How turkey hacked the hair-transplant industry
wired.com137 points by joozio 6 days ago
137 points by joozio 6 days ago
I did it a few years ago when I was living in Istanbul. One evening, a friend of mine wouldn't shut up about the procedure. I ended up booking it almost on a whim, mostly just to prove him wrong. I did the transplant the next day. In the end, I was very happy with the results. I think it cost around 1500$.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olalonde/olalonde.github.c...
You look very handsome in both photos, but I'm just happy that you're happy.
Do you have to take any medications/follow-ups forever to keep it in place or is a one and done kind of procedure?
No medications or follow ups required. The transplanted hair follicles are harvested from a region of the scalp (the donor area) that is genetically immune to hair loss, meaning they are permanent. However, you will continue to lose the non-transplanted native hair around them as baldness progresses. So some people choose to take finasteride and/or minoxidil to maintain their existing hair (I personally don't).
How long ago is this? I literally just had one done, believed what you just wrote, and then came across this video randomly yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL7J2Mqbhrc
I think the finasteride side effects sound too much for me to handle.
The side effects of finasteride are wildly overstated, millions of people take it without any issue, myself included
> I think the finasteride side effects sound too much for me to handle.
That's the bit that puts me off. I don't mind my baldness - it doesn't impact me in any way. I wouldn't mind being able to have hair again to style it, but not at the expense of the potential side effects of fin.
I'll just continue to enjoy not having to style my hair every morning, and saving on extortionate barber bills nowadays.
You don’t? Are you okay with what it’ll look like once you lose the hair behind your transplant? Folks who get a HT who don’t get on meds will have a weird crescent hairline and then no hair behind it. Feels like at that point just don’t get the transplant in the first place.
I've never done it despite being fully bald by age 25, as going back into work with a head of hair would cause more conversation about it than being bald ever has for me
You shouldn't bother with any other opinion than your own on these matters, it's not healthy, they don't live your life.
That being said, I also started balding in spots very young and I couldn't care less fixing it.
Obviously subjective, but I've got to say that looks pretty great to me. Do you mind if I ask where the transplanted hairs came from?
They come from lower parts of the patient's scalp. The typical "receding hairline" pattern is caused because the follicles on the forehead and top of the head become sensitive to with age to DHT, the but the hair follicles on the lower and on the back of the head don't have the same sensitivity. There's usually more than enough of these resistant follicles to maintain sufficient hair density.
The surgery just moves the follicles around your own scalp. Body hair transplant can be done but is relatively uncommon, donor hair from other people (or animals) requiring a lifetime on immune system suppressing drugs as with an organ transplant is virtually unknown.
No, it's not pubic hair and you don't need to have a hairy back or chest, and no, there are not millions of low-status Turkish men walking around with scarred heads because they sold their scalp to a foreigner.
Thanks.
They take hair follicles from the back of your head, the "safe donor area" that is genetically immune to balding, and move them to the thinning areas. The total amount of hair on your head remains exactly the same, it's just repositioned to give the illusion of uniform coverage and eliminate bald spots.
That's also why it's not a miracle cure for baldness - you're limited by the amount of hair follicles available in the donor area.
See: https://ishrs.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/donor-area-asse...
I had three done in the states and I'm happy with them, but it's tough to argue it was necessarily worth the increased price.
What was the cost? I've heard it's cheaper to fly to Turkey.
It's a lot cheaper in Turkey. I don't remember the exact numbers but each of mine (in the US) was in the high four figure range.
I originally felt more confident going to a plastic surgeon, though even though the doctor oversaw the process, it was being done by highly trained technicians. That's probably more ideal anyway because it's very manual and meticulous work, so (IMO) you want someone who's done it a thousand times--not someone who did a nose job yesterday, a boob job the day before, and only does a hair transplant every couple of weeks.
I'd assume the techs in Turkey are about as experienced as you can get.
if i recall, it was costing $8-$11 in US compared to 3-5eur per graft in turkey 2-3 years back.
How did it hold up over the past few years?
Holding up pretty well. Here's a picture from yesterday: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olalonde/olalonde.github.c.... The transplant was in 2021.
that is actually one of the better and more natural-looking hairlines I've seen. They did a good job!
Looks great! So you get the procedure, and then what happens after? Whats the recovery process like?
It is mostly a waiting game. The first month is about cleaning the scabs off your scalp and keeping away from the sun and certain activities while the hair follicles anchor and the scalp heals. Your hair will go through an initial 'shock' phase where it falls out but enters a normal growth cycle.
you or the dog? In both cases: respect!
