Good Advice for a Successful Hair Transplant

Every month thousands of people in Australia consider getting a hair transplant or hair implants.  With over 40% of the population experiencing hair loss (both men and women) it is no surprise people are looking for good hair restoration solutions. If you have just started looking at whether hair transplants might be the right option for you, we trust you will find this article helpful.

Good Hair Transplant = Good Results

We love the results that a good hair transplant can create.  We have seen massive improvements in a person’s confidence and consequently their social life and relationships.  Great hair is a powerful thing!  It is also why products such as Biothik Hair Fibres are so popular for people pre and post hair implants.  They instantly make your hair look thicker and they enhance the look of the transplanted hair.

Hair Transplants – a permanent solution for hair loss

It is true that hair transplants are the only truly ‘permanent’ solution for hair loss.  What this means is that is once you have had the correct number of procedures there is no need for further treatment.  Hair is relocated and redistributed from the donor region to areas of thinning hair to create a hairline and regions of thicker hair.  This transplanted hair doesn’t fall out (at least not for a very long time – natural aging can cause hair morbidity) and you can enjoy the results for many years, even decades. This all sounds like a dream but it’s not, it is a reality for many people.  But there are some drawbacks that you should consider.

Common objections about hair transplants – The “Too’s”

People often raise common questions, concerns and objections to the idea of a hair transplant and many of them are fair enough.  We call this the story of the “toos”. Here are seven of the most common objections for people seeking a hair transplant and why they look for an alternative:

1. Too Expensive – hair transplant cost

We don’t know of any significant surgical procedure that is cheap.  Nor should it be.  Any self respecting doctor who has studied for years and is good at what they do will want to be well remunerated.  Fair enough.  Also, if the doctor is located in the west (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, etc) they will need to pay a hefty insurance premium to guard against cases of litigation.  All of this adds to the cost of a hair transplant.  It makes sense. Costs of hair transplants today vary significantly and often reflect the skill or renown of the doctor. Great artisan hair implantation doctors that create beautiful hairlines will cost more than unknown, new to the field, relatively unskilled doctors. In Australia,  hair transplants costs vary on how many hairs you have transplanted.  On average, for a gold standard doctor, you can expect to pay around $14,000 – $20,000 for a significant hair transplant that will actually make a material difference.  We are talking about a minimum of 1500 – 2000 follicular units (a follicular unit can have between 1 – 4 hairs).  Even if you travel overseas for cosmetic surgery – India, Turkey and Thailand have become popular destinations for hair transplants – you can still expect to pay around $7000 for a reasonable hair transplant plus transport and accomodation.  Of course, if anything goes wrong you have very little come back unless you return to the country where the procedure was done. Even worse, if something were to happen during the procedure and you needed further medical attention, it could cost many more thousands of dollars.  In this scenario, that savings gained by travelling to a foreign destination will be completely outweighed by the additional medical costs that you will have to pay out of your own pocket.

2. Too many procedures

Depending on the level of hair loss you have today and will have in the future, you should expect to have at least two or even three hair transplants in the course of your life.  For many, this is simply too many procedures, too much effort, too much time healing, too much money (circa: $30,000 AUD or more) for apparently too little result. The reason why you normally need at least two transplants is that you cannot transplant enough hair in one procedure without the risk of losing a significant number of newly transplanted hair.  Industry standard is about 90% take up rate of transplanted hairs, however, this can greatly decrease when doing ‘mega sessions’.  The longer the procedure goes for and the greater number of implantations causes swelling in the area of the hair transplant.  This can cause those newly transplanted hairs to be pushed out, thus causing the new hair not to “take”.  They might be implanted, but they can be dislodged, in turn they will not receive adequate blood supply and then die. It is always better to do two moderately sized procedures rather than one mega session hair transplant, the results will simply be much better; healing will be quicker, less painful and better results.

3. Too long to see results

People will often think that once they have the procedure they will instantly have the hair of their dreams.  This is not the case.  The newly implanted hair is implanted very short, like stubble.  After the procedure the scalp will be covered with scabs, dried blood, for about 10 days. Then, that newly transplanted, stubble like hair, will fall out.  Don’t worry this is part of the regrowth process, it is to be expected.  After the hair has remained dormant for a while, the hair will start to grow.  Without assistance, it will take about 9 months for the hair to grow in.  In our experience, if you use a low level light hair laser – like the Hairmax Laserband 82 – you can see this time reduce by up to 50%, about 5 months.  Still, for many this is longer than they would like.

