, as going back into work with a head of hair would cause more conversation about it than being bald ever has for me

You shouldn't bother with any other opinion than your own on these matters, it's not healthy, they don't live your life.

That being said, I also started balding in spots very young and I couldn't care less fixing it.

Obviously subjective, but I've got to say that looks pretty great to me. Do you mind if I ask where the transplanted hairs came from?

They come from lower parts of the patient's scalp. The typical "receding hairline" pattern is caused because the follicles on the forehead and top of the head become sensitive to with age to DHT, the but the hair follicles on the lower and on the back of the head don't have the same sensitivity. There's usually more than enough of these resistant follicles to maintain sufficient hair density.

The surgery just moves the follicles around your own scalp. Body hair transplant can be done but is relatively uncommon, donor hair from other people (or animals) requiring a lifetime on immune system suppressing drugs as with an organ transplant is virtually unknown.

No, it's not pubic hair and you don't need to have a hairy back or chest, and no, there are not millions of low-status Turkish men walking around with scarred heads because they sold their scalp to a foreigner.

Thanks.

They take hair follicles from the back of your head, the "safe donor area" that is genetically immune to balding, and move them to the thinning areas. The total amount of hair on your head remains exactly the same, it's just repositioned to give the illusion of uniform coverage and eliminate bald spots.

That's also why it's not a miracle cure for baldness - you're limited by the amount of hair follicles available in the donor area.

See: https://ishrs.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/donor-area-asse...

I had three done in the states and I'm happy with them, but it's tough to argue it was necessarily worth the increased price.

It's a lot cheaper in Turkey. I don't remember the exact numbers but each of mine (in the US) was in the high four figure range.

I originally felt more confident going to a plastic surgeon, though even though the doctor oversaw the process, it was being done by highly trained technicians. That's probably more ideal anyway because it's very manual and meticulous work, so (IMO) you want someone who's done it a thousand times--not someone who did a nose job yesterday, a boob job the day before, and only does a hair transplant every couple of weeks.

I'd assume the techs in Turkey are about as experienced as you can get.

if i recall, it was costing $8-$11 in US compared to 3-5eur per graft in turkey 2-3 years back.

that is actually one of the better and more natural-looking hairlines I've seen. They did a good job!

It is mostly a waiting game. The first month is about cleaning the scabs off your scalp and keeping away from the sun and certain activities while the hair follicles anchor and the scalp heals. Your hair will go through an initial 'shock' phase where it falls out but enters a normal growth cycle.

I don't think so. I had a transplant and I'd like being told I look better bald. I can always shave my head. "You looked better with hair" when you've gone bald is the hurtful one.

Some men can. Unfortunately, a full head of hair looks better the vast majority of the time.

Dude, you're crazy! You look great now, prob one of the best procedures of it I've seen.

Also I notice my wife and female friends NEVER seem to notice when someone has plugs.

When I occasionally point it out, they're always surprised.

I haven't done it as I don't need it, but I would say anyone on the fence, just do it.

From what I know it's easier to keep what you have that get a transplant so fire up that HIMs subscription

Thanks! It's really hard to tell. Most people are surprised when I tell them (unless they knew me before the procedure).

I think both look good on you, I had a transplant because I definitely didn't look better bald.

As a guy that started experiencing moderate hair loss in his 20s, I spent countless hours researching the Turkish hair transplant industry.

It's a case of having the right people at the right place, at the right time. Turkey have some of the leading doctors and clinics in this field, and have had for years. They were also located in a place which was close to both customers from Europe and the Middle-East, and could offer FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) procedures at a very nice price.

Even the very top doctors there were charging a relatively modest price, compared to their (more) western colleagues. And I guess with the sheer volume they'd go through, they discovering new best practices, techniques, etc. along the way.

Back when I did research on this, now 15 years ago, the industry was starting to really take off. This was reflected in the prices that the best clinics charged. Some of them jumped up 50% in a short time, when photo-driven social media like Instagram started blowing up.

And then a whole industry sprung out of it. Many excellent clinics, tons more mediocre (to horrendous) ones that are only trying to compete on price.

Guess this also goes for the dental industry there.