Should've clarified: the dog is 100% natural and procedure-free. Life is unfair :)
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this is one of those "if you have nothing nice to say" moments. there's really no reason for your comment.
I don't think so. I had a transplant and I'd like being told I look better bald. I can always shave my head. "You looked better with hair" when you've gone bald is the hurtful one.
Men can wear the bald look if it comes down to it. It's women that I feel really bad for.
Some men can. Unfortunately, a full head of hair looks better the vast majority of the time.
Dude, you're crazy! You look great now, prob one of the best procedures of it I've seen.
Also I notice my wife and female friends NEVER seem to notice when someone has plugs.
When I occasionally point it out, they're always surprised.
I haven't done it as I don't need it, but I would say anyone on the fence, just do it.
From what I know it's easier to keep what you have that get a transplant so fire up that HIMs subscription
Thanks! It's really hard to tell. Most people are surprised when I tell them (unless they knew me before the procedure).
The thing is, you can always shave your head, no matter how magnificent your hair is.
Thanks, I guess I could still shave :) But it's definitely not a common opinion.
I think both look good on you, I had a transplant because I definitely didn't look better bald.
As a guy that started experiencing moderate hair loss in his 20s, I spent countless hours researching the Turkish hair transplant industry.
It's a case of having the right people at the right place, at the right time. Turkey have some of the leading doctors and clinics in this field, and have had for years. They were also located in a place which was close to both customers from Europe and the Middle-East, and could offer FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) procedures at a very nice price.
Even the very top doctors there were charging a relatively modest price, compared to their (more) western colleagues. And I guess with the sheer volume they'd go through, they discovering new best practices, techniques, etc. along the way.
Back when I did research on this, now 15 years ago, the industry was starting to really take off. This was reflected in the prices that the best clinics charged. Some of them jumped up 50% in a short time, when photo-driven social media like Instagram started blowing up.
And then a whole industry sprung out of it. Many excellent clinics, tons more mediocre (to horrendous) ones that are only trying to compete on price.
Guess this also goes for the dental industry there.
Which clinics are good based on your research? Did they survive the boom or went under?
Did your research turn up anything about the hacked medical devices that the article is talking about? Is that not relevant to the industry at large too? Seems like that kind of could have been a "make it or not moment", or no?
My grandmother used to say, "the Americans are going to space while we're just growing butt-hair". She was so close!
The first gulp from the glass of wealth will make you reach for the stars, but at the bottom of the glass, a hair transplant is waiting for you.
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The only caveat is that Turkey isn't even an EU candidate anymore. So not sure why you bring Europe up.
It is a huge unspoken reality how much one's physical appearance affects the way they are treated, their life outcomes, and ultimate success in social/romantic relationships. Hair transplants, leg lengthening, plastic surgery, etc. will all explode over the next decade as AI erodes humans' ability to be successful via their industry and intellect.
The irony is that none of this stuff actually works as intended. Plastic surgery is obvious. Lip injections are obvious. Leg lengthening, I mean have you seen the proportions after?? Hair transplants too. If the most wealthy people getting these procedures look botched, what hope does anyone have really. Also, are we acting like steve jobs wasn't still a handsome man with his grey thinning head?
It doesn't come from getting legitimate validation from others. It comes from one's own fear of aging and their own mortality. Sorry, but we all shrivel up like a raisin by the end. Trying to beat that back with these means just seems so futile. Spend that cash on therapy instead to tackle your body dysmorphia.
> Plastic surgery is obvious
Survivorship bias, you only notice the plastic surgery that isn't good. Most of the time it's invisible, your brain doesn't process the individual change, you just get the sense that the person looks better/less tired/more put together.
>Lip injections are obvious
Same phenomenon, but even if they are obvious some people like that aesthetic, in the same way that dyed hair/painted nails are obvious, but that's the point
>Leg lengthening, I mean have you seen the proportions after
For some men it is far better to be 6' with wonky proportions than 5'7" with perfect proportions. There is far more hate directed towards short men than men with long legs.
>Hair transplants too. I mean are we acting like steve jobs wasn't still a handsome man with his grey thinning head?
Not everyone is as handsome as Steve Jobs. If you have a handsome face you can get away with balding, if not then its a further infliction on how people percieve you.
>Sorry, but we all shrivel up like a raisin by the end
If we all die after 80 or so years then what's the point of doing anything? Why get a job, why put any effort into personal grooming?
