So are you thinking about getting a hair transplant?

“Go to the wing.” “Go Turkey.” “I need a uniform.” If these phrases give you anxiety, then you’ve probably worried about your hairline at some point. You’ve probably (like me) scraped your hair back in front of the bathroom mirror and tried to remember if your hairline actually always looked like that. Affecting about 50 percent of men by the age of 50 and seen as a crisis of attractiveness and masculinity, hair loss is a ubiquitous concern especially for young men. It’s also, unfortunately, something online venues seem to be taking advantage of more and more.

“I play to hundreds of thousands every year and confidence is everything. Thinning hair is not an option,” declares McFly guitarist Danny Jones in an endorsement for online hair clinic MANUAL. While this isn’t the case (hair thinning is inevitable for many, especially men), and buying treatments online certainly isn’t always the answer, what this video highlights is how the stigma around hair loss is starting to disappears. Gone are the days of rampant tabloid speculation about Wayne Rooney’s potential hair transplant. Today, celebrities are much more open about hair loss.

Likewise, hair transplant providers like it Estenovewhose Istanbul clinic I visited last month, are also making surgical treatments more affordable than ever. Offering all inclusive at competitive prices, hair transplants are no longer exclusive to the super rich.

The increased availability of hair loss solutions obviously comes with its risks, mainly from all the unscrupulous companies that seek to exploit your concerns, but they also have an added benefit of allaying those concerns. Everything looks worse in the bathroom mirror at midnight, and talking about your perceived hair loss can inform you whether you should seek medical treatment. Well, let’s talk about it.

“95 percent of our patients are men, mostly because of androgenic factors,” explains Estenove’s doctor, Zafer, “B.We also see other causes, such as hormonal imbalances, vitamin and iron deficiencies, and perhaps stress.” In these androgenic cases, Zafer continues, hair loss occurs at the corners of the head, before gradually increasing in severity and spreading to the crown area. Meanwhile, stress- and hormone-related hair loss often first appears as thinning on the top of the head.

The remaining five percent of Estenove’s patients are women, but, aside from trauma and stress-related hair loss, the causes are usually different. “Too much microblading on the eyebrows can mean that the hairs never grow back and, after that, they may want an eyebrow transplant,” she explains. “I remember when I was a teenager, thin eyebrows were fashionable. These days, thicker brows are the trend.”

Zafer also tells me that there are some situations where a hair transplant is not possible – for example, if the patient is very young (generally under 25), if they have pre-existing heart or brain conditions, or if the hair loss is very severe, as the procedure is based on grafts from the back of the head. “In these cases, we may recommend other drugs,” he explains, “so experience [in hair loss treatment] it is important. There’s a lot of misinformation online and people often come in with unrealistic expectations.”

Of these other medications mentioned by Dr. Zafer, finasteride and minoxidil are by far the most common. Finasteride treats male pattern baldness specifically by inhibiting the production of the sex hormone dihydrotestosterone, which can contribute to the shrinking of hair follicles, while minoxidil works more generally by stimulating hair regeneration. Both are readily available from online providers and can be effective in preventing early hair loss, but they also come with a host of side effects, including erectile dysfunction and reduced libido – which many online vendors readily (and worryingly) stock for .

We spoke to a recent recipient of Estenove’s hair transplant, football influencer Mark Harlow, who explained how losing his hair had caused him to lose confidence while filming his social media content and worried that his 11 teammates would make comments about the his appearance. Harlow described how he began taking finasteride to maintain the graft — a practice sometimes recommended as part of the recovery process. “I started with the tablet but had some side effects as libido was low,” she tells Dazed, “I switched to a topical finasteride spray and so far it’s been great with no side effects.”

Elsewhere in our conversation, Zafer describes how his clinic has also seen a recent increase in bodybuilders seeking hair transplants due to testosterone-boosting steroid abuse. What begins to emerge here is a cycle of male insecurity that leads to further negative outcomes, from testosterone abuse to hair loss medication to erectile dysfunction treatment. Again, perception and managing expectations play a huge role here, and it’s important to be aware of the side effects of any treatment you’re on.

“Without a doubt, I plan on getting a transplant at some point,” another hair loss sufferer, Eesah*, tells Dazed. “It’s clearly a very unregulated and predatory landscape with many surgeons making people’s lives worse, so I’ve done a lot of research to ensure I choose an ethical and competent surgeon when I take the plunge.” Indeed, some hair transplants can do more harm than good – from causing infection and scarring to just being a bit funny. So, according to Estenove’s doctors, here are some ideas about the procedure.

“There are written and unwritten rules for hair transplants, so experience is important,” Zafer tells me. “In America, the procedure starts at $20,000 to $40,000, but the results can be devastating. It’s not about price, it’s about whether they have experience.” This medical expertise can include knowing which techniques to use depending on the type of hair loss, but also understanding the patient’s expectations.

“The first rule of medicine is to do no harm, but what is harm? There is a balance between the patient’s medical conditions, aesthetic conditions and their psychology,” Zafer continues. “Many 20-25-year-old patients are applying for a transplant, but some don’t even have any type of hair loss. We try to keep them within realistic boundaries.

But what is the process actually like? “The operation took about five hours, and the anesthesia was the only painful part, which lasted five minutes,” Harlow tells Dazed about a month out of his surgery. While the exact techniques can vary from clinic to clinic, with a big variable being whether patients undergo general anesthesia, the vast majority of hair transplants involve taking grafts from a donor area (often the back of the head where the hair are denser) and implanting them throughout the scalp, before sealing the area with stitches.

After surgery, patients return to the clinic the next day for a wash and check-up before entering the aftercare period, throughout which your doctor should be in regular contact. As Zafer mentioned, the success rate of a transplant can vary greatly and no operation is guaranteed, but Estenove advertises 90-95 percent effectiveness for his surgeries.

“My hair is now past the shedding stage, so I’m looking a bit bald again, but it’s all part of the process and five months from now I’ll start to see a lot of progress,” Harlow concludes of the process that is finally taking. about a year to complete. “The first month I took everything easy. No gym or anything like that. But now I’m in my second month and I’m back to my normal routine.”

I had heard rumors about how every Ryanair flight to Istanbul is full of hairy pilgrims looking for salvation. Sitting on the plane out there last month, I spotted some prominent widow’s peaks that might fit. But then I heard them speaking Turkish. I realized I was being a bit judgmental – they weren’t men insecure about their hair, but ordinary people on their way home from holiday. In a way, this felt like a metaphor for the stress of hair loss as a whole. Perception bias is a powerful thing, and fixating on your hairline can easily make it look much worse than it actually is.

Hair loss has affected people for generations – even the most famous bust of Julius Caesar in Turin, Italyshe is at a cool stage three on the Norwood hair loss scale. So whether you choose to seek treatment or not, be sure not to internalize your anxieties, discuss your concerns with friends and professionals, and consider any treatment for its potential side effects. Besides, everything looks worse in the bathroom mirror at midnight.

* The name has been changed