Did your research turn up anything about the hacked medical devices that the article is talking about? Is that not relevant to the industry at large too? Seems like that kind of could have been a "make it or not moment", or no?

My grandmother used to say, "the Americans are going to space while we're just growing butt-hair". She was so close!

The first gulp from the glass of wealth will make you reach for the stars, but at the bottom of the glass, a hair transplant is waiting for you.

The only caveat is that Turkey isn't even an EU candidate anymore. So not sure why you bring Europe up.

It is a huge unspoken reality how much one's physical appearance affects the way they are treated, their life outcomes, and ultimate success in social/romantic relationships. Hair transplants, leg lengthening, plastic surgery, etc. will all explode over the next decade as AI erodes humans' ability to be successful via their industry and intellect.

The irony is that none of this stuff actually works as intended. Plastic surgery is obvious. Lip injections are obvious. Leg lengthening, I mean have you seen the proportions after?? Hair transplants too. If the most wealthy people getting these procedures look botched, what hope does anyone have really. Also, are we acting like steve jobs wasn't still a handsome man with his grey thinning head?

It doesn't come from getting legitimate validation from others. It comes from one's own fear of aging and their own mortality. Sorry, but we all shrivel up like a raisin by the end. Trying to beat that back with these means just seems so futile. Spend that cash on therapy instead to tackle your body dysmorphia.

> Plastic surgery is obvious

Survivorship bias, you only notice the plastic surgery that isn't good. Most of the time it's invisible, your brain doesn't process the individual change, you just get the sense that the person looks better/less tired/more put together.

>Lip injections are obvious

Same phenomenon, but even if they are obvious some people like that aesthetic, in the same way that dyed hair/painted nails are obvious, but that's the point

>Leg lengthening, I mean have you seen the proportions after

For some men it is far better to be 6' with wonky proportions than 5'7" with perfect proportions. There is far more hate directed towards short men than men with long legs.

>Hair transplants too. I mean are we acting like steve jobs wasn't still a handsome man with his grey thinning head?

Not everyone is as handsome as Steve Jobs. If you have a handsome face you can get away with balding, if not then its a further infliction on how people percieve you.

>Sorry, but we all shrivel up like a raisin by the end

If we all die after 80 or so years then what's the point of doing anything? Why get a job, why put any effort into personal grooming?

> Survivorship bias, you only notice the plastic surgery that isn't good. Most of the time it's invisible, your brain doesn't process the individual change

So you're telling me all these Hollywood stars having infinite money, access to the best surgeons and are literally paid to look good get butchered on purpose?

Yes, often times it's some specific surgeon that overpromises, messes up, then subsequent surgeries which attempt to patch the issues end up failing. There are many celebrity surgeons who are good at marketing but bad at execution, and many celebs themselves who can't discern a good or bad job.

Everyone looks great if they live healthily and groom themselves. No one is actually an ugly duckling.

>If we all die after 80 or so years then what's the point of doing anything? Why get a job, why put any effort into personal grooming?

Because you want to be fit and healthy? All these surgeries are orthogonal to that. Every surgery is risky even medically necessary ones. You shower and groom yourself to prevent skin issues. You work out to simulate the hunter gatherer lifestyle your body is adapted to in the modern society which does not sufficiently pressure these adaptions. This stuff is your oil change and tire rotation. It is maintenance really. These surgeries are not maintenance however. It is like ricing the civic while it burns oil and the transmission makes scary sounds.

> Everyone looks great if they live healthily and groom themselves.

Not true for everyone. Simply living healthily and grooming, you are still limited by the ceiling imposed by your body. Sometimes it just doesn't live up to the aesthetic demands of the human psyche, used to a superstimulus of attractiveness as the norm.

>Every surgery is risky even medically necessary ones

Most cosmetic surgeries carry very little risk, your overall risk from even being a moderate drinker, commuting to work in a car, being mildly overweight are far higher in aggregate.

My main point is, the human modern social world isn't a perfect arbiter of reward based on whether you are doing all the "right things", by being generally healthy.

