It’s hard to deny that Elon Musk’s hair has changed for the better along with his net worth. A slew of international celebrities and sports heroes have publicly undergone follicular unit extraction (FUE) transplant procedures to *magically* restore their hairlines and stay at the forefront of style. From social media to magazines, everywhere you look today it seems more common that people proudly declare their hair transplant status, though the visible evidence for the treatment is easier to hide. Millennial FUE isn’t your dad’s hair transplant.
Even men who wouldn’t have considered a cosmetic procedure previously or never fussed over their looks are now getting on board this trend. Millennial men aged 28 to 38 are often in the thick of their personal hair-thinning experience. Most would have accepted the inevitable in the past or purchased a toupee. Today there are real, lasting, and natural-looking solutions. What makes millennial hair-restoration procedures so appealing? We’re going to take a closer look.
What does FUE mean?
Metrics in Europe and North America show an increase in patients choosing hair transplant surgery. In places like India or Turkey, the high international demand has created a booming destination surgery industry.
Follicular unit extraction, or excision, describes the procedure most commonly used to perform hair transplants today. It’s known as FUE and marketed as the “scarless” hair transplant option. Though it technically does still create scars, they are so small and well hidden due to advanced micro-punch tools that an expert, qualified practitioner can deliver virtually scarless results.
FUE isn’t new, but it has been fine-tuned in recent years to deliver incredible results. Small rotary punch tools were used to remove individual hair grafts and relocate them as early as the 1940s. However, the most prevalent methods for the general public still involved excising strips of scalp until recently. Also known as the strip method, FUT (follicular unit transplant) leaves a telltale linear scar at the back of the head because it requires the surgeon to remove a piece of the scalp and dissect it under a microscope. In that way, individual hair grafts are created for transplant. The transplantation (insertion) of hair grafts will be the same using either method, but FUE lets people avoid that scar.
What kind of result are you picturing?
As this meticulous method has advanced, the results that people achieve have also taken several steps up. There was a time when it seemed that a hair transplant result was destined to look obvious. You could tell that a person had one, and the hairs standing straight up in rows that were too thick and that ended abruptly on the forehead gave the impression of a hairpiece more than real hair.
A generation ago, the men who chose the high price of hair transplants often wore the evidence of their procedure unavoidably. Today’s FUE cost is still relatively high, depending on the number of grafts transplanted, but people are lining up in droves to undergo this transformation. We’ll outline a few of the ways it looks and feels far better than before.
FUE in Toronto: More Advanced Than Ever
If you’re wondering how it works, FUE is relatively easy to understand, but it requires an experienced hair transplant surgeon to get it looking just right. The donor hairs are extracted from an area of the head where hair growth is still thick and resilient – usually the back and sides. For men experiencing male pattern baldness, this is the region most resistant to the DHT hormone that causes hair loss. This means that the graft follicles retain their donor dominance in the new location and resist falling out.
The grafts consist of 1 to 4 hairs and a slight amount of the surrounding scalp tissue. The punch device used to extract these, whether the NeoGraft or SmartGraft system, will remove samples of tissue so small that they leave “barely there” spaces once healed. Each will be less than 1 mm wide on average. If the grafts are extracted using an experienced and intentional strategy, the donor area won’t show signs of depletion or visible spaces. This is essentially a redistribution of your existing growing hairs.
The hairline creation is another crucial factor that must be artistically carried out if you want to avoid appearing “obvious”. A well-done FUE hairline will have an irregular edge with the density and direction of hairs mimicking natural growth. The placement of single hair grafts and more diffused density helps a hairline look soft and realistic.
At the Toronto Hair Transplant Clinic, each graft is extracted carefully to ensure that the dimensions and pattern designed by Dr. Cory Torgerson specifically for you are carried out precisely.
The methods we use today are the least invasive you can get with much faster recovery times. That’s another major draw for young millennial men who don’t want to take significant time away from their lives and careers to undergo a procedure.
Healing after your procedure
Past FUT procedures were more invasive and more painful and required 2 or more weeks for recovery. The newest transplant techniques use a spinning device to efficiently extract just the superficial micro-graft. This ensures that the holes can close within a few days and heal with no stitches or bandages required. Implant sites are created using tiny slits in the scalp that don’t need any closure and leave no trace. Even up close, today’s FUE before and afters are impressively flawless.
Patients experience very little downtime or discomfort. Mild swelling usually lasts a few days, and recipients must avoid aggressive handling of the scalp or working out at the gym for a couple of weeks. Post-op care instructions are straightforward, and most people can get back to work within 3 to 5 days.
Because today’s hair restoration methods are minimally invasive, patients have far fewer complications to worry about.
Another FUE bonus: In the past, patients utilizing the strip method were limited by how many procedures they could have. Of course, androgenic alopecia (genetic hair loss) is progressive, and over time they would want to have additional procedures, but the scalp becomes tighter each time you remove a strip. The FUT (follicular unit transplantation) method can be done only a couple of times before the associated risks become too high. With follicular unit extraction, however, the options for a procedure repeat are almost endless, so if the future brings new bald areas or further recession, you can stay on top of the result and add to the crown and hairline. The transplantation can be completely customized, using anywhere from 500 to 2,500 grafts per session.
