My Hair Transplant #2

10th May 2012 – My Hair Transplant – Jason Shankey – The UK’s Male Grooming Expert.

It was the day I had been waiting for, for over eight years.

After gradually losing my hair with androgenic alopecia (male pattern hair loss) since 2004, like many men, I had become upset and withdrawn at the way I was starting to look. Clumps of hair were evident in the plug hole each time I showered and it was becoming more and more obvious that more of what I was seeing at the top of my head was scalp, rather than hair. I could no longer style my hair because it was becoming so thin, and as you can probably imagine, as an expert in the hair industry, I hated what I was seeing.

Whether we like it or not, first impressions are made within ten seconds, and my thinning scalp and expanding balding crown were becoming more and more evident. For me, it dented my confidence and made me feel much older than my 41 years. I hear this from many of my clients who are losing their hair, and I challenge anyone who doesn’t agree, to voluntarily shave portions of hair off their scalp on a permanent basis (particularly between the crown and temples), to see what it actually looks and feels like.

Like a lot of men suffering the same way, I had tried a variety of ways to halt its progress and to hide it. I used Minoxidil since 2004, and I began taking Dutasteride in 2010, but I was a little too late with the Dutasteride. That’s more of a preventative treatment, which helps prevent your scalp from shedding its hair, and the effect of the Minoxidil seemed to be diminishing.

By this stage, I realised that there was no way of regaining my hair by just using these drugs, so I found a great concealer called Nanogen Nanofibres (which we sell in our salons). For me, this product was ideal, It’s a simple powder that you apply to your hair which hides hair loss and makes your hair appear full and thick. The difference was astonishing, but even though it looked amazing, it fell down in a few areas. Firstly, it’s a cosmetic product and isn’t permanent. Secondly, once people see your thick hair, you have to keep using it. This isn’t always practical if you go swimming for example, or if you get caught out in the rain.

As a professional hairdresser, I knew that there was one last line of defence against hair loss. A hair transplant surgeon can take hairs from the back of your head and insert them into the top of your head, thus replacing many of the hairs that have disappeared. There is quite a detailed scientific reason why the hair follicles at the back of your head aren’t susceptible to falling out like the ones at the top of your scalp, but let’s just say that they will stay there permanently.

Whilst this is a permanent solution, I had reservations about the procedure, because during the 1980’s when the treatment was first developed, surgeons used an old fashioned technique which ‘plugged’ clumps of hair into the recipient area. This gave transplanted hair a ‘dolls hair’ look, which quite frankly looked fairly ridiculous.

However, most things have moved on from the 1980’s, including hair transplant technology, and I thoroughly investigated the new techniques available before deciding it was something that would definitely suit me.

Using my professional judgement, I was able to understand how each process worked, and how it would transform my hair. For example, I could imagine what a finished look might be like based on the type of procedure a man chose, and it became evident that MFUT (Microscopic Follicular Unit Transplantation) with strip harvesting was perfect for my particular circumstance.

MFUT is where a strip of donor tissue is removed from the back of your head and then is carefully separated into the naturally occurring follicular units of one to four hairs per follicular unit under a microscope by a hair transplant technician, before being transplanted into recipient sites your surgeon has carefully created in the balding and thinning areas of your scalp. The result is a natural, completely undetectable hair transplantation outcome.

I had decided that I was ready to have a hair transplant and then spent a few months researched the entire market, before coming to my conclusion that Dr Craig Ziering would be my choice of surgeon.

To learn more about Ziering Medical, visit their website at www.hairtransplantziering.co.uk or call 0808 149 7281.