Sometimes people get a disease, like cancer, and nothing our body evolved to do can help, but human-invented therapies can actually help. Likewise, you can be perfectly healthy and nevertheless start balding, and no amount of generally being healthy is going to fix it, and no amount of generally being healthy will mitigate the minor albeit real social cost of it.

Donald fricking trump is the president of the united states. You don't have to be pretty to get far in life.

An exception isn't the rule. However Donald Trump by NY billionare real estate executive standards is fairly good looking, is very tall and has no major deformities. I doubt Trump would have gotten as far as he did if he were below average height, balding and didn't have expensive veneers.

Sure he would have. Plenty of people at the top of their industry are short, bald, and not conventionally attractive. People only have a good 10-15 years between looking 16 and showing signs of aging, sometimes much less. Such a small percent of one's life. But, people are not rational or logical but highly emotional. They see a grey hair and they feel bad. A wrinkle and they think it is the end for them. Sorry, you are becoming a high mileage car. This is just what happens. You got a lot more in you to go though.

Kind of relevant that Steve Jobs looked like Ashton Kutcher to begin with. Edit: Well a prettier version.

I agree, but admitting the shallowness of the general human populace seems to be a moderate social taboo. You can get away with contextualizing it in a way that equivocates the nature of the phenomenon, but addressing it too directly seems to get pushback.

Saying

>I'm getting a hair transplant because I want to feel better about myself

Is received much more favorably that

>I'm getting a hair transplant because people are mean to bald people and I would downgraded a few points in implicit social status and general treatment if I were to exhibit male-pattern baldness.

It’s one of the most spoken about things in the world somewhat indirectly.

> as AI erodes humans' ability

Lol here we go again.

I'm not entirely sure! It might have thinned a bit, but it also depends on my haircut, angle, and light.

It was painful for a day or two, and I couldn't touch my scalp at all for a few days, I had to sleep on a rolled-up towel. That's it.

I won't be calling Turkey Türkiye anymore than I would call China Zhōngguó.

They don't have any authority to manage other people's languages.

The lack of capitalization is an obvious error, though. Before clicking, I wondered if some accidental discovery in turkeys (as birds) resulted in better human hair growth.

> I won't be calling Turkey Türkiye anymore than I would call China Zhōngguó.

And that's fine. I mentioned Türkiye because at least one smart-ass would correct me otherwise. But "turkey" is a bird. For it to be a country it's at least gotta be "Turkey".

> I won't be calling Turkey Türkiye anymore than I would call China Zhōngguó.

Whyever not? It's their stated preference. And it's hardly the same kind of change as "China" vs. "Zhōngguó" or "Germany" vs. "Deutschland". It's just a slightly different spelling and pronunciation of the same word. You can change your ways.

Well, you don't know if they do, or if they were just capitalising the start of their sentence while not feeing that the word needs a capital letter in and of itself.

(But yeah, personally I would capitalised both counties regardless of spelling/which name used.)

Hold on, I’m confused for real. If not for the country, is this just a cosmic linguistic coincidence? J/k but only sorta.

Any country should have the respect to have their names spelled out as they prefer, the PITA is the keyboards. I speak for myself, but when I type Turkey I mean the country with no subliminal diss.

Sure, but "turkey" is a bird, not a country. You at least have to write "Turkey" to be clear to English speakers. If you like, save Türkiye for your visits to the UN.

Yes, casing matters. It carries meaning.

It's the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.

This headline makes it sound like the IT systems of a cosmetic surgeon have been attacked by poultry.

Exactly. "Earth" means the planet we live on and "earth" means soil. The disrespect of the meaning conveyed by not using the correct case is noxious and sloppy.

Yes? The country is named Türkiye, we should use that name?

The etymology here is interesting and has a looooong history. The country has officially been named Türkiye for over a century.

Is it a right of any nation to assert what other nations call it? Can America ask China to stop calling them 美国 (Měiguó) and call them the USA?

The problem with the turkey rebranding is that it was a mere orthographic update, but it is using orthography that is very non standard(whatever that means for English), including using a diacritic rarely seen in English.

I could get behind it more if they completely changed the name, like a when Swaziland switched to eswatini. But for now, you can pry turkey from my cold dead hands

Yes? It's obviously the case that countries can ask this?