4. Too little hair, Too little results

Tragically we often hair that there people are not happy with the results.  There could be a few reasons for this.  Perhaps, their expectations were not realistic in the first place.  Hair transplants cannot deliver the same kind of hair that you once had.  It is a mathematical impossibility.  Hair transplants don’t increase the number of hairs on your head (as many think), they simple relocate and redistribute the location of the hair.  There is no net gain of hair.  Sadly, these expectation have often been set by a doctor more interested in money than delivering a promised result, it’s the old story of over promising and under delivering on what can realistically achieved.

5. Too Painful

Ouch!  Yes, there is an ouch and an ache with transplants.  Most are done under local anesthetic and though the scalp is very numb, and your brain is also very numb, there is still the sensation of the surgery itself.  The sensation is muted, but it is still very real.  Each procedure tends to be several hours in length and a person needs to be sedated throughout. Then there is the post-operative healing.  Certainly, today’s pain killers are amazing, but they don’t remove the pain completely.  Some people find themselves off pain killers within hours, but most will need to use them for a few days to overcome the aching sensation on the scalp.  It’s always recommended to take several days off work till you are feeling like yourself again.

6. Too few good candidates

Good doctors will tell you that the key to a successful hair transplant surgery is being a good candidate.  Only 30% of people that come in for consultations are truly good candidates.  So what makes for a good candidate?  These are the key criteria to consider for hair transplant success:

1. Enough donor hair – if your hair is sparse or thin in the donor area you will not be a good candidate
2. Quality of donor hair– even if you have a good number of hairs, if that hair is very fine and limp (poor quality), you won’t be considered a good. Fine hair requires more follicles to be relocated to get the same result as a person with a moderate texture of hair.  Not all hair is equal and the number of hairs for a transplant to look good is not equal either.
3. Skin tone – if you are very fair skinned, this will work against you. Darker skin tones make the hair look thicker and fuller because you can’t see the scalp so clearly through the hair.  It is one of the reasons why Biothik fibres are fantastic at making your hair look thicker as they disguises the look of the scalp so it is the same colour as your hair, it conceals the scalp from view and makes your hair look thicker in the process.
4. Hair Colour – the darker the hair is, the better usually. Salt and Pepper (some grey’s) are even better.
5. Patient Expectations – this is probably the most critical factor in the whole process. If you want to have a gloriously thick mane of hair like Elvis, but you have significant baldness or very fine hair around the sides and back of your head, a surgical hair restoration procedure will not yield the results you want.  In effect, are not a good candidate because your expectations are too high.  If you are happy to ‘thin down’ your expectation to have a higher hairline, increase recession and have a thinner amount of hair than you once had, you are in a better place.  As a general rule, if you are male, you need to be happy to have hairline more like a 55 year old than a 25 year old and less hair around the crown.  The crown is often left much thinner so the implanted hair can be densely packed around the front hairline and front/top region of the head to maximize the look of healthy hair.  Thicker hair with a higher recession actually creates the look of a lower hairline than having a low hairline and it being very sparse.  It’s a common cosmetic trick that the best in the industry subscribe to.  Most women would not be happy to have thinner hair on top than they originally had and then decrease the hair density in donor areas is rarely looked upon as favourable.  Furthermore, there is more to consider if you are a woman as the thinning hair tends to be more expansive over the scalp than men – front, top and sides.  For these reasons we would recommend having a consultation with a hair loss specialist.
6.  Too “Pluggy” – it looks like ‘hair plugs’.  Many people refer to hair transplants as ‘hair plugs’. This is an unfortunate phrase because they relate to how hair transplants looked in their infancy 30 years ago.  Famous people that made ‘hair plugs’ infamous are are the likes of Bert Newton and Elton John before they started to use a non-surgical hair restoration process.  Hair plugs look similar to dolls hair or tufts of hair implanted in rows – it is a very unfortunate look!  Thankfully, all things evolve and the latest hair transplant methods of individual or singular implantation look nothing like this, rather, they look remarkably similar to the way your own natural hair looks, it is very undetectable.  The problem with this method how they would harvest the hair and implant it.  Doctors would literally take ‘plugs’ from the donor area and then insert them in the same fashion.  By today’s standards this sort of procedure is rather barbaric, at very least brutish compared to the sophisticated means that are employed today.

Take Action today with Hair Thickening Hair Products

The process of researching and arranging a hair transplant can take many months, even years for some.  So what can you do today to make your hair look thicker and fuller, like you have had a hair transplant, but without the hassle? We recommend that you consider using our Biothik Hair Fibres, they are the best of their kind on the market today.  They instantly make your hair look thicker, inexpensive, easy to apply and offer total security (they won’t come out of your hair) and are undetectable.  They give a perfect cosmetic result. It’s like a 30 second hair transplant in a bottle, except it’s way less expensive and instantaneous.  You can learn more about it here, or you can purchase a starter kit today. Have more questions? Call us on 02-8091 4605