> Survivorship bias, you only notice the plastic surgery that isn't good. Most of the time it's invisible, your brain doesn't process the individual change
So you're telling me all these Hollywood stars having infinite money, access to the best surgeons and are literally paid to look good get butchered on purpose?
Yes, often times it's some specific surgeon that overpromises, messes up, then subsequent surgeries which attempt to patch the issues end up failing. There are many celebrity surgeons who are good at marketing but bad at execution, and many celebs themselves who can't discern a good or bad job.
Plastic surgery can be obvious, which is useful signaling for some groups.
Everyone looks great if they live healthily and groom themselves. No one is actually an ugly duckling.
>If we all die after 80 or so years then what's the point of doing anything? Why get a job, why put any effort into personal grooming?
Because you want to be fit and healthy? All these surgeries are orthogonal to that. Every surgery is risky even medically necessary ones. You shower and groom yourself to prevent skin issues. You work out to simulate the hunter gatherer lifestyle your body is adapted to in the modern society which does not sufficiently pressure these adaptions. This stuff is your oil change and tire rotation. It is maintenance really. These surgeries are not maintenance however. It is like ricing the civic while it burns oil and the transmission makes scary sounds.
> Everyone looks great if they live healthily and groom themselves.
Not true for everyone. Simply living healthily and grooming, you are still limited by the ceiling imposed by your body. Sometimes it just doesn't live up to the aesthetic demands of the human psyche, used to a superstimulus of attractiveness as the norm.
>Every surgery is risky even medically necessary ones
Most cosmetic surgeries carry very little risk, your overall risk from even being a moderate drinker, commuting to work in a car, being mildly overweight are far higher in aggregate.
My main point is, the human modern social world isn't a perfect arbiter of reward based on whether you are doing all the "right things", by being generally healthy.
Sometimes people get a disease, like cancer, and nothing our body evolved to do can help, but human-invented therapies can actually help. Likewise, you can be perfectly healthy and nevertheless start balding, and no amount of generally being healthy is going to fix it, and no amount of generally being healthy will mitigate the minor albeit real social cost of it.
Donald fricking trump is the president of the united states. You don't have to be pretty to get far in life.
An exception isn't the rule. However Donald Trump by NY billionare real estate executive standards is fairly good looking, is very tall and has no major deformities. I doubt Trump would have gotten as far as he did if he were below average height, balding and didn't have expensive veneers.
Sure he would have. Plenty of people at the top of their industry are short, bald, and not conventionally attractive. People only have a good 10-15 years between looking 16 and showing signs of aging, sometimes much less. Such a small percent of one's life. But, people are not rational or logical but highly emotional. They see a grey hair and they feel bad. A wrinkle and they think it is the end for them. Sorry, you are becoming a high mileage car. This is just what happens. You got a lot more in you to go though.
Kind of relevant that Steve Jobs looked like Ashton Kutcher to begin with. Edit: Well a prettier version.
i do not think this is unspoken.
I agree, but admitting the shallowness of the general human populace seems to be a moderate social taboo. You can get away with contextualizing it in a way that equivocates the nature of the phenomenon, but addressing it too directly seems to get pushback.
Saying
>I'm getting a hair transplant because I want to feel better about myself
Is received much more favorably that
>I'm getting a hair transplant because people are mean to bald people and I would downgraded a few points in implicit social status and general treatment if I were to exhibit male-pattern baldness.
It’s one of the most spoken about things in the world somewhat indirectly.
> as AI erodes humans' ability
Lol here we go again.
I did one in Thessaloniki, Greece eight years ago. Here's a photo album of me before, during, after, and recently:
Is your hair thinning again, or is it just the angle between the last two pics?
I'm not entirely sure! It might have thinned a bit, but it also depends on my haircut, angle, and light.
Thank you for sharing. I asked this of another commenter - but whats the post-procedure process like?
It was painful for a day or two, and I couldn't touch my scalp at all for a few days, I had to sleep on a rolled-up towel. That's it.
Why is "turkey" lowercased? For that matter the country's official name is Türkiye as of 2022.
I won't be calling Turkey Türkiye anymore than I would call China Zhōngguó.
They don't have any authority to manage other people's languages.
The lack of capitalization is an obvious error, though. Before clicking, I wondered if some accidental discovery in turkeys (as birds) resulted in better human hair growth.
> I won't be calling Turkey Türkiye anymore than I would call China Zhōngguó.
And that's fine. I mentioned Türkiye because at least one smart-ass would correct me otherwise. But "turkey" is a bird. For it to be a country it's at least gotta be "Turkey".