We can choose not to do it, I guess, but place names change all the time. Istanbul vs Constantinople. New York vs New Amsterdam. Myanmar vs Burma. Czechia vs Czech Republic. Swaziland vs Eswatini.

> But for now, you can pry turkey from my cold dead hands

Big fan of Thanksgiving foods I see.

(Do you see the real problem? Lowercasing a proper noun that has another meaning when lowercased. Turkey/Türkiye is just the cherry on top)

Yes, compare Czech Republic-> Czechia. No problem typing that out, no problem updating my mental map of the world.

Frankly I dispute that Türkiye can be the English name given it contains a non-English letter.

> if they completely changed the name, like a when Swaziland switched to eswatini.

It's "Eswatini" with a capital letter and no, it's not a complete change. In both cases the word means the place of the Swazi/Swati people. If you're not aware that Southern African languages use prefixes such as "e-" as well as suffixes (like e.g. the suffix "-land" in English) then I guess it's harder to recognise the word stem. But they are related terms, not a "complete change".

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swazi_people

That attitude is, frankly, pretty misanthropic. "Why should I do anything for anyone who doesn't do it for me first" is how you get nowhere.

So here's your why: because they asked you to and you are better at it than they are. If you need smug superiority, you could use that too, I guess.

People change their names and nick names all the time. I don't go and check every value of theirs before I use their new name. It's really not that complicated.

I don't see why I should follow the demands of an authoritarian president who encourages ethnic cleansing in the Caucasus and represses ethnic minorities in his own country. Especially when they won't do it for others.

Oh, extremely fuck Erdogan. Despots don't deserve the time of day. If that's your reason to keep it Turkey, then fine. Probably still not turkey, though. We can check back after Erdogan is gone and see how you feel about Türkiye then.

So does 'mark' and 'Mark', that doesn't mean I correct everyone (or myself) every time they/I type my name without using a capital letter.

Words come from the people who use them. The name for a place is in the context of the language and culture that is using the word to reference it.

Regular Turkish people may not. The Turkish government, in official diplomatic communications, most certainly would if those countries requested it.

I don't think we are required to start calling it Turkey in the vernacular. Regular Turkish people don't have to change their names for countries in their language either. I only pointed out Turkey/Türkiye in my original post to head off smart-asses. Using proper casing for the name is much more important.

Yes! I originally read the headline as "a turkey" because of the lack of a capital T.

They can call themselves what they want, but it unreasonable of the Turks to expect English speakers to write their country's name with characters which are not part of our alphabet.

Yeah I'm not gonna type out the u with an umlaut (?) myself on an message board. If I were writing to the UN or to the Turkish embassy I'd copy-paste it. But lowercasing a proper noun is egregious.

So I spent time living in Istanbul a few years ago. It really was wild. In the touristy areas (near where I lived), you really would see loads and loads of bald guys walking around with stitches on their heads.

If I were bald, I would totally go there and do the same.

It's interesting to read about.

I visited one of those Bosley places in the US. The pitch came across as very...predatory? It did not inspire confidence. They would only consider scheduling you for the surgery if you could demonstrate that you'd use other measures for a year, meaning finasteride, one of those laser hat things, etc. They did talk about how few surgeons there were that do this stuff well though. Also talked about scalp injections I think?

It's been several years. I just decided to let it go naturally and deal with it.

> The pitch came across as very...predatory? It did not inspire confidence. They would only consider scheduling you for the surgery if you could demonstrate that you'd use other measures for a year, meaning finasteride, one of those laser hat things, etc.

I don't want to defend the esthetic surgery industry in general, which I do think tends to be quite predatory, but doesn't this sound like the opposite of that? If they really wanted to fleece you, wouldn't they offer surgery instead of the safer and cheaper treatments?

Did they require it be through them? Fin is pretty cheap as far as meds go.

Unless you're already at full Norwood VII pre-transplant, you have hair that you'll continue to lose post-transplant. Being on the medications that help stop that in its tracks will mean a better looking long term result and keep you from having to undergo future transplants.

>Unless you're already at full Norwood VII

I was at "80% hair loss" and they pretty much just carpet bombed my scalp. Looks great now, no meds.

