No one wants to deal with balding as they age. In youth, we often take our full, luscious locks for granted, not realizing how fleeting they are until we notice an alarming receding line in the mirror. We can chop our hair as short as we want, dye it a new color every month, or completely change its texture through perms and other chemical treatments. In some cases, a lifetime of this hair abuse even speeds up the balding and brittleness that happens with age. While some embrace the gradual hair loss that comes with getting older, others want to preserve their curls or waves for as long as possible. Thankfully, there are many procedures available that can help you do that.
Follicular unit extraction. Follicular unit extraction, or FUE, is a procedure in which a surgeon will shave the back of your head and remove the hair follicles one by one. After these sites are healed, the surgeon will place in grafts to replace the hair. All in all, the procedures take about eight hours on average. Your surgeon will require you to wear bandages for a couple days as your scalp heals.
The hair that is surgically applied to your head will not be the hair that remains. In fact, it will probably fall out within two or three weeks. After that, however, you can expect up to 60% of hair regrowth within the next few months. Keep in mind that these surgical hair replacement procedures can come with the risk of scarring, bleeding, infection, and unnatural looking hair growth patterns.
Follicular unit strip surgery. Follicular unit strip surgery, or FUSS, is a very similar procedure to FUE, except the surgeon will remove a six to ten inch section of skin from the back of your head, and implants grafts from this section into the rest of your scalp. The cost of a hair transplant like these two can be extensive, anywhere from $4,000 to $15,000.
There are other hair replacement techniques that are not as severe as these, including home remedies, diet changes, and harvesting hair follicles from donors. It is a little known fact that men actually begin going bald before they realize it; half of a man’s head of hair will have fallen out before it becomes cosmetically visible. Talk to a professional consultant today to see if these procedures are right for you.