> I won't be calling Turkey Türkiye anymore than I would call China Zhōngguó.
Whyever not? It's their stated preference. And it's hardly the same kind of change as "China" vs. "Zhōngguó" or "Germany" vs. "Deutschland". It's just a slightly different spelling and pronunciation of the same word. You can change your ways.
Germany's official name is Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Germany's official name in English is "Federal Republic of Germany". (And in French the official name is "La République fédérale d'Allemagne").
Another country's official name in English is "Republic of Türkiye". Since 2022.
In both cases, that is what officials from the country expect the country to be called, when using the English language.
For instance here
And yet you write "Germany", not "germany".
Well, you don't know if they do, or if they were just capitalising the start of their sentence while not feeing that the word needs a capital letter in and of itself.
(But yeah, personally I would capitalised both counties regardless of spelling/which name used.)
Hold on, I’m confused for real. If not for the country, is this just a cosmic linguistic coincidence? J/k but only sorta.
Any country should have the respect to have their names spelled out as they prefer, the PITA is the keyboards. I speak for myself, but when I type Turkey I mean the country with no subliminal diss.
Turkiye is the endonym, not the exonym.
Not anymore really, at least according to their preference. At a minimum, a capital T will prevent comedic errors like a head full of feathers.
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/08/1147704945/the-state-departme...
Sure, but "turkey" is a bird, not a country. You at least have to write "Turkey" to be clear to English speakers. If you like, save Türkiye for your visits to the UN.
I agree on a capital T. Country names are proper nouns and should always be capitalised.
Let's talk turkey, does it really matter?
Yes, casing matters. It carries meaning.
It's the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.
This headline makes it sound like the IT systems of a cosmetic surgeon have been attacked by poultry.
Exactly. "Earth" means the planet we live on and "earth" means soil. The disrespect of the meaning conveyed by not using the correct case is noxious and sloppy.
Does anything matter? If there are things that matter, grammar is one of those things.
Yes? The country is named Türkiye, we should use that name?
The etymology here is interesting and has a looooong history. The country has officially been named Türkiye for over a century.
And Germany's official name is "Bundesrepublik Deutschland". I get to call it Germany though.
Germany's official English name is Germany[0].
[0] https://unterm.un.org/unterm2/en/view/745bbc2a-fc50-4b94-bb9...
Has Germany said they should be called Deutschland by English speakers?
Is it a right of any nation to assert what other nations call it? Can America ask China to stop calling them 美国 (Měiguó) and call them the USA?
The problem with the turkey rebranding is that it was a mere orthographic update, but it is using orthography that is very non standard(whatever that means for English), including using a diacritic rarely seen in English.
I could get behind it more if they completely changed the name, like a when Swaziland switched to eswatini. But for now, you can pry turkey from my cold dead hands
Yes? It's obviously the case that countries can ask this?
We can choose not to do it, I guess, but place names change all the time. Istanbul vs Constantinople. New York vs New Amsterdam. Myanmar vs Burma. Czechia vs Czech Republic. Swaziland vs Eswatini.
> But for now, you can pry turkey from my cold dead hands
Big fan of Thanksgiving foods I see.
(Do you see the real problem? Lowercasing a proper noun that has another meaning when lowercased. Turkey/Türkiye is just the cherry on top)
Yes, compare Czech Republic-> Czechia. No problem typing that out, no problem updating my mental map of the world.
Frankly I dispute that Türkiye can be the English name given it contains a non-English letter.
I was gearing up to suggest that diaeresis very absolute valid English, but dug in a bit. It's not just a u with a diacritic. Ü is a separate letter in Turkish, with a more "ooh" or "ouh" like sound. TIL.
> if they completely changed the name, like a when Swaziland switched to eswatini.
It's "Eswatini" with a capital letter and no, it's not a complete change. In both cases the word means the place of the Swazi/Swati people. If you're not aware that Southern African languages use prefixes such as "e-" as well as suffixes (like e.g. the suffix "-land" in English) then I guess it's harder to recognise the word stem. But they are related terms, not a "complete change".
If you need an example, look at the Peking->Beijing transition.
https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pekin Turkish still uses the old term. Why should I change my language to suit them if they won't do it for others.
That attitude is, frankly, pretty misanthropic. "Why should I do anything for anyone who doesn't do it for me first" is how you get nowhere.
So here's your why: because they asked you to and you are better at it than they are. If you need smug superiority, you could use that too, I guess.
People change their names and nick names all the time. I don't go and check every value of theirs before I use their new name. It's really not that complicated.