Haha, true. Another advantage of doing it in Istanbul is that you don't look like a weirdo walking around with your headband and scarred scalp.

Am I the only one that likes being bald? Hair maintenance has always been a huge drag for me (yea executive dysfunction!) and when I had it I hated it getting in my eyes. I was balding anyway. Started shaving my whole head at the start of COVID and haven't stopped. I love it.

I have decent genes so decent hair. Albeit with first grey strands. I prefer to keep it rather short. Even when it is not really long it is much more work to wash. Proper short is like running hand with shampoon through once and being done...

Club Happily Bald here. My wife prefers me without hair, and razor blades are significantly cheaper than haircuts. I can't imagine trying to preserve my hair.

I'm just using a trimmer, without any of the "sheets" or whatever in front. Used to do a 10mm trim, now I just do 0mm trim I suppose. Bought a machine maybe 10 years ago, still using the same machine, just needs lube sometimes, and a deep cleaning, otherwise it only costs the electricity! Works for hair anywhere on your body too, so you can get a 7-in-1 machine if you're lucky too! :)

I like it, but then again my hair was never great to begin with. It’s certainly one less thing to think about.

The title just goes to show that

1. the turkish government had reasons for trying to get people to use "Türkiye" instead.

2. It's still not working.

I 100% thought this was about birds until clicking

> I 100% thought this was about birds until clicking

Same, I was really curious reading about the hair transplant industry organized by turkeys and got really disappointed :(

Turkish isn't pronounced "Turkey-ish". It's just "turk-ish" as in, "of or relating to the ethnic group the 'Turks'". "Turkiyesh" (Turkish is perfectly phonetic, they don't play games with vowels combining to make all sorts of sounds like English) would be a different thing, being of or related to the country Turkiye.

No, that's not it. The problem is that "How turkey" means a bird, but "How Turkey" means the country.

What I think is surprising about this article is that I would expect the top HN comment to call out that it's an advertorial for the Turkish hair replacement industry. It's like something you'd usually find on the Yahoo News page - the only reason it seems to have survived on the front page of HN is because it's in Wired and it's got the word hack used inappropriately in both title and body. If I can't rely on HN to sniff out the paid BS, what do I have to do, figure it out myself?

I can't read the article myself, but the blurbs I can read:

> Turkey’s billion-dollar hair-transplant industry is the result of a constant process of innovation. [...] it’s also a tale of “hacked” medical equipment and algorithmic craftsmanship

Seems there was some actual "hacking" involved, if they had to patch medical equipment, but who knows how much of the article is actually about that, I can't actually see any text.

If you're not white enough, it's a hack. You can get around this problem by attracting some VC funding and building your HQ in Silicon Valley. /s

In this context it's being used in much the same way as in "growth hacking", which is an actual position people hire for.

This concept in known as medical tourism. [1]

I was business admin student in college and my concentration was in entrepreneurship. Part of the program was a class were I had write a business plan and I chose medical tourism. This was back in 2006-ish. Even back then, there was trend where Americans would travel abroad for surgery, but cosmetic surgery was not that popular. Mostly people would go to India, bc the quality of care was high and orders of magnitude cheaper.

Good to know my entrepreneurial instinct was somewhat accurate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism

I had mine done in Rio de Janeiro, not in Turkey, but I understand the costs are similar for both. I had 2 sessions performed 6 months apart, total cost of about USD $5,000. In the US it might have been $20,000 or more. Each session was about 10+ hours, but with the local anesthesia it went by surprisingly quickly. I take dutasteride and apply topical minoxidil daily.

This was in 2023, and I'm largely happy with the results since then. If I had my 20s to do over again, I would have tried to go just the medication route and avoid the procedure. I do think that would have resulted in a more natural appearance vs. what I have now.

>I take dutasteride and apply topical minoxidil daily.

This is so extremely harmful. I wish you the best of luck.

Edit: To whoever I upset, yes it is harmful to suppress your sexual hormones daily. Originally it was never intended for hair loss but for prostate cancer until Merck & Co. figured out they could market it as a 'hair loss pill'. You will find the popularity of fin/dut inflated on Reddit these days as (paid) moderators will remove anyone who speaks against it even those with first hand horror stories.

