This is a very question and one that a lot of people are confused about. In particular, the hair transplant procedure involves removing growing hair follicles from and area of the scalp with good hair growth, usually the posterior, and placing that hair into the bald spot or thinning area to give new growth where the old hair has fallen out. This procedure has been performed in the US since the 1950’s so there has been a lot of time to perfect the procedures and make them as natural looking as possible. Most people can not spot a man who has had a hair transplantation procedure performed when he is next to a man who has not had the hair grafting done.
Let’s look at why this is necessary. Almost 100% of the men who report balding problems do so because of a condition is passed down through the generations called male pattern baldness. This genetic condition causes a man to lose hair only on certain areas of the scalp. Usually this is the front and the vertex or crown area. This means the hair continues to grow at the sides and back of the head which gives a great place to harvest hair implant units from. Women with hair loss will usually have a little more difficult time because they are generally suffering hair thinning over their entire head and thus don’t have a good donation area to work from. Another method of new hair transplant procedures known as follicular unit extraction is used for hair implants in women.
When a man suffers from male pattern baldness his body is actually fighting the hair to make it fall out. What happens in particular is a substance in the blood called DHT will bond with receptors on the hair follicles, also called hair roots, and cause them to slow down their growth cycles. This causes a loss of keratin in the hair shaft and the hairs become thinner and thinner. Eventually the hair can not support itself and it breaks of at the scalp boundary and falls out. At this point there is not way to get this particular hair follicle to start producing hair shaft material again no matter what several hair loss remedy sales pages will tell you. The only option is to get new follicles growing in the bald spot.
A cosmetic surgeon performs the hair transplantation procedure by actually removing some hair from the back of the head and implanting these complete hair units. The hair shaft along with the sebaceous glands, the adventitial sheath, and all the support blood supply and nervous system structures are individually separated and then inserted into a small incision hole in the scalp. By transplanting all the necessary roots of the hair there is a much better chance of the hair growing after the hair transplant procedure. In fact, you can expect an almost 100% growth rate within about six months time.
The new hair transplantation procedures are now very gentle on the scalp and patient feels very little discomfort. The removal site of the follicular unit extraction method usually appears as a pin prick and is healed over within a few days. The hair implant insertion site also shows a little discoloration but again it is gone within a few days. The entire hair transplantation procedure can be done in an afternoon at a doctors office or hair clinic. It is really quite simple.
If you are having balding problems then you owe it to yourself to learn all you can about the hair transplant procedure and how it can take years off your life and give you back the youthful look you deserve.