TONY MALEEDY HAIR ADVICE Healthy Scalp-Beautiful Hair Hair Facts & Myths Questions & Answers Hair Transplants Hairloss in Women Hairloss in Men

Hair Transplants
(and how Wayne’s hair can be even better)
Meet Tony Maleedy our hair specialist with 25 years experience in clinical practice and hair research. Tony will be regularly contributing to his column on UKHairdressers and helping you care for your hair.

On me head son!' Wayne seemed happy to show his hair transplant off on Twitter.

With recent documentaries, lower costs, and the news about Wayne Rooney’s hair, hair transplants are becoming a main stream and totally acceptable surgical procedure for men.

Hair Transplanting is a surgical technique that involves moving individual hair follicles from the donor site at the back of the head to a bald area of the scalp (the recipient site). The reason this technique is successful is because the hairs which are transplanted from the back of the head are not genetically programmed to respond negatively to elevated levels of the male hormone dihydrotestosterone (DHT), and so will not be lost as the original hairs were.

Hair transplantation has improved enormously over the last 15 years or so. Originally comparatively large grafts of skin were transplanted from the back of the scalp to the thinning areas, and frequently these ‘plugs’ of hair were unsightly. Indeed, in the past I have come across hair transplants so badly done eventually all the plugs had to be removed because they were so embarrassingly unattractive.

But how things have changed! The technique used now is called micro-grafting. This is where, instead of the large plugs of skin, very small grafts containing 1 to 4 hairs are inserted into the thinning area of the scalp, with often spectacular results. In the right hands this technique results in totally natural

Wayne's hair a few years ago, before it started receding.

looking hair which is virtually undetectable even to an expert eye. Only a few days ago I examined the scalp of a man who had had a hair transplant ten months previously and who was totally delighted with the results. Even on close examination it was extremely difficult for me, as a hair specialist using a magnifying lens, to tell that the transplanted hairs were not original to that area of the scalp. For a non-hair specialist it would be impossible to tell.

But are all hair transplants as good as this? No they are not, which is a shame because they probably could be. All too often the hairs do not grow as well as they could simply because the person’s scalp is not as healthy as it should be.

Why is a healthy scalp important?
The hair grows from the scalp and depends upon it for its nourishment and well-being, similar to a rich fertile soil needed for plants to grow and flourish. So when the scalp becomes unhealthy it shows in the hair. Dryness, dandruff, irritation, inflammation, hair loss and much more can all be symptoms of an unhealthy scalp, but improving the health of the scalp leads to enormous improvements, not just to the scalp itself but also to the quality and condition of the hair and its ability to grow.

In 2011, Jason Gardiner spent £35,000 having 3,500 hairs transplanted from the back of his head to the top. It took 8 hours and worked out at £10 per hair. After the transplant he had to wait around 6 months for the hair to regrow and revealed his new look while on the judge's panel of the TV show Dancing on Ice. Left: James Nesbitt in 2009 after his hair transplant and (right) in 2007

The health of the scalp is particularly important in relation to hair transplants. A healthy scalp is more likely to allow newly transplanted follicular root systems to settle into position well, for any scabs or crusts to heal at a faster rate and for the regenerated hair to grow more vigorously. Improving the health of the scalp is a simple thing to do and yet can make an enormous difference to the quantity of new hair growing from transplants.

A highly effective method of achieving and maintaining a healthy scalp, particularly before and after hair transplant surgery, is to use the clinically developed therapeutic shampoo, Juniper Mint Scalp Therapy Shampoo.

Juniper Mint Scalp Therapy Shampoo
It’s worth knowing that a leading hair transplant clinic uses the Juniper Mint Shampoo after the transplant procedure as it has been proven to aid hair growth performance.

This is a unique shampoo treatment made using a rich blend of natural therapeutic oils, juniper, white thyme, tea tree, rosemary and corn mint oil, all of which have natural anti-microbial and antiseptic properties. These ingredients, combined together in an exceptionally high quality conditioning shampoo base, can have dramatic improvements to the health of the scalp and hair because of their soothing and calming effect on scalp tissues and an improvement to the environment in which the hair grows.