Not everyone is affected by the side effects you are mentioning. If 100 % of men were experiencing them I doubt Dutasterid would still be such a popular drug for bph

Let me be clear: hormone suppression is not a "side effect" it is the effect. Ironically, the side effect is the hair growth.

Edit: systemic effect is not 0% even with topical, enters your bloodstream nonetheless. To respond to the guy marketing below (HN limiting replies).

Everything has horrific side effects - as per your two examples.

What really matters is the prevalence...

Why are so many people brainwashed to think baldness==bad? My hair really started to go down around 30 years old and am going to have to shave my head at some point, but who cares? Why does it matter?

The human brain responds positively to a full head of hair, and less positively to balding. I'm not sure why, as it seems there is no huge evolutionary advantage to hair.

However the way the brain responds to it is incontestable, and no amount of body positivity will change the impact it has, thus for an individual it makes much more sense to pay a few thousand to conform to beauty standards than hope that everyone you meet will turn off their primate brain when interacting with you.

Unless you happen to be one of the lucky few who look better bald, balding makes you less conventionally attractive (there are actual studies about this). Whether that matters depends on how much weight you place on being conventionally attractive.

Wouldn't the same also apply to preferring the shaved head look over a more natural male pattern baldness look when those are your options? Why shave it? Who cares? Does it matter?

More directly, at the risk of a handwavey evo-psych just-so story: Hundreds of millions of years of evolution, perhaps? A ton of characteristics driving attraction are signals of health / youthfulness. Weight, musculature, nice skin, good teeth, etc. And yeah, good hair! Male pattern baldness is definitely associated with aging even though many people will probably spend more of their lives follicularly challenged than they did with good hair.

Speaking as someone who's been shaving for 20 years now, it is bad.

More sun exposure, less cold protection.

It has benefits too, but it's overall harmful.

I forgot to mention: a thick head of hair is useful for safety as well. I've had a nasty head wound that would have been mostly avoided, and I've certainly bumped my head on multiple occasions where it was much more painful without that buffer.

Why are so many people brainwashed to think that anything makes an aesthetic difference? We just like what we like, having a great head of hair when you're older is rare, so it's more attractive.

Ageism is huge in the workplace. It sucks but it definitely happens. I had a young manager complaining that "his job was to teach a bunch of old bald guys with saggy balls how to use excel" - I was sitting there thinking about how I had 20 years on him but he probably didn't realize in my case because I dye my hair.

If you need your job and income, taking steps to prevent facing this bias can be beneficial.

Right? Everyone should have access to gender affirming care. Obviously, we should also try to socially change to remove the negative pressures that contribute to dysphoria.

If it makes someone feel happier to not be bald, great. It should come from making them happy, not them having to avoid social stigma though.

The question is why do people feel bad about themselves? Everyone gets old, it is part of life. Why can we not accept that?

It's not necessarily feeling bad. It might be something makes one feel better.

I'm not unhappy with how I look. I'm happier after a haircut and a hot shave. Sometimes we make choices because they take us from "whatever" to "this rules".

Because society (random people you interact with) treats you differently depending on your physical characteristics. And dealing with a bunch of people who are mean to you for no real reason is harder psychologically to deal with than dealing with a bunch of people who are nice to you for no reason. Ask any person who was overweight and lost weight whether they noticed strangers being nicer to them after their weight loss.

> Everyone gets old, it is part of life

This forum believe the silicon valley delusional tech executives saying we'll soon extend lifespan to 150+ years thanks to "ai", it's a transhumanist echo chamber, a hair transplant is nothing, they'd sell their parents for a neuralink chip

While I do not care as well I perfectly understand people that do and want to have hair on their heads.

Some people look great bald. Some don't. I am in the latter group, so I'm hoping not to go bald! If I do, I will probably buy a beret.

Totally unreputable. That is not a scientific journal. That is some guy (Who's degree is in geophysics) biog. The article was written by him.

They tried, and it sort of worked, but they couldn't stop the resulting cancer from getting cancer.

