Can gray hair be transplanted? That is a question often asked when a person with graying or gray hair begins to experience hair loss due to androgenetic alopecia, the condition commonly called male- or female-pattern hair loss (Click on About Your Hair Loss). The answer is “Yes, gray hair can be transplanted as safely and successfully as hair of any color.”

Vive le difference is a phrase that celebrates the features making us individuals. Features contributing to an individual’s include gender (male-ness or female-ness) and ethnicity (for example, East Asian, South Asian, sub-Saharan African, North African, Mediterranean Caucasian, Nordic Caucasian among many ethnic “types”). Gender and ethnic differences are manifested most prominently in the overall appearance of an individual—the “look” that an

Sometimes your mirror raises the first question: Is that a spot where I’m beginning to lose hair? Or, it may be your comb and brush or the shower drain: It looks like I’m losing a lot more hair than usual. If you have been losing hair for a while and have visible bald spots, you may wonder how much hair

Medical hair restoration therapy and hair transplantation are two different approaches to the correction of hair loss due to androgenetic alopecia. Either medical hair restoration or surgical hair restoration may be the best approach to hair loss for an individual, depending on variable factors such as degree of hair loss, rapidity of hair loss, pattern of hair loss, and response to medical treatment. Some persons may

Comparing Apples with Apples and Oranges with Oranges in Hair Transplantation: What Benchmarks Should a Patient Rely on to Predict Outcome? The purpose of hair transplantation is cosmetic improvement, but this has multiple layers of meaning for different people. One may seek hair transplantation to feel better about one’s self, to have more confidence about one’s appearance to others, to

An important-and for some prospective patients the most important-question regarding hair restoration surgery is: Will it be painful? Different people have different levels of susceptibility to the unpleasant sensations associated with physical trauma. Those with a low level of susceptibility can tolerate skin injury with a “grin and bear it” attitude. People with higher levels of susceptibility do not tolerate

The final and esthetically important surgical step in hair transplantation is placement of hair grafts into the scalp. A graft is the tissue unit of one or more hair follicles that has been removed from a donor site on the scalp, to be inserted into an area of hair loss. Graft placement is a surgical procedure that the patient cannot

  What are the characteristics of scalp hair that contribute to a person’s unique appearance?   The characteristics commonly noted are: Color-blond, red, brown, black and varying shades of each. Caliber (diameter of hair shaft)-fine, medium, or thick in cross-section. Geometric property-straight, wavy, curly, frizzy.   These commonly noted hair characteristics are often associated with other features that contribute to

Do you smoke? Do you drink alcoholic beverages? What medications do you take? Do you use herbal “health food” products? These are questions a patient will be asked before undergoing hair restoration surgery-or, for that matter, any type of surgery. What is the connection between smoking, drinking and surgery? What does it matter what medications a patient takes, or what

  Age-Appropriate Appearance One of the most common reasons for men and women to consider hair transplantation is to overcome what they perceive to be an age-inappropriate appearance. They don’t want to appear older than their calendar age or appear older than they wish to appear. The reasons to avoid age-inappropriate appearance can be personal, work-related, or a combination of

Androgenetic alopecia-male- and female-pattern hair loss-is known to have a genetic basis. It is an inheritable condition, commonly described as “running in the family”. (See About Hair Loss). Having close family members with androgenetic alopecia significantly increases your risk for having some degree of hair loss between adolescence and middle age. How much hair you will lose and in what pattern