Could I donate mine to you? Been shaving my head for the last 20 years and I cannot wait for it to stop growing eventually... Seemingly it grows faster every year, as I need to continuously increase how often I trim it, I simply want less hair.

Edit: I love that someone downvoted me for offering my hair follicles to a random stranger, downvotes truly happen randomly here :)

You can't donate follicles, but you can do IPL! All us bald(ing) people will hate you, though.

But all these people in Turkey walking around with their brand new hair follicles, aren't those from other people? Or from the same person, just elsewhere?

The follicles come from the back of your head. Feel your head, there's an area where the skull and vertebrae meet. Place your hand over that area. That's the "donor" area. Follicles on the front of your scalp are sensitive to DHT (what your body metabolizes testosterone into) for many humans. This is where male pattern baldness happens.

They take your existing hair follicles from areas that aren't thinning and move them to the thinning or bald area.

So in theory if I want less head-hair and more chest-hair, I could in theory do this by moving the hair follicles? Interesting stuff.

That would not be practical. Visible body hair (and head hair) is "terminal hair". Peach fuzz is "vellus hair". Androgens turn vellus hair into terminal hairs (and are also the driving force for male pattern baldness). There was a big stink on social media about the character Aloy in the game Horizon who had vellus hairs visible on her face - like every other human woman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_hair

Yes, imagine endless energy and endless hair. It's like nuclear and hippy again, but stronger and ai-government-mandated

No no fusion energy company is going public shortly so the technology must be closer than that :)

This article is just an advert disguised as journalism.

" Most experts agree that Turkey’s strategy for success in hair transplantation no longer relies on low prices or volume; instead, it hinges on creating an unshakable brand value through innovation, purpose-built technological equipment, and medical expertise that has proven itself on a global scale. "

I don't understand how can you trust these foreigners-oriented clinics in counties with otherwise miserable healthcare. These clinics are not an exception from dysfunctional healthcare system, they are the very result and fruit of it.

Globally ranks along Poland, Belarus, and Albania. Having first hand experience in one of them the only advantage of healthcare from this league is "it somehow exists, sometimes".

"Bad health care" is what you have in Peru with nonexistent state services and thoroughly incompetent doctors. Turkey's is middle-of-the-road, which is actually pretty decent for a lot of the life-saving interventions for mainstream diseases. The life expectancy is three years lower than the EU, which is, again, not bad by any stretch of the imagination.

If you don't fall through the cracks because of cronyism, corruption, or neglect it's somehow helpful with mainstream diseases. That's the level of healthcare.

Life expectancy in these regions is mostly from diet, lifestyle, avoiding wars, and at times from avoiding the healthcare actually.

Walking thru the streets of Istanbul, it seems that female nosejobs are even more common than male hair transplants.

I think Turkish factory style dentists accumulate something like 100 times more experience?

Their private practitioners typically earn $25,000 - $45,000 per year and public sector dentists earn roughly $10,000 - $15,000

Pretty much what a western dentist charges for a handshake. So you get endless rows of teeth flying there.

If you're considering this, what I learned during my hair transplant journey may be useful. There are a variety of surgical techniques to address hair loss including different kinds and degrees of transplants and scalp reductions. Most hair loss progresses over many years until it eventually reaches a stable state. A big part of getting optimal results is identifying your kind of hair loss, where you are in the progression and correctly estimating how it will continue - then matching the proper technique or combination of techniques.

Some less-than-ideal outcomes are from mismatching the procedure(s) to the patient or doing too much too early in the loss period. If the progression occurs differently than expected after the procedure the outcome can become unbalanced. A few patients can be one-and-done but for many patients multiple steps over time can increase the odds of optimal outcomes. Generally, you should NOT push for one-and-done unless you're that rare candidate. Figuring out the pattern, progression and matching the correct plan of attack is where the experience and diligence of the practitioner matter most.

While a lot of hair loss clinics market the 'artistry' of their doctors, the reality is that performing the procedures tends to be fairly rote. My eventual outcome was great, but I totally lucked into it. It was still the late 90s when my hair loss progressed from "just some thinning" to the early stages of "have you considered a comb-over?" I went to a clinic and was told I was most likely early in a 'full loss' progression and that I'd probably need more than one scalp reduction before even starting transplants. They also advised waiting more than a year between scalp reductions for optimal results.

I was disappointed because I'd been hoping to walk in and walk out a few hours later with "Brad Pitt hair." But just having turned 30, I was feeling insecure about my hair, still dating and looking for "The One." So I signed up and insisted the surgeon "go big" on the first scalp reduction. The procedure itself was fine but the week-long recovery kicked my ass and for several months afterward my scalp felt stretched to the limit. To be fair, they did fully warn me on all this, I just hadn't taken it seriously enough. As I recovered, I decided it just wasn't worth it and gave up on the hair thing.

After it had settled for a year, the one big scalp reduction did improve things back to "just thinning" but eventually the loss progressed (as I was warned it would). But I'd already decided "it is what it is". Fortunately, it turns out when I met "The One" a couple years later she didn't care about my hair (despite being, according to my friends, waaaay out of my league) :-). Jump forward another ~20 years and my now-wife is seeing a plastic surgeon for C-section scar removal and mentions "If you still care, they do hair transplants."

Thanks to the now-ancient mega-scalp reduction, my hair never reached "full loss" but it'd stopped somewhere deep in comb-over territory. I didn't care that much but decided to do a consult anyway. Based on my unique history, the doc asked for year-by-year photos to gauge how things had progressed since the scalp reduction (photos from kid birthday parties worked well). Turns out that doing the mother-of-all scalp reductions and waiting ~20 years to reach full progression was, accidentally, the perfect plan. Now the target was clear, unmoving and reduced enough they could nail it in a one-and-done transplant by taking ALL the donor hair - which is rare. Most procedures are done on patients still in progression, but each patient only has a limited amount of donor hair, so they don't 'harvest' all of it because some will be needed later in the progression. They just don't know exactly where yet.

So I did it and ~5 years later, it still looks perfect. The procedure took most of a day but was pretty easy. The interesting part was the top-notch, deeply experienced plastic surgeon didn't do the procedure herself. It was done by two sub-contractor technicians who travel from clinic to clinic over a multi-state area doing nothing but transplants all day, every day. The doc explained its really best because they can do it very well and fast (apparently speed in parts of the procedure can improve the follicle survival rate). Of course, she checked in during the day and was on-hand in case anything went wrong. You don't need Sully Sullenberger in the cockpit on every milk run, as long as he's there on the rare flight that ends in the Hudson River.

tl;dr In my experience, once you have a skilled assessment, correctly matched procedure(s) and plan of attack, then using lower cost technicians to do the actual procedure should be fine - as long as there's an experienced back-stop available in the event of an "unscheduled water landing" (do 737s have scheduled water landings)? My only other concern would be ensuring they don't harvest too much, too early from some patients. Doing so would probably lift their 90-day customer satisfaction but at the expense of nefing 10-year C-Sat. To be fair, that could happen at pricier U.S. clinics too (my technicians had both started in those places and we got to gossiping over that long day).

Wayne Rooney lost his strength, motivation and creativity directly after his hair transplant. Some speculate the pills you need to take forever afterwards mess up your hormones. It's not worth it just to look good for women and "impressing" other people. His body turned into a fat womens body.

There are no pills to take afterwards, except perhaps painkillers. Some people who are balding chose to take finasteride but it's unrelated to the procedure itself.

> Some people who are balding chose to take finasteride but it's unrelated to the procedure itself.

Couldn't that be the pills Wayne took?

It's possible, but finasteride doesn't cause weight gain or muscle loss. In fact, it slightly increases free testosterone due to less of it being converted to DHT. He probably just got older and became less active.

Yes, finasteride can cause a very slight estrogen increase (~15%) but nothing like bodybuilders who inject anabolic steroids for example (3x-5x+ increase). It's similar to the estrogen bump from gaining 10-15 pounds of fat. In any case, it doesn't cause weight gain or muscle loss.

Wayne Rooney, like many professional sports players who spent decades staying in top shape and motivation, can actually call it a day and that is the most reasonable